As Republicans came before the Supreme Court Tuesday to get rid of one of the last regulations governing our wild west campaign finance system, the colloquies fell flat.
Continue reading “Republicans Fight to Kill Lingering Campaign Finance Regulation after SCOTUS Obliterated the Rest”Wave of Income Tax Cuts Has Left Many States Vulnerable to Trump SNAP and Medicaid Crisis
This story first appeared at ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive ProPublica’s biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
This fall, Americans got to see what it’s like to go without a safety net for the hungry. With the U.S. government shut down for multiple weeks and President Donald Trump refusing to fund SNAP, the federal food stamp program, a panic set in among the more than 40 million people who rely on it. Families skipped meals, and babies went unfed. Food banks ran out of food, and some people turned to dumpster diving.
It was just a glimpse of what’s to come. Starting next October, Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act will shift billions in SNAP costs from the federal government onto states. Some states won’t be able to afford this, and they could be forced to deeply cut or even shutter their SNAP programs altogether, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Continue reading “Wave of Income Tax Cuts Has Left Many States Vulnerable to Trump SNAP and Medicaid Crisis”Inside the Secret Network Offering Sanctuary to Immigrants Amid Trump’s ICE Onslaught
They call them the “forgotten migrants.”
Of the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, over two thirds of them come from Mexico and South America, according to data compiled by the Pew Research Center last year. However, the population from other regions is growing sharply. Pew found that, as of 2022, there were 375,000 unauthorized immigrants from Africa living in the U.S., which was a striking 36% increase over three years.
Estimates show New York is home to nearly 8% of the nation’s undocumented African immigrants. The community was the primary focus of ICE’s Canal Street raid in late October. As TPM spent nearly two months examining the fallout from that sweep and Trump’s deportation machine in the city, we found that African migrants have faced threats and unique challenges. They’re also receiving help from a growing network of activists and advocates.
Continue reading “Inside the Secret Network Offering Sanctuary to Immigrants Amid Trump’s ICE Onslaught”Life Inside the Undocumented Underground
During President Donald Trump’s second term, dramatic raids staged by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have become a part of life. We want to show you what that looks like up close and on the ground in one American city. It’s a story of fear, resilience, and resistance.
TPM has spent the past two months reporting on the effect of Trump’s mass deportation agenda in New York, one of the cities facing the prospect of a large-scale ICE invasion. We went inside the courts where Trump’s deportation machine is firing judges and snatching migrants from the halls. We walked those same corridors with masked agents and a growing network of volunteers, activists, and advocates who are determined to fight this new system. We also spent time with the immigrants who described the dangers that led them to leave their homes, the new fears they face in this country, and their drive to keep going despite these long odds.
Continue reading “Life Inside the Undocumented Underground”SHOWTIME: Boasberg Summons Key DOJ Witnesses in Contempt Inquiry
DOJ Whistleblower to Take Center Stage
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has ordered testimony next week from Justice Department whistleblower Erez Reuveni and deputy assistant attorney general Drew Ensign in the criminal contempt of court inquiry in the original Alien Enemies Act case.
Not satisfied with what he called the “cursory declarations” from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and top DOJ officials involved in the decision to continue with the AEA deportations in March despite his court order, Boasberg is taking his inquiry to the next level with the first live testimony.
Testimony from Reuveni is likely to be especially probative as he as already gone public with his account of his efforts to urge DOJ and DHS to abide by Boasberg’s order to stop the AEA deportations of Venezuelan nationals and turn around the planes en route to El Salvador. Reuveni also produced extensive internal DOJ communications that buttressed his account of that fateful weekend in mid-March that quickly became a flashpoint between the executive and judicial branches.
It was Reuveni who famously quoted then-DOJ official Emil Bove as telling attorneys under him that they might have to tell the courts “fuck you” if they tried to block the AEA deportations. Bove — now a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeal — unexpectedly filed his own declaration yesterday in the contempt of court inquiry. Like the others filed Friday, Bove’s declaration was cursory and raised the prospect of using attorney-client privilege as a shield to block further inquiry from Boasberg.
For his part, Ensign has been a willing pawn in an ongoing DOJ effort to stonewall, obfuscate, and mislead judges in some of the key Trump II deportation cases. Ensign was the lead DOJ attorney in front of Boasberg as the AEA deportations unfolded and much of Boasberg’s initial ire was directed at him.
The Trump DOJ may yet rush to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to try to avoid allowing Reuveni and Ensign to testify, citing various privileges, including attorney-client privilege, but the appeals court in a muddled opinion last month already seemed to clear the way for Boasberg to proceed with his inquiry, after it delayed him for seven months.
Boasberg is zeroing in on whether Noem’s decision to continue with the AEA deportations despite his order was willful, a necessary element of a finding probable cause for criminal contempt.
GOP Congress Has Had Its Fill of Hegseth
In perhaps the most robust oversight this GOP-controlled Congress has yet conducted, the must-pass annual defense policy bill contains a new provision compelling the Pentagon to turn over (i) the specific orders for the U.S. military strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats; and (ii) unedited video of the attacks.
The provision includes some teeth, too, the NYT reports: “It would withhold 25 percent of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget if he failed to give the congressional national security committees a copy of the execute orders behind the strikes, or to outline how he planned to facilitate future briefings about the operation with lawmakers in accordance with federal law.”
SCOTUS Might Surprise on Birthright Citizenship
Steve Vladeck, on the way in which the Roberts Court accepted the birthright citizenship case last week: “That particular tea leaf is significant because it reinforces something I’ve believed since the Court first ruled on the emergency applications relating to the birthright citizenship cases back in June—that a majority of the justices are likely to rule against the administration on the merits and invalidate Trump’s executive order.”
No More Habba to Kick Around in New Jersey
Alina Habba has dropped her claim to be the U.S. attorney for New Jersey after a federal appeals court upheld a lower court decision that she was invalidly appointed. Habba will move to a new position as an advisor to Attorney General Pam Bondi on U.S. attorneys. Bondi indicated that she would continue to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
An EDVA Clash Seems Inevitable
With the Trump DOJ continuing to pretend that Lindsey Halligan is the interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia despite a court ruling that she was invalidly appointed, I don’t know how the district judges can continue not to appoint an interim U.S. attorney, especially with ongoing public attacks on them like this from Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche:
A statement from @AGPamBondi and @DAGToddBlanche:
— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) December 8, 2025
Certain district court and magistrate judges in the Eastern District of Virginia are engaging in an unconscionable campaign of bias and hostility against U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan and her line AUSAs.
Lindsey and our…
Reax to SCOTUS
The Roberts Court gleefully took a sledgehammer not just to independent agencies yesterday in oral arguments, but to the Supreme Court’s own jurisprudence. For help sorting through the implications of the historic case:
- Kate Shaw, William Baude and Stephen I. Vladeck chew over the oral arguments under the clever headline: “Looks Like the Supreme Court Will Continue to Overturn the 20th Century.”
- Public policy professor Don Moynihan looks at the bigger political picture:
[T]he risks of a partisan public personnel system is not just poor public services, but that it worsens our democracy. Many of the points of friction between Trump and federal employees are about democratic values: the rule of law, how Congressional statute is to be interpreted, avoiding abuses of the power, and transparency. Again and again, the logic for Trump’s personnel actions is the logic of a personalist regime: loyalty to the leader above all else, removing individuals or downgrading agencies that are disfavored.
Sandwich Thrower Jurors Recount Deliberations
While they expected it to be an open-and-shut case, three jurors in the case of the D.C. sandwich thrower Sean Dunn told CBS News that they had to overcome an initial 10-2 split that led to some seven hours of deliberations before acquitting Dunn.
2026 Ephemera
TX-Sen: Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) is in and former Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) is out of the Democratic primary to seek the seat held by Sen. John Cornyn (R). State Rep. James Talarico (D) of Austin is the other major candidate in the Democratic primary field.
Very on Brand
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) announced a plan to open Turning Point USA chapters in every high school in Texas. The high school chapters are called “Club America.” I’m told “club” is not a verb.
Good Read
The Guardian: What activists from authoritarian regimes wish they’d known sooner.
Nancy Mace Went Full Karen on Airport Staff
The WaPo obtained the investigation report, transcripts of interviews with officers and officials, and video from the Oct 30. incident involving Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the Charleston airport. Upon arriving for a flight, Mace went ballistic when her vehicle was not met curbside at the airport by a police escort, the WaPo reports:
The airport holds “a certain level of responsibility” for a “minor miscommunication” about the color of the vehicle that Mace would arrive in, airport police chief James A. Woods wrote in the new report. But Mace’s “continued failure to follow established procedures at the checkpoint” escalated the situation into “a spectacle” and negatively affected airport staff, the report concluded.
After her arrival hiccup, Mace became enraged:
The investigation, which included several interviews with TSA staff and police officers, found Mace told officers “I’m sick of your s—,” said that they were “f—ing idiots” and “f—ing incompetent” and yelled in front of TSA officers and police using similar expletives as she proclaimed that she is a “f—ing representative.”
The incident left some airport employees “visibly upset” and “downtrodden,” according to the WaPo report.
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It’s Time to Govern, and Republicans in Congress Can’t Remember How
Republicans Try to Remember a World in Which Not All Policy Came From Trump
We’re seeing a phenomenon play out right now that has cropped up repeatedly during both Trump terms.
Continue reading “It’s Time to Govern, and Republicans in Congress Can’t Remember How”Roberts on Cleanup Duty as Court Prepares to Kill Independent Government Agencies
Chief Justice John Roberts scrambled around with a verbal broom and dustpan Monday, reflexively jumping into the arguments to downplay the obvious dangers his majority will soon unleash in its seemingly imminent decision to destroy independent agencies.
Continue reading “Roberts on Cleanup Duty as Court Prepares to Kill Independent Government Agencies”Team Oligarch Suits Up to Torpedo Netflix/WBD Merger
Simply extraordinary stuff coming out this morning about the battle over what used to be Time Warner and now goes by the name Warner Bros Discovery (which includes CNN in addition to the more lucrative media stuff). The company had agreed to be acquired by Netflix. So Paramount — now the vehicle of the Ellison family successor and a Trump state media entity-in-the-making — has launched a hostile takeover effort to swoop in and gobble up WBD for itself. In its public pitch, it has openly advertised to shareholders that it is the better acquirer because the Ellisons are tight with Trump, and the White House will never let a Netflix deal go through. Trump, in comments yesterday, as much as agreed. Trump has refashioned antitrust oversight to be little more than a personal veto for the Trump family. Friends can do mergers; foes can’t. Indeed, the indifferent and uncommitted can’t either. You need to get right with the Trump family.
When you ask why so much of corporate America is beholden to Trump now, this is why. A big diversified corporation simply cannot compete and thus, in practice, can’t exist with a determinedly hostile administration.
Continue reading “Team Oligarch Suits Up to Torpedo Netflix/WBD Merger”Rough Seas Abroad Under Trump II
I’ve written a number of times over the years about the fact that Americans mostly believe that the post-World War II world order is the normal state of things. Of course, it is not. The last 80 years are unparalleled in global history for their general prosperity, lack of great power wars, a fairly predictable system of global rules. One has to say the obligatory caveats about all the ways the United States honored its values and rules in the breach, the slow run of proxy conflicts it participated in or fomented around the world. But these caveats only serve to illustrate the larger point in a paradoxical way. Things can always get worse and getting worse — conflict, instability, mass death — are the normal order of things in world history. Even a thin appraisal of the American ascendency shows its close to uniqueness in this regard.
Continue reading “Rough Seas Abroad Under Trump II”Trump DOJ Stonewalls Criminal Contempt Inquiry
Will Emil Bove Have to Testify?
A lot of weekend news to cover this morning, but I want to continue to keep front and center the contempt of court proceedings in the original Alien Enemies Act case.
The Trump DOJ faced a Friday deadline set by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of D.C. to submit sworn declarations by the officials involved in the decision to continue with the AEA deportation flights in mid-March even after Boasberg ordered the deportations stopped and the planes turned around.
The Trump DOJ acknowledged that it was taking a narrow view of what Boasberg meant by “involved in the decision” and submitted declarations from only three senior officials:
- Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem
- Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche
- DHS Acting General Counsel Joseph Mazzara
Of note, Blanche explicitly mentioned former DOJ official and now appeals court Judge Emil Bove has having been involved in providing what he asserts is “privileged legal advice” to DHS in the matter. It remains to be seen whether Boasberg will demand either a declaration or testimony from a sitting judge whose potential contempt of court occurred prior to taking the bench.
In its filing accompanying the declarations, DOJ pulled back from having earlier identified Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign as involved in the decision and didn’t submit a declaration from him, saying he only relayed Boasberg’s oral and written orders.
In filing the declarations, the Justice Department remained defiant. Among other arguments, it told Boasberg that:
- given the declarations, there is no basis for witness testimony in the contempt inquiry;
- attorney-client privilege would prevent the lawyers (Blanche, Bove, and Mazzara) from testifying;
- he could be in for a constitutional fight over compelling the testimony of Noem;
- no criminal contempt occurred because his order was not “clear and reasonably specific.”
Seizing on the muddled mess that the laggardly D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals made of Boasberg’s contempt inquiry, the Justice Department leaned heavily on the concurring opinion of Appeals Court Judge Gregory Katsas: “[I]f a leading jurist like Judge Katsas concluded that Defendants’ interpretation of the TRO is legally correct, it is impossible to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Defendants’ interpretation is so unreasonable as to make their conduct criminally contumacious.”
Boasberg has moved the criminal contempt inquiry along as fast as the D.C. Circuit has allowed him to, so I would expect we’ll know what he wants to do next in the case as soon as today.
Another Wrongful Deportation Case
The Trump administration deported a Guatemalan man back to his home country despite an immigration judge order barring his removal to Guatemala because of fears he would face torture there. U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama of El Paso accused the Trump administration of “blatant lawlessness” in the case and ordered it to facilitate the return of Faustino Pablo Pablo to the United States by Dec. 12.
SCOTUS Takes Up Birthright Citizenship
The invented right-wing legal theory that birthright citizenship is not guaranteed by the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause is going to get decided by the Supreme Court in its current term.
Pam Bondi Needs to Talk to Pam Bondi
Last year, before she became attorney general, Pam Bondi wrote a Supreme Court brief for the America First Policy Institute in which she argued: “Military officers are required not to carry out unlawful orders.”
Venezuela Boat Watch
Among the new developments:
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continues to deny that he ordered Special Operations forces to kill everyone aboard an alleged drug-smuggling boat during a Sept. 2 attack, but in a new twist NBC News reports that Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley told lawmakers in a classified briefing last week that Hegseth ordered everyone killed “because they were on an internal list of narco-terrorists who U.S. intelligence and military officials determined could be lethally targeted.”
- The second strike of the boat killed the two survivors of the first strike, Bradley told lawmakers, but he ordered a third and fourth strike to sink the boat, according to the NBC News report.
- Despite administration claims, the boat was not bound for the United States but to rendezvous with a larger vessel bound for Suriname, CNN reports.
Clash Over Halligan Looms
The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel has ratified keeping Lindsey Halligan in place as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia despite a judge’s ruling that she was invalidly appointed to the position, the NYT reports:
The office has told department officials that because Judge Currie’s order did not require a specific measure to be taken, like removing Ms. Halligan, she could stay even though the judge declared her appointment invalid, the people said.
In other words, the administration’s position was that since the court order did not explicitly remove Ms. Halligan from the job, she could keep it.
Under Judge Currie’s ruling, only the judges in that district may now appoint an interim U.S. attorney — but they have not publicly moved to do so.
New Ruling Thwarts Re-Indictment of Comey
Over the weekend, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of D.C. issued a temporary restraining order barring prosecutors from accessing material seized years ago that belong to Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, a close friend of and attorney for James Comey. Because the materials at issue largely formed the basis for the now-dismissed indictment of Comey, the ruling may delay any effort by the Trump DOJ to re-indict him.
Trump DOJ Leads Attack on Voting Rights
Mother Jones: “Over the last six months, [the Trump DOJ] has demanded full, unredacted voter rolls from dozens of states in an effort to create the federal government’s first-ever national database of registered voters, accompanied by their private information: party affiliation, voting history, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, even physical characteristics.”
The Death of Independent Agencies
Ahead of Supreme Court oral arguments today over whether President Trump can unilaterally fire a FTC commissioner, a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel with two Trump appointees ruled that Trump lawfully fired — without cause — Cathy Harris, a Democratic member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, and Gwynne Wilcox, a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board.
The Destruction: Vax Edition
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel stacked with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. allies has dramatically altered the recommendation for infants to immediately receive the hepatitis B vaccine, upending 30 years of wildly successfully public health policy.
The Corruption: Pardon Edition
- Trump is big mad that his pardon of Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX) didn’t engender enough personal loyalty for Cuellar not to seek re-election, potentially costing Republicans a pick-up in the 2026 midterms.
- Trump pardoned sports executive Tim Leiweke — who was convicted by Trump’s own Justice Department — after a round of golf with former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who was one of Leiweke’s lawyers, the WSJ reports.
- Convicted fraudster David Gentile, the former private equity executive whose seven-year sentence was commuted by Trump, will not have to pay $15.5 million in restitution by the terms of the clemency order, Politico reports.
- The Trump DOJ says it will be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Pardon Attorney Ed Martin to decide which people and which crimes are covered by Trump’s sweeping pardons related to the 2020 fake electors scheme and other Big Lie related offenses.
Indiana Redistricting Hangs in the Balance
With the Indiana House having passed a new GOP friendly mid-decade congressional district map, all attention turns to the Republican-controlled state Senate, where its fate is not as cut and dry as you might expect.
Such a Big Boy
At the 0:42-second mark, Trump’s mask comes off for a moment and the insatiable neediness of an unloved child emerges:
Racism With a Big Dose of Cringe
Under a new Trump administration policy, Americans will no longer have free access to national parks on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day or Juneteenth, but will now have free access on June 14 — President Trump’s birthday, which coincides with Flag Day.
RIP V3 Camera
Over the weekend, the 38th episode in the eruption sequence that began at Kilauea volcano last December was particularly vigorous, with a laterally-jetting lava fountain knocking a remote camera on the crater rim out of commission:
In case you ever wondered what it would be liked to be engulfed in a lava fountain…
— USGS Volcanoes🌋 (@USGSVolcanoes) December 6, 2025
This video was recorded by the V3 camera, located on the south rim of Halema‘uma‘u crater at the summit of Kīlauea volcano on the Island of Hawai‘i. The camera, located in a hazardous closed… pic.twitter.com/7coXye39AK
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