Say what you will about President Trump: he knows how to make an entrance. This time, he will enter the presidency with the distinction of being the first to have a felony conviction on his record. Friday’s sentencing came a mere ten days before he is slated to take office.
Judge Juan Merchan imposed a sentence of “unconditional discharge” — that means no probation, no fines, and no jail time. Trump appeared by video feed and boasted about his election victory. He did not express remorse. “I’d just like to explain that I’ve been treated very unfairly,” he concluded.
Merchan gave brief remarks and imposed his sentence.
The fact that sentencing went forward at all is something of a surprise. After Merchan indicated last week that he would move to conclude the case before Trump’s inauguration, the former and future President launched a series of appeals; first to the state court above Merchan, and then, breaking with procedure, directly to the Supreme Court on the same day he went to the New York state high court. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 Thursday evening to allow the sentencing to proceed.
TPM was in the courthouse. Read our live coverage below.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has made a mess of the tendentious dispute over the public release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago prosecutions. But it may not matter for long if the case ends up before the Supreme Court.
Last evening, the appeals court mostly sided with the Justice Department in refusing to block Attorney General Merrick Garland from releasing the volume of the two-volume report pertaining to the Jan. 6 case. Garland has already said he won’t release the Mar-a-Lago volume until the case is complete (which puts it in the hands of the incoming Trump DOJ).
Still, the 11th Circuit didn’t go as far as the Justice Department had wanted. It failed to dislodge immediately the temporary injunction that renegade U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon imposed, preventing Garland from releasing the report until three days after the appeals court decision. On a practical level, I suspect the appeals court’s own rationale was leaving Cannon’s injunction in place would give the defendants in the Mar-a-Lago case a chance to take the matter to the Supreme Court without either Cannon or the 11th Circuit having to intervene again.
Instead, the appeals court invited the Justice Department to appeal Cannon’s decision if it wanted the matter resolved more quickly. The Justice Department immediately filed that invited appeal overnight. So now the case is back at the 11th Circuit and likely headed to the Supreme Court.
The race against the clock is on, with 10 days until inauguration and Trump’s takeover of DOJ, when the prosecutions and the reports are likely to be buried.
Trump Sentencing Is ON
In a surprise decision that showed the corruption of the six-justice conservative majority has some ill-defined limits, the Supreme Court declined in a 5-4 split to block the sentencing of President-elect Trump for his conviction in the hush money case involving porn star Stormy Daniels.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined with Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberal justices in refusing to allow Trump’s depredations to erode the rule of law even more dramatically than they already have. But it was a hollow victory in many key respects:
Alarmingly, four justices – Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh – would have blocked Trump’s sentencing altogether.
The Supreme Court’s scant order declining to intervene wasn’t scant enough. Rather than staying silent on its reasoning and doing the least damage possible, it invented new and vague constitutional standards for president-elects, tied the trial judge’s hands on sentencing, and once again carved out special treatment for Trump even as it handed him an ostensible defeat.
The liberal justices seem like hostages of late, forced to go along with bad reasoning and setting troubling new precedents even when getting their preferred outcomes.
Still, the sentencing of Donald Trump for 34 felony convictions 10 days before he is sworn in to a second, non-consecutive term is better than nothing. A low bar. Judge Juan Merchan’s sentencing of Trump will proceed this morning at 9:30 a.m. ET in state court in Manhattan. TPM’s Josh Kovensky is in the courtroom and will be covering it for us live.
Trump and Alito Call: A Loyalty Test
The NYT goes deep on the circumstances of the call between President-elect Trump and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and what it says about prioritizing loyalty above all else, old grudges against Bill Barr of all people, and the contours of a Trump II administration.
Rudy G Faces Another Contempt Hearing Today
Rudy Giuliani got owned by a federal judge in DC yesterday and will be forced to appear in person today at his second contempt of court hearing in as many weeks. Like the first one, this arises from the $148 million defamation judgment against him by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
Embrace The Complexity
TOPSHOT – In this aerial view taken from a helicopter, burned homes are seen from above during the Palisades fire near the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California on January 9, 2025. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON / AFP) (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)
The death toll in the Los Angeles wildfires rose to 10. Early estimates are that some 9,000 buildings have damaged or destroyed, roughly split in half between the Palisades fire, which remains uncontained, and the Eaton fire, which is 6% contained as of Friday morning. It is expected to be the costliest conflagration in economic terms in U.S. history.
Natural disaster coverage is notoriously difficult, often over-simplistic, and occasionally downright bad. Immediate public reaction and political responses can be emotionally charged, misguided, misdirected, and ultimately ephemeral.
One example in particular that Morning Memo has returned to from time to time over the past year is the mistaken framing of the insurance industry’s growing recognition of climate change risk as an “insurance crisis.” Insurers pulling back is a symptom of the climate crisis, another early warning sign, an arguably rational response amidst a sea of denial.
You’ve probably read by now that State Farm last year decided to dramatically reduce its property insurance exposure in Pacific Palisades by not renewing nearly 70% of its existing book of business there. Susan Crawford, who is as thoughtful and astute as anyone writing the broad issue of controlled retreat from high risk zones in a new climate, looks at the impact of the Los Angeles fires on California’s insurer of last resort.
In further service of embracing complexity versus reductive thinking in these matters, let me refer you to this insightful thread by Jake Bittle:
1/ When I was reporting my book chapter about the 2017 Santa Rosa fires, I spent a lot of time in two neighborhoods that had both burned. One was dense and middle class, in flat land, the other was very wealthy and up on a hill. I want to talk a bit about this.
For a broader overview of the rapidly spreading effects of climate change on politics, Garrett Graff is another steady if urgent voice.
Global Temps Passed 1.5C In 2024 For First Time
Average global temperatures were 1.6 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average in 2024, making it the hottest year in human record-keeping and the first year that surpassed the 1.5-degree mark.
IMPORTANT
Trump advisers have spent months looking for a disease they can blame on immigrants as justification for closing down the southern border, the NYT reports.
Pizzagate Gunman Killed In Police Shooting
NYT: “A man in North Carolina who fired a rifle inside a Washington restaurant in 2016 because he wrongly believed an internet conspiracy known as Pizzagate was fatally shot by the police in North Carolina over the weekend when he pulled out a gun during a traffic stop, the authorities said.”
Quite A Presidential Tableau
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 9: Former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President George W. Bush, former First Lady Laura Bush, former President Barack Obama, President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump, President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff attend state funeral services for former President Jimmy Carter at the National Cathedral at the National Cathedral on January 9, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The Supreme Court will not intervene in Donald Trump’s New York hush money case. At least, not before his sentencing goes forward on Friday morning.
Trump filed a last-ditch brief with the Supreme Court on Wednesday, asking the justices to intervene and block his sentencing. On Thursday night, in a 5-4 decision, the justices said no.
With less than two weeks until he’s inaugurated, Trump has been moving to put an end to the last remnants of the various criminal cases brought against him over the past several years.
In a separate case, the incoming president is trying to prevent Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing a report concluding his investigation. The report contains one volume covering the Jan. 6 investigation, and a second volume about the Mar-a-Lago classified records case. A ruling from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday denied a bid by Trump’s former co-defendants to block the report, which could emerge in the next few days — but this issue, too, is likely first headed to the Supreme Court.
Last month, TPM reporter Emine Yücel was up on Capitol Hill attempting to pin down House Republicans on a topic that few wanted to directly discuss: whether or not the Republican conference as a whole was willing to act on recent pronouncements from a few vocal, far-right members that the party would look into sweeping cuts to the social safety net in the new Congress.
As a series of devastating wildfires ravages parts of Southern California, Donald Trump and his allies have seized on the moment to gloat, spread disinfo and politicize the still unfolding tragedy.
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss Trump’s attempts to evade the final dregs of legal accountability, congressional Republican dysfunction and the legacy of Jimmy Carter.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Some of you will disagree with this. And perhaps the future will vindicate your criticism. But I don’t think we should be distracted by Trump’s nonsense about Greenland, the Panama Canal or bum rushing Canada into becoming a U.S. state. We’re all under the grip of that line: “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.” But that doesn’t always work with con men and pathological liars. None of this stuff is going to happen. At a minimum, we shouldn’t get pulled into these outrage cycles or pretending any of this is a thing until you see the U.S. deploying military assets in Central America or … Maine? (I’m not sure where your deploy military assets to menace Greenland but wherever that is, wait for that.)
I saw this CNN article about how Danish officials “fear Trump is much more serious about acquiring Greenland than in first term.” And I get it: the U.S. is a nuclear power and Trump’s a freak. I don’t begrudge them being concerned. But I restate the point. None of this stuff is going to happen. What’s possible is a bunch of bullshit followed by some negotiations in which the Kingdom of Denmark agrees to some minor changes to the existing agreement which allows the U.S. military pretty vast liberties to defend and operate in Greenland. (That’s the NAFTA model: bullshit followed by some discussions and then huge fanfare for marginal changes to existing agreements.) It is the same story that we’ve talked about in other contexts: the constant stream of threats and maybes, all of which create what in this case may not be a penumbra of fear so much as a penumbra of reaction. Absurd tempests in teapots, the effect of which is to have everyone else in a pattern of reaction. He acts — or really doesn’t act, he jabbers — and everyone else reacts. And spin maybe 12 of those things at any one time. And that’s life under Trump.
I suspect many of you are a little dazed and confused by the flurry of court filings in the waning days of the Trump transition. There’s a lot to track, and the stakes might be a little unclear to you. So let me try to break this down in a way that makes some sense of this.
Two parallel races to the courthouse are underway: (1) Trump’s mad-dash effort to stop his sentencing in New York state court tomorrow; and (2) his attempt to block the public release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report on the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago prosecutions.
I’ll turn to each in turn in a moment, but first a word about the stakes of these two legal skirmishes. Neither is as a high a stakes as holding Trump accountable to the rule of law was in the first place; that battle has been irretrievably lost. The Supreme Court made it impossible, first with its Disqualification Clause decision then more decisively with its presidential immunity decision.
What is at stake now is still important but on a lesser scale. As Trump prepares to take office with the mantle of nearly unfettered presidential immunity, will the courts continue to show him excessive and overweening deference, clearing the way for further abuses of power? Or will we see some lines drawn here that might offer a hint as to how the courts will attend to their own independence or register concern about preserving their own prerogatives in a Trump II era?
In that sense, it’s not so much an existential battle but a rather feeble line-drawing exercise. If the courts show some spine, it will still be a somewhat hollow victory. If they show none, well, at least we know what we’re up against.
Will SCOTUS Block Trump’s Sentencing?
With sentencing scheduled for tomorrow on Trump’s conviction in his hush money case, this is the most pressing of the two matters. It is taking place at the Supreme Court and in New York state court.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has a 10 a.m. ET filing deadline at the Supreme Court. Trump rushed to the Supreme Court before he had exhausted his appeals in New York state court, but he is still pressing appeals there simultaneously. Usually that would be enough for the Supreme Court to demure and wait for the lower courts to finish their work. I won’t hazard a guess here as to what the justices will do. But it’s clear what they should do: decline to get involved.
Here’s how Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck put it this morning: “To nevertheless grant a stay pending appeal in circumstances in which it is so difficult to legally justify would be an ominous portent for how the justices plan to approach the second Trump administration—and how willing they will be to bend the relevant legal rules to accommodate the personal preferences of the incoming Chief Executive.”
We could hear from the Supreme Court as early as this afternoon. Remember, all Trump needs to do is kick the can past his Jan. 20 inauguration. So substantial delays count as much as outright wins do at this point.
Will The 11th Circuit Curtail Aileen Cannon?
Trump’s effort to block Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report has been more active, taking place at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and in federal court in Florida, and involving Congress on the periphery.
Overnight, Trump filed an amicus brief with the 11th Circuit, and Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a letter to Congress saying he will abide by Cannon’s injunction against releasing Smith’s report so long as it remains in place. But otherwise Garland plans to release Volume I of Smith’s report on the Jan. 6 prosecution as soon as the injunction is lifted. He won’t release Volume II on the Mar-a-Lago prosecution until after the cases against Trump’s former co-defendants is complete. That means it may never see the light of day since those cases are likely to be corruptly ended by Trump’s DOJ.
All the filings are now submitted to the 11th Circuit so we can expect a decision at any time.
TPM has a running liveblog on both matters that will keep you up to speed throughout today.
Alito And Trump Speak By Phone
President-elect Trump and Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito spoke by phone Tuesday about a professional reference for one of Alito’s former clerks, ABC News first reported. The phone call came the day before Trump asked the Supreme Court to block his sentencing in the hush money case.
We did not discuss the emergency application he filed today, and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed. We also did not discuss any other matter that is pending or might in the future come before the Supreme Court or any past Supreme Court decisions involving the president-elect.
It’s not uncommon for justices to serve as references for clerks. But as the NYT’s Adam Liptak noted: “It was not clear, however, why Mr. Trump would make a call to check references, a task generally left to lower-level aides.”
No president has ever attempted to do what Donald Trump now proposes to do—assemble a small team of former personal attorneys and install it at the highest levels of the Department of Justice. The president-elect first named lawyers who have represented him in recent years to the key positions of deputy attorney general, principal deputy attorney general, and solicitor general. Then, with the quick death of the Matt Gaetz nomination, he announced a new attorney-general nominee, Pam Bondi, who was a member of his legal defense team in the first impeachment.
Los Angeles Burns For A Third Day
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 08: A firefighting helicopter drops water as the Sunset Fire burns in the Hollywood Hills with evacuations ordered on January 8, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Over 1,000 structures have burned, with two people dead, in wildfires fueled by intense Santa Ana Winds across L.A. County. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
A new fire broke out overnight in Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, forcing another wave of evacuations in the heart of Los Angeles. That fire has since been somewhat contained and the evacuation order lifted, but the larger fires in Pacific Palisades and Pasadena remain uncontained, with thousands of structures damaged and destroyed, tens of thousands of people under evacuation orders, and five people confirmed dead.
SMDH
I hesitate to flag some of the right-wing nastiness being spewed about the Los Angeles fires because I can’t imagine having to see misguided vitriol like this after my home burned and my life was upended, but it’s an important marker of where we are today:
i’m kind of amazed at how this is just the crudest, most obvious n****rbaiting you can imagine. “the people you don’t like, yeah, they are responsible for everything bad.” and it works!
Trump Allegedly Fed Questions Before Fox News Town Hall
CNN: “President-elect Donald Trump’s team was given the questions asked by Fox News anchors at an Iowa town hall last January in advance by someone inside the network, according to a forthcoming book, in what would be a serious breach of journalism ethics.”
Keep North Carolina On Your Radar
TPM’s Khaya Himmelman has the latest on the state Supreme Court blocking the certification of the election for one of its own seats, which Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs apparently won by a few hundred votes. Her Republican opponent is trying to get the court to toss some 60,000 cast ballots.
Good Read
Francisco Lobo, writing at Just Security: The Rio Treaty’s Security Pact and Unintended Consequences of Threatening Canada, Greenland, and Panama
‘America Mexicana’
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum jabbed back at Trump over his “Gulf of America” jingoism by joking that California and Texas can revert to be called “America Mexicana.”
Day Of Mourning For Jimmy Carter
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 8: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his wife former First Lady Melania Trump visit the flag-draped casket of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter lies in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 8, 2025 in Washington, DC. Carter’s body will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until a funeral service at the National Cathedral in Washington on January 9. Carter, the 39th President of the United States, died at the age of 100 on December 29, 2024 at his home in Plains, Georgia. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Today is the culmination of the memorial ceremonies for the late President Jimmy Carter, as all four living former presidents will gather with President Biden at Washington National Cathedral for Carter’s public funeral.
The White House put out a fact sheet today highlighting record-breaking enrollment under the Affordable Care Act during the Biden administration. During the current enrollment period, almost 24 million Americans have signed up for health insurance plans under Obamacare, meaning the number of Americans covered through the ACA has almost doubled since President Biden took office.
Want to come join us for our first live edition of the podcast in Washington, DC? We only have thirty tickets left for our live podcast event on January 15th. So if you’re considering it please get them now before they’re all gone. Each ticket is $75. With a member discount they’re $50 each. For members, there should be an email in your inbox from earlier this week with a link that you can use the members discount. If you’re not a member, drop us a line by email for more info.
