“Pete Hegseth is unqualified to run the Pentagon” is criminal understatement.
Continue reading “Senate Republicans Will Do Whatever Trump Tells Them To Do “The Jan 6 Pardons Are A Huge Liability for Trump
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.
Continue reading “The Jan 6 Pardons Are A Huge Liability for Trump”Listen To This: 1 Down, 1,459 To Go
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh break down the beginning of the second Trump administration.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
The Medical Research Hiatus
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.
Continue reading “The Medical Research Hiatus”Jan. 6 Judges Let Out A Collective Primal Scream Over Trump Pardons
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Appealing To History
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
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.
- Tulsi Gabbard‘s nomination as DNI is on shaky ground.
- 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 WaPo’s Aaron Blake parses the latest allegations against Pete Hegseth, from his brother’s ex-wife.
- 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.
I Laughed, I Cried, It Was Better Than Cats
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The Purported DEI Rollback
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.
Creeping RFKJrism at HHS
It’s still uncertain precisely how long the duration will be, but we’re getting fast emerging information that there appears to be an indefinite halt on the various meetings, review panels and so forth that keep the pipeline of medical research funding going in the U.S. This article in Science gives a broad overview. Put simply this just turns off the spigot of funding for a huge amount of cancer research as well as research across various other health fields and diseases. The article makes clear that there have been brief pauses before when a new administration takes office. But all signs suggest this is far more thorough-going and draconian. This comes after a similar halt to the weekly MMWR report which CDC sends to hospitals and doctors every week with information on flu, COVID and other infectious diseases.
I think we’re at the point in this where you can’t yet categorically say that this is being done for RFK Jr.-adjacent anti-research nuttery, but basically all signs point in that direction. And there is at least a temporary and disruptive halt to how health research gets funded in this country.
Meanwhile, on a totally different front, Jessica Valenti says that in the last two days Instagram has begun blocking the account of an organization focused on helping women find access to abortion medication.
Trump’s Long, Not Terribly Convincing Con On Abortion Policy Is Over
Donald Trump’s Week One actions on abortion appear to be just as brazen and trollish as his attempts on the campaign trail to convince voters he’d moderated on abortion. (And that is not to suggest that things won’t take a yet more sinister — and substantive — turn in the days to come.)
Continue reading “Trump’s Long, Not Terribly Convincing Con On Abortion Policy Is Over”Democrats are Surrounded by Low Hanging Fruit: Get To It
Yesterday my colleague Kate Riga noted a trap Senate Democrats keep falling into: in an effort to court Republican defectors they temper their criticism of the various Trump nominees. But since there are and will be no defectors they lose on both sides of the equation, gaining no defectors and making their critiques tepid and forgettable. This is unquestionably true. But we can go a step further still. Far from courting potential defectors, they should be attacking them.
Potential defectors are almost always those from marginal states, and some are senators from marginal states who face voters at the next election. 2026 doesn’t have a lot of great prospects. But there are some. So Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, possibly Joni Ernst and new Florida senator Ashley Moody. The criticisms of the bad nominees should be as intense as possible and all focused on the support of these senators. No one does you a favor in these settings for being nice: senators defect when they think they may pay a price at the ballot box. That is the only way to have messaging that takes the initiative and stays on the attack. If things get too hot and the senator pulls their support, great. If not, that just lays the groundwork for beating that senator in the next election. Those two possibilities are the only outcomes of any consequence and the same game plan advances both goals. It’s simple. When they’re upset or hiding you’ll know you’re doing it right. One more point: no one cares about press releases. Getting on camera or activity on social media matter.
Continue reading “Democrats are Surrounded by Low Hanging Fruit: Get To It”Trump Installs Stop The Steal Booster To End Cases Against Jan. 6 Defendants
The U.S. attorney who Trump installed in Washington, D.C. to end Jan. 6 prosecutions has spent the past several years outside of government pushing for exactly that.
Continue reading “Trump Installs Stop The Steal Booster To End Cases Against Jan. 6 Defendants”