A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Trump DOJ Gives Judge Runaround On Deportations

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg remained measured despite confronting a Trump Justice Department that was giving him the runaround.

President Trump’s constitution-shaking defiance of Boasberg’s order blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act could turn out to be one of the defining stories of our time. But the potentially titanic constitutional clash arrived in the form of penny-ante gamesmanship, unsubtle avoidance and misdirection, and less-than-stellar advocacy from the Justice Department.

A pattern has already developed of the highest echelons of the Justice Department plastering their names on important filings and even showing up to argue some cases themselves. But at the same time, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s department has swapped out lawyers, pushed attorneys with less experience in the case at hand in front of judges, and sent counsel into court unprepared to answer obvious questions.

Such was the case Monday when Judge Boasberg lamented that the government didn’t come prepared to provide the information he had set the hearing to obtain. In response, Boasberg set a new deadline for noon ET today for the government to answer some of his most basic questions. The hearing happened despite a last-minute effort by the Justice Department to cancel the hearing and a heavy-handed and sure-loser of a request to the appeals court to take Boasberg off the case entirely.

On top of the ill-preparedness and the gamesmanship, the quality of the Trump DOJ’s advocacy was poor. It’s not the first time that the Trump DOJ has brought a weak hand into court and tried to bluff its way through a hearing. The volume of legal challenges over the first two months, the speed of developments, and the apparent difficulty DOJ lawyers are having getting factual information from their government client have contributed to professionally humiliating moments that no previous Justice Department would have subjected its attorney to.

The contrast between the historically high stakes of these cases and the small ball being played by the Trump DOJ is striking. But there is a through-line that aligns the substance and the legal theatrics: In both, the Trump administration is sneering at the judicial branch and its status as a co-equal branch.

‘I Don’t Care What The Judges Think’

Acting ICE Director Tom Homan helpfully offering new evidence of the Trump administration defying court orders:

Homan: "We're not stopping. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We're coming."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 17, 2025 at 11:05 AM

Judge Backs Off In Second Deportation Case

The federal judge who issued an order blocking the deportation of a Brown University medical school professor seemed satisfied by the government’s explanation about why she was deported anyway. U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin of Boston entered a minute order Monday that said in part:

The Court appreciates the prompt response by the government. Supported by an affidavit from the CBP Watch Commander, the government explains that CBP Officers at Logan did not receive notice of the Court’s Order from their legal counsel until after Dr. Alawieh “had already departed the United States” and that “[a]t no time would CBP not take a court order seriously or fail to abide by a court’s order.” 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration claimed that it refused Dr. Rasha Alawieh re-entry in the United States because she had attended the public funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last month while she was home in Lebanon. Customs officials apparently searched Alawieh’s phone and claimed she had deleted “sympathetic photos and videos” of prominent Hezbollah figures.

A Grim Sign Of The Times

Brown University is cautioning international students and staff to postpone travel abroad

‘Speech Acts And Keyboard Acts’

Timothy Snyder, on the Alien Enemies Act deportations:

The individuals involved are declaring their power to define reality, independently not only of judicial but of all verification. There is no basis for this deportation beyond speech acts and keyboard acts. The words (“foreign alien terrorists,” “monsters”) are doing the work. There are no procedures between the movement of mouths and the movement of bodies. If members of the executive branch are allowed to issue truth claims that have the consequence that human beings leave the United States, we are in a dictatorship. If we accept that the executive branch can simply deport anyone they call a “foreign alien terrorist,” then none of us has any rights.

The Constitution Is Not In Crisis. It’s Under Attack.

Jonathan Bernstein:

The problem with the language of “crisis” is that it simply doesn’t prepare supporters of the republic for the reality of the situation, which is a series of long fights, some high profile and some not, many of which will have unclear and complicated outcomes. …

The worst temptation — and I think a “crisis” framework encourages it by treating single conflicts as the final battle until it’s over and the next final battle approaches — is for supporters of the republic to declare defeat and even to mock those still fighting.

The Retribution

• In apparent compliance with the unprecedented Trump executive orders targeting three major law firms, the EEOC has sent letters to 20 big law firms inquiring about their use of DEI in hiring.
• President Trump declared he was pulling Secret Service protection from President Biden’s children Hunter and Ashley. The retaliatory move came after a New York Post story Saturday about Hunter Biden vacationing in South Africa with his Secret Service detail.

MUST READ

With apparent help from the FBI and DC police, DOGE took over the independent U.S. Institute of Peace on Monday in a surreal scene that spilled out onto city sidewalks:

Mr. Musk’s team did not get into the building until officers from Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department showed up, Ms. Lin said. Institute officials had called the police to report that Department of Government Efficiency members were trespassing, she said, but the police instead cleared institute leaders from the building.

The takeover backed by law enforcement was reminiscent of an earlier standoff with the U.S. African Development Foundation.

The Purges

• IRS: “The Trump administration is set to cut more than 20 percent of the staff at the taxpayer help branch of the IRS,” the WaPo reports.
• EPA: “The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate its scientific research arm, firing as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists,” the NYT reports.
• Gov’t-wide: Under court order, the Trump administration has moved to reinstate at least 24,000 federal probationary employees, but U.S. District Judge William Allsup of San Francisco is demanding that the government confirm by today whether those reinstated employees are being immediately placed on administrative leave en masse, as some new reports have suggested. Allsup said that such a move would be in violation of the preliminary injunction he issued ordering their reinstatement.

The Destruction Of Social Security

• Judd Legum: Memo details Trump plan to sabotage the Social Security Administration
• NYT: Social Security Employees Warn of Damage From DOGE

The Corruption

• NYT: Elon Musk’s Starlink Expands Across White House Complex
• WSJ: IRS Retreats From Some Audits as Agency Slashes Workforce

BRIGHT RED BLINKING LIGHT

Acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin announced a new push to investigate election fraud cases, creating a new office called the “Special Unit Election Accountability,” Reuters reports.

Pentagon Sends People Of Color Down The Memory Hole

• Axios: Navajo Code Talkers disappear from military websites after Trump DEI order
• WaPo: Amid ‘DEI’ purge, Pentagon removes webpage on Iwo Jima flag-raiser who was Native American

The Trump II Clown Show

After sacking the governing boards of the service academics, President Trump is now stacking them with a mix of people that includes loyalists, conspiracists, and right-wing media figures. Among the notables:

West Point: retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn; Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX); Steve Bannon’s daughter Maureen Bannon; Medal of Honor winner David Bellavia; and retired Army Major Gen. Dan Walrath

Naval Academy: Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT); former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer; Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX); and former Trump co-defendant Walt Nauta.

Air Force Academy: Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL); Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk; and former deputy national security adviser Dina Powell.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

We Are Crossing The Rubicon

The major news of the weekend was the rapid-fire series of events following President Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act that culminated with the White House chortling over its defiance of a federal court order blocking deportations under the act and ordering outbound flights to return to the United States.

The Trump administration’s immediate deportation to El Salvador of Venezuelan nationals claimed to be part of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang is its own saga, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio taunting the federal court, El Salvador’s president releasing grim videos of dehumanizing treatment of the detainees, and the White House trumpeting how it ignored a federal judge to create a fait accompli.

But the big stakes here are not immigration law but the rule of law itself. At the same time the Alien Enemies Act was playing out, the Trump administration apparently deported a professor at Brown University’s medical school in direct contravention of a federal court blocking her expulsion (more below). It’s hard not to see the two cases as related and further evidence that we have arrived – two months to the day after Trump’s second inaugural – at the falling-over-the-cliff’s-edge moment we’ve long thought would mark an irreversible-in-the-short-term descent into authoritarianism.

Now, the analytical part of my brain still wants to wait to see if the judges in the two cases I’ve mentioned conclude that these were instances of willful denial of their orders. We may know their answers today, in a matter of hours. But we can see from the White House’s preening and posturing that it is eager to embark down this slippery slope.

The Timeline

A couple of differently designed timelines matching up the deportation flights under the Alien Enemies Act and the court proceedings in front of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of Washington, D.C.:

• Adam Isacson: Timeline of What Appears to be Defiance of a Judicial Order
• WaPo: Deportation flights landed after judge said planes should turn around

Commentary And Analysis: The Alien Enemies Act

• Steve Vladeck: 5 Big Questions in the Alien Enemies Act Litigation
• Joyce Vance: “If presidents can do whatever they want, including putting people on a plane and sending them to prisons in a foreign country with no due process whatsoever, then really, who are we?”
• Mattathias Schwartz: With Deportations, Trump Steps Closer to Showdown With Judicial Branch

A New Pattern Is Emerging

Two non-citizens with proper paperwork that allows them to be legally in the United States were detained at Boston’s Logan Airport late last week while trying to re-enter the country:

• A professor at Brown University’s medical school who is a Lebanese citizen with a valid U.S. visa was detained and quickly deported despite a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion.
• A New Hampshire electrical engineer who is a German national with a green card remains in federal detention in Rhode Island without official explanation for why he was stopped after returning from a visit to Luxembourg.

Worth Watching

In a speech Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche continued to vilify Columbia University, speak publicly about ongoing investigations, and cast vague aspersions about associations with Hamas:

BREAKING: The US Justice Department is examining whether student protests at Columbia University over the genocide in Gaza violated federal terrorism laws, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said today.

[image or embed]

— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) March 14, 2025 at 3:57 PM

Trump DOJ Leads The Attack On Federal Judges

As the right-wing backlash against court rulings adverse to President Trump gains steam, top Trump DOJ officials are fanning the flames:

• Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a press release accusing the federal judge who blocked Trump’s deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of supporting terrorists: “Tonight, a DC trial judge supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans.”
• DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle, who has been moonlighting as acting associate attorney general, raged on social media about the court order to reinstate fired federal workers: “We now have an unelected federal judge who has ‘hired’ more executive branch employees than President Trump. This is a judicial power grab. Plain and simple.”

Trump Gives Enemies Speech At DOJ

President Trump said all the quiet parts loudly and proudly in a speech Friday in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, openly and unreservedly politicizing the department that has long prized its independence as a bulwark against political interference.

The backward-looking parts of the speech were a victory lap for having evaded criminal prosecution. The forward-looking parts of the speech painted targets on perceived foes, threats to his own power, and civil society institutions for federal law enforcement to go after.

Trump: "These newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative. And it has to stop. It has to be illegal … it just cannot be legal."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 14, 2025 at 4:13 PM

Breaking New Ground In Lawlessness

President Trump late Sunday night purported to invalidate Joe Biden’s pardons of members of the House Jan. 6 committee.

Trump Targets Yet Another Major Law Firm

On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked as wildly unconstitutional President Trump’s executive order targeting the Perkins Coie law firm. On Saturday, the president issued a similar executive order targeting Paul Weiss, a major NYC-based law firm.

Appeals Court Allows Trump To Enforce DEI EOs

In a case out of Maryland, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has overturned a lower court ruling that blocked two of President Trump’s executive orders banning DEI while the case was on appeal. Under the ruling, the executive orders will remain in place as the appeal proceeds.

Trump Purports To Shutter VOA

NPR’s David Folkenflik on the carnage at Voice of America and other government broadcasters as President Trump’s Friday night executive order began to take effect.

The Destruction

• President Trump’s executive order targeting VOA also purported to dismantle six other federal agencies:
  • Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
  • Woodrow Wilson Center
  • Institute of Museum and Library Services
  • United States Interagency Council on Homelessness
  • Community Development Financial Institutions Fund
  • Minority Business Development Agency
• WaPo: “Arlington National Cemetery has scrubbed information about prominent Black, Hispanic and female service members and topics such as the Civil War from its website, part of a broader effort across the Defense Department to remove all references to diversity, equity and inclusion from its online presence.”
• KFF Health News: “National Institutes of Health officials have urged scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccine technology from their grant applications, two researchers said, in a move that signaled the agency might abandon a promising field of medical research.”
• NIH has taken down a portrait of Anthony Fauci.

The Purges

• NNSA: DOGE cuts hit nuclear scientists, bomb engineers and safety experts
• Bureau of Reclamation: Nearly 400 agency workers have been cut by the Trump administration.

Doge Watch

• ProPublica: Who’s Running the DOGE Wrecking Machine: The World’s Richest Man or a Little-Known Bureaucrat?
• Wired: Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’
• NYT: Antonio Gracias, a private equity investor who is one of Elon Musk’s closest confidants, has taken a new role in the Social Security Administration.

Trump II Abroad: The March Of Folly

• Ukraine: U.S. withdraws from multinational group investigating responsibility for Russia’s invasion.
• South Africa: Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, persona non grata, forcing him to be recalled the day after Breitbart reported comments the envoy had made about Trump, MAGA, and white supremacism.
• Gaza: The U.S. and Israel have contacted officials from Sudan, Somalia and the breakaway region of Somaliland to discuss using their territories as potential destinations for Palestinians forcibly expelled from Gaza under a possible Trump administration plan.

Quote Of The Day

Lee Bollinger, former longtime president of Columbia University, in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

We’re in the midst of an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. It’s been coming and coming, and not everybody is prepared to read it that way. The characters regarded as people to emulate, like Orban and Putin and so on, all indicate that the strategy is to create an illiberal democracy or an authoritarian democracy or a strongman democracy. That’s what we’re experiencing. Our problem in part is a failure of imagination. We cannot get ourselves to see how this is going to unfold in its most frightening versions. You neutralize the branches of government; you neutralize the media; you neutralize universities, and you’re on your way.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!