Wanted to share some information on the RFK Jr. nomination before the Senate.
It probably won’t surprise you that RFK Jr., along with Tulsi Gabbard, are among the few Trump nominees who might actually not get confirmed. But I’m told that one senator who Democratic senators and health care advocates have real concerns about is none other than Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). To be clear, Whitehouse isn’t confirmed as voting for Kennedy. But he appears to be actively considering it. (Ed Note: WTF?)
In order to combat the scourge of “DEI,” the DOJ yesterday indefinitely suspended observance of events like Black History Month, Women’s History Month and other long observed (and one would imagine fairly innocuous) commemorations.
The details are as follows.
Yesterday as part of the implementation of Trump’s anti-DEI executive order and the related anti-DEI guidance memorandum from the Office of Personal Management, the Executive Office of United States Attorneys immediately “suspend[ed] observance programs until further notice” and advised regional U.S. Attorneys Offices that “we believe it would also be prudent for the USAOs to suspend all observance events at this time.”
For what it’s worth, Black History Month isn’t something that BLM activists came up with. President Gerald Ford recognized February in 1976 and Congress passed a law designating February as National Black History Month in 1986.
The news was contained in a circular email sent to all U.S. Attorney’s Offices and shared with TPM.
We talk a lot about the structural imbalances in American politics, but perhaps the most consequential disparity arises from the Trump right’s fundamental commitment to breaking shit. We’ve seen it unfold in spades this week, as promises to destroy as much as they can as quickly as they can begin to be kept.
It’s not new to Trump. It’s been an essential element of the conservative project for decades now, reflected in anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist’s famous line about shrinking the federal government until it was small enough to drown in a bathtub.
When destruction is the point and there is no responsibility or accountability for building, creating, or even administering, all manner of democratic norms and civic consensus start to fall apart. Perhaps in the long term the consequences of the destruction will exact a political price, but in the meantime, the performative transgression is its own reward.
The Trump II Destruction Continues …
Swathes of the federal government have ground to a halt in the first week of the second Trump administration:
Disturbing: Trump moves to close Pentagon office focused on curbing civilian deaths
Alarming: Health researchers are reeling as Trump administration pauses travel, communications, and meetings.
Vindictive AF
After yanking special security protection from his own former national security adviser, President Trump has now done the same thing to Mike Pompeo, his own former secretary of state, and Brian Hook, his former special representative for Iran. Both men have been under threat of retaliation from Iran.
Quote Of The Day
“Patriotism is loyalty to country and loyalty to the Constitution – not loyalty to a single head of state. No stroke of a pen and no proclamation can alter the facts of what took place on January 6, 2021. When others in the public eye are not willing to risk their own power or popularity by calling out lies when they hear them, the record of the proceedings in this courthouse will be available to those who seek the truth.”
–U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, joining other federal judges in Washington, D.C. in reluctantly dismissing a case against a Jan. 6 defendant at the request of the Trump DOJ
The Other Trump Pardons
Beyond the Jan. 6 pardons, President Trump is using his first week in office to abuse the pardon power in other ways: to signal whose side he is on regardless of the law, to score political points, and to reward supporters explicitly for their political backing:
a convicted online drug kingpin who was a cause célèbre for pro-Trump libertarians.
A Weird Day On The Pete Hegseth Beat
Even as defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth cleared a significant confirmation hurdle in the Senate, new allegations continued to emerge about his prior misconduct:
In response to questions from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Hegseth revealed that he paid $50,000 to the woman who accused him of a 2017 sex assault, the AP has learned.
Pete Hegseth’s ex-wife has given a new statement to the FBI about his alcohol use, CNN reported: “He drinks more often than he doesn’t.”
A Senate floor vote on the Hegseth nomination is expected late tonight. Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) were the only two Republican no votes on yesterday’s procedural vote. Hegseth can only lose three GOP votes, so it remains close but no real sign yet that enough Republican senators will rally to stop his confirmation.
Whither Kash Patel?
The confirmation hearing for Trump FBI pick Kash Patel has been scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 30
NYT: F.B.I. Pick Pushed False and Misleading Claims About Trump Investigations
Bloomberg: FBI Nominee Patel’s CNN Defamation Lawsuit Fails to Advance
NYT: Trump’s F.B.I. Pick Sees ‘Deep State’ Plotters in Government, and Some Good in QAnon
The Intimidation Is The Point
As President Trump rolls back anti-discrimination rules across the federal government, including some that date back to FDR, law professor SamuelBagenstos makes the point that the way Trump is doing it is designed to squelch pro-diversity voices in the private sector, too:
But there’s an even more pernicious aspect to the new anti-DEI EO. It will be used–and appears to have been carefully designed to be used–to intimidate and harass private institutions that are outspoken in their support for a robust vision of equity. And it will be used to encourage those institutions to silence their employees who speak out in favor of such a vision (and, on university campuses, to silence those who speak out on other matters).
‘A Blatantly Unconstitutional Order’
President Trump’s executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship did not survive first contact with a federal judge.
In a court hearing to temporarily block the executive order, U.S. District John C. Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, called it a “blatantly unconstitutional order”
I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order. There are other times in world history where we look back and people of goodwill can say where were the judges, where were the lawyers?”
Coughenour savaged Trump administration lawyers for arguing otherwise. “Frankly, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order,” Coughenour said. “It just boggles my mind.”
NYT: Trump Officials Move to Quickly Expel Migrants Biden Allowed In Temporarily
A federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Newark, New Jersey, swept up citizens, including a U.S. military veteran, according the city’s mayor.
WaPo: DOJ focus on ‘sanctuaries’ follows prison threats by Stephen Miller’s group
‘It’s Become Too Violent An Environment’
The current political atmosphere is prompting some churches to pull back from offering sanctuary to undocumented immigrants. Seth Kaper-Dale, a pastor at the Reformed Church of Highland Park in central New Jersey, told the WSJ: “It’s become too violent an environment, and the current president’s sort of invitation to violence makes us not want to have a label of sanctuary,” he said. “I do not need this to become the next Tree of Life synagogue.”
The Toils Of Cassidy Hutchinson
UNITED STATES – JUNE 28: Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, is sworn in to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol hearing to present previously unseen material and hear witness testimony in Cannon Building, on Tuesday, June 28, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
In the midst of their bogus counter-investigation last year of the Jan. 6 committee, some House Republicans got jumpy that if they subpoenaed former Trump White House aide-turned-whistleblower Cassidy Hutchinson then sexually explicit texts to her from members of Congress might come out, according to a bizarro report in the WaPo:
Before that meeting, a Johnson aide told Loudermilk’s staff that multiple colleagues had raised concerns with the speaker’s office about the potential for public disclosure of “sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors” with Hutchinson, according to correspondence produced at the time that detailed the conversation.
The exact nature, timing, and scope of the sexts remains pretty opaque in the WaPo report. In her 2023 book, Hutchinson recounted some creeptastic moments involving then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Rudy Giuliani, which they each denied.
Oath Keepers founder and seditious conspirator Stewart Rhodes left prison this week beaming — President Donald Trump had commuted his sentence, nullifying Rhodes’ 18-year term behind bars.
Here’s a simple but inarguable point: Trump’s decision to pardon (and/or commute release of) all the January 6th insurrectionists is deeply unpopular. Your best evidence for that is the responses of Republicans who are asked to react to or justify it. They’re doing the most practical thing: dodge the questions and wait for those questions to subside. Wait for it to become old news, something that happened in the past. Democrats’ job is to prolong the period of questions for as long as possible. There are many ways to do it, as I explained yesterday. The job of a political opposition is to spend every day illustrating for the public what’s bad about the current government being in power. That’s not tawdry or institutionally selfish or unhelpful. It’s a functional, essential feature of our political system. To the extent you’re not able to do that, the folks in power must be doing a fairly good job. And that’s a good thing to know, even if it’s an unpleasant reality for the opposition. It’s quite literally what you’re supposed to do for the broader framework of government to function.
This is a quick follow up to yesterday’s post about the “pause” on funding for essentially all medical research in the United States. This is a big, big deal and our team, notwithstanding its very small size, is very much on it. And if you’re in that community your tips are very important.
In blistering court orders, three separate federal judges in Washington, D.C., with an eye toward history decried the dismissals of Jan. 6 cases in the wake of President Trump’s sweeping pardons of those convicted for the attack on the Capitol.
In each instance, the judges were being asked by the Trump Justice Department to dismiss still pending cases against Jan. 6 defendants, a result of a direct order from Trump that squarely flies in the face of decades of DOJ independence.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who most famously handled the now-dismissed Jan. 6 case against Trump himself, issued a brief order in another case that tersely refused to whitewash the record:
[N]o pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. … And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power. In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor. The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.
A pained U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, asked to dismiss a Jan. 6 after conviction but before sentencing, wrote that history will ultimately judge:
Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens. Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.
U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell was breathing fire in her order, tolerating neither the Big Lie nor the subsequent historical revisionism:
No “national injustice” occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election. No “process of national reconciliation” can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity. That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law.
In all three instances, the judges had no choice under the law but to grant the dismissals.
Stewart Rhodes Revisits The Scene Of The Crime
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 22: Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes speaks to the press in the Cannon Rotunda on January 22, 2025 in Washington, DC. Rhodes and Ivan Raiklin met with U.S. Reps. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) to discuss the release of Jeremy Brown who was sentenced to 7 years after his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Rhodes, who was among about the 1,500 criminal defendants who were charged in the January 6 attacks was pardoned by President Donald Trump. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was back on Capitol Hill within hours of Trump’s pardon and his release from prison for seditious conspiracy. Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys, who was also pardoned and released, each called for retribution against those who prosecuted them.
Quote Of The Day
“I went through four years of hell by this scum that we had to deal with. I went through four years of hell. I spent millions of dollars on legal fees and I won, but I did it the hard way. It’s really hard to say that they shouldn’t have to go through it also.”–President Donald Trump, threatening retribution for his criminal prosecutions, in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity
House GOP Wants To Investigate Everything But Jan. 6
In announcing the creation of a bogus new Jan. 6 committee to investigate the legit old Jan. 6 committee, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) more or less gave up the game, saying it would probe “the events preceding and following January 6″– but apparently not Jan. 6 itself. (h/t @ericcolumbus.bsky.social)
Trump II Destruction Watch
Trump hits NIH with “devastating” freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring.
Trump administration orders health agencies to halt all external communications.
Trump cripples Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
National security adviser Mike Waltz sent home dozens of National Security Council staffers, the non-political experts who advise the President.
DOJ orders its civil rights division to halt its investigative activity and not pursue new indictments, cases or settlements, according to a memo obtained by WaPo.
DEI Crackdown Comes With Threat Of Retaliation
As the Trump administration shut down DEI initiatives across the federal government, it also threatened employees with adverse consequences if they didn’t report any concealed, hidden, or relabeled DEI activity within 10 days.
More Than Just DEI
In addition to the DEI crackdown, Trump’s revoked an LBJ-era order that sought to combat workplace discrimination and promote affirmative action among federal contractors.
It’s Not About Immigration. It’s About Othering.
In new memo, DOJ threatens to prosecute state and local officials who refuse to enforce Trump’s hard-line anti-immigration policies.
In a move echoing decades of racist tropes, the Trump administration is denying asylum seekers access to the United States on the flimsy grounds that they have passed through countries where communicable diseases are present, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection briefing document obtained by WaPo.
The Trump administration is giving deportation powers to the ATF, DEA, and the U.S. Marshals Service, according to an internal memo seen by the WSJ.
Trump II Clown Show
Ed Martin, the Missouri Republican installed as U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. to end the Jan. 6 prosecutions, has spent the past several years outside of government pushing for exactly that.
Media Research Center founder L. Brent Bozell III — a nephew of William F. Buckley, Jr., and the father of a convicted Jan. 6 rioter — is President Trump’s pick to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees, among other things, Voice of America, where Trump wants to install election denier Kari Lake.
The Bulwark: What Kash Patel Doesn’t Want the Senate to Know About the ‘J6 Prison Choir’
Coast Guard Officially Calls It ‘Gulf of America’
After President Trump fired the head of the Coast Guard, its new acting commandant issued a statement dutifully adopting the jingoistic “Gulf of America” moniker.
(Ed. Note: A Gulf Coast friend wryly suggested that the Gulf of America is the wealth gap, and I can’t unthink that every time I see it. You’re welcome.)
Not Off To A Good Start
Amid Democratic disunity in both chambers, the House gave final passage to the anti-immigration Laken Riley Act, which now heads to President Trump signature.
Senate Dems Gum Up The Works A Little
“Senate Republicans had hoped to rush through confirmation of a flurry of Cabinet nominees in the days immediately after President Trump assumed office. But Democrats, expressing reservations about some picks, are slowing the push, frustrating Republicans and denying the new president the quick action he demanded.”–NYT
“Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-written bill on Wednesday that could subject some doctors who perform abortions to criminal penalties, thwarting the G.O.P.’s first attempt to restrict reproductive rights since the party has secured its governing trifecta.”–NYT
Creeping Reactionism
A Milwaukee TV weather forecaster has been fired after she criticized Elon Musk on social media for his “straight-arm gesture.”
An LSU law professor has been removed from teaching classes for reportedly making political comments in the classroom.
One more point to keep an eye on. You’ve likely seen that the White House is doing a series of executive orders and sending letters to employees demanding “DEI” be rooted out of agencies. News organizations have mostly used this terminology. But whatever you think about DEI, this is deeply and intentionally misleading. This gives the impression that they’re clawing back various #MeToo and post-George Floyd government policies. But they’re actually repealing a host of executive orders and departmental policies going all the way back to the Johnson administration. A lot of it is very basic employment non-discrimination rules and contracting non-discrimination rules.
For the purposes of this post I’m not trying to get into what “DEI” is or whether it’s good or bad. I’m focused on this more general point that under the pretext of a DEI rollback they’re basically stripping out non-discrimination policies across the government.
