Trump Casts The Worst And Dimmest For Season 2

Posted on by David Kurtz

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

The High Price Of Kakistocracy

As we inch toward the holidays and the news slows, I wanted to step back and offer a bit more context on the slew of absurdist Trump nominations. The sheer number of unqualified miscreants that Trump has chosen to cast for his second season is overwhelming to the mind and to the mechanisms in place to screen out the worst and dimmest.

“The volume of controversial nominees will force senators to prioritize their battles, allowing some to advance simply due to limited time and attention,” law professor Alan Z. Rozenshtein writes at Lawfare.

I highly recommend Rozenshtein’s piece. It places Trump’s approach to nominations in a broader historical and political context. Here’s a sampling:

Trump’s nominations represent an unprecedented triple assault on constitutional appointment norms: First, many are unqualified or hostile to their agencies’ missions. Second, rather than making a few controversial picks, Trump has flooded the zone, nominating an entire slate of problematic candidates that burdens the Senate’s capacity for proper vetting. And third, Trump has signaled willingness to circumvent the confirmation process through legally dubious tactics such as forced Senate adjournment. Together, these moves threaten to transform the appointments process from a constitutional safeguard into a vehicle for installing loyalists regardless of competence.

As Rozenshtein points out, the constitutional structure was intended to give considerable latitude to the president on appointments with the idea that he would be directly politically accountable to the electorate if he stocked his administration with grifters and clowns. Perhaps Trump’s 2020 defeat validates that structural approach, but his re-election has put the whole edifice under considerable strain.

Trump II Clown Show

  • Trump selects Herschel Walker as ambassador to the Bahamas.
  • WSJ: How Tucker Carlson Killed Mike Pompeo’s Hopes of Joining the Trump Administration

Disney Did It

ABC News’ settlement of Donald Trump’s defamation claim was largely driven by parent company Disney, according to the NYT:

The concerns about the case among Disney executives, and the eventual decision to settle, involved multiple considerations, according to three people inside the company with knowledge of the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private matter. The settlement was recommended by Horacio Gutierrez, Disney’s general counsel, and approved by Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive. It was not elevated to a company board vote.

Trump’s Favorite Piñata

Politico: Trump is already delivering on his promise to go after the press

Lawsuit Or Press Release?

The text of Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Des Moines Register, pollster Ann Selzer, and Gannett because he didn’t like the shock poll showing him trailing Kamala Harris in Iowa is worth a read for the pure absurdity of it all.

Food For Thought

Morning Memo has identified retribution, corruption, and destruction as the three primary organizing principles for a Trump II presidency, but I wanted to offer a counterpoint from Marcy Wheeler on whether “retribution” is the proper way to frame it: “If you use the term “retribution” to describe Trump’s attacks on the press, you are accepting his frame that free speech that accurately describes his faults is somehow wrong, an injury to be avenged.”

Bigly Reaction

Trump melts down over his latest setback in the hush money case.

AOC Loses Bid To Be Ranking Member On Oversight

House Democrats fell back on seniority in electing 74-year-old Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) to be the ranking member on the Oversight Committee, thwarting the upstart bid from 35-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

Shutdown Watch

Because a government shutdown has seemed like a remote possibility, Morning Memo has eschewed covering it breathlessly, but with the Friday deadline looming, the language of a continuing resolution to fund the government through mid-March was finally released Tuesday evening. It’s going to be a tight needle to thread but it still looks more likely than not to be be passed by or shortly after the deadline with minimal disruption. There will be a lot of howling from the farthest-right GOP members though.

What A World

WSJ: Federal Judge Broke Ethics Rules by Criticizing Justice Alito During Flag Flap

Good Read

Thomas Zimmer, on the link between modern conservatism and the Trumpist right:

If we take Modern Conservatism seriously, we should not be all that surprised by the radicalizing dynamic that has ultimately led to the Trumpist Right’s triumph. That outcome was never determined and depended instead on a lot of contingent factors, the structures of the political system, and individual decisions by influential rightwing leaders. It does not, however, constitute a departure from or a betrayal of the “true” Modern Conservative tradition. The political project that coalesced in the 1950s was always exceedingly clear about its goals and priorities. From the start, it was centered around its commitment to a specific societal order – and by its hostility towards the “left”-coded forces working to change, undermine, or subvert it. It always defined the stakes of the conflict as existential because it set out to defend a “natural order” that was not up for political deliberation or subject to democratic control.

Pure Absurdism

North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Remember North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R)?

His failed campaign as the Republican nominee for governor was disrupted by, among other things, a CNN report that more than a decade ago he called himself a “black NAZI!” and a “perv” in frequent posts on a porn website using the alias “minisoldr.” He denied the allegations. But now WRAL is reporting that Robinson logged in to state virtual meeting last week about Democratic Gov.-elect Josh Stein’s inauguration using the “minisoldr” handle.

“Mark’s personal username has been MiniSoldr for more than 20 years,” a Robinson spokesperson said in an email. “Anyone who has been following Mark for any period of time knows this. People attempt to impersonate him all the time by utilizing variations of the name.”

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Come See Us Live On Jan. 15

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Folks, we’re really excited about this. We’re hosting the first live, in-person version of The Josh Marshall Podcast Featuring Kate Riga on January 15th in Washington, DC. Tickets just went on sale. They’re $75 per person and $50 for members. If you’re a member you’ll already have gotten an email with a link to get the membership pricing. We’ll do a live version of the podcast with the audience, followed by a Q&A and then a bar with drinks for chatting and discussion afterwards. We are really looking forward to it and we really hope you can join us.

Cash bar and every ticket comes with a coupon for your first drink. Tickets are free for TPM Inside members (again, you’ll have gotten an email). If you’re a member and for some reason haven’t received an email just drop us a line at memberships at talkingpointsmemo dot com.

House Republican Leadership’s Nerve-Racking Tuesday

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

I wrote last week about the historically tiny majority House Republicans will hold as they attempt to enact the worst pillars of Donald Trump’s agenda at the start of the 119th Congress.

You can read the details here, but the short version is this: due to vacancies Trump himself created by appointing members of the House Republican conference to key administration positions (plus the whole Matt Gaetz saga), Republicans will start the year unable to lose one single vote in their conference in order to pass legislation (if all Democrats are present and vote together).

Continue reading “House Republican Leadership’s Nerve-Racking Tuesday” →

A Big Pile of Money and Lawyering to Defend Trump’s Legal Targets?

Posted on by Josh Marshall

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory and promised revenge tour, a number of individuals have proposed the creation of an organization or fund which would take on the job of defending the various lawsuits, prosecutions and generalized legal harassment Trump will bring to the table in the next four years. It’s a very good idea. It’s a necessary one. Over the last six weeks I’ve had a number of people reach out to me and ask who is doing this. Where should they send money to fund this effort? This includes people who are in the small-donor category and also very wealthy people who could give in larger sums. So a few days ago I started reaching out to some people in the legal world and anti-Trump world to find out what’s going on, whether any efforts are afoot and who is doing what.

What I found out is that there are at least a couple groups working toward doing something like this. But the efforts seem embryonic. Or at least I wasn’t able to find out too much. And to be clear, I wasn’t reaching out as a journalist per se. I was explicitly clear about this. I was doing so as a concerned citizen, not to report anything as a news story but as someone who wants such an entity to come into existence. The overnight news that Trump is now suing Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register over her final election poll for “election interference” makes me think that these efforts aren’t coming together soon enough or can’t come together soon enough. (If you’re not familiar with the details, Selzer is a pollster of almost legendary status and in what turned out to be her final public poll, dramatically missed not only the result of the election but the whole direction of it.) So what I’m going to write here is simply my take on why such an effort is important and what shape it should take.

Let’s start with the practicalities.

Continue reading “A Big Pile of Money and Lawyering to Defend Trump’s Legal Targets?” →

The 18th-Century Law Trump Says He’ll Use For Mass Deportations Has Only Been Invoked During Times Of War

Posted on by John Light

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

President-elect Donald Trump often said during the 2024 presidential campaign that he plans to launch the nation’s largest-ever mass deportation operation in his second term.

Trump has pledged to carry out this work by using an obscure 18th-century law called the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The act empowers presidents to apprehend and remove foreign nationals from countries that are at war with the United States. U.S. presidents have issued executive proclamations and invoked this law three times: during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II. All three instances followed Congress declaring war.

Why bother dusting off a 226-year-old law?

Invoking the Alien Enemies Act could make it far easier for the Trump administration to quickly apprehend, detain and deport immigrants living in the U.S. without legal authorization. That’s because the law lets presidents bypass immigration courts.

In my view, if Trump uses the Alien Enemies Act to carry out his mass deportation plans, it almost certainly would trigger major court battles in which the text, early history and previous uses of this antiquated law take center stage.

Guatemalan immigrants arrive in Guatemala City on an ICE deportation flight in February 2017, during the first Trump administration. John Moore/Getty Images

Repressive origins and populist backlash

The Alien Enemies Act traces back to the late 1700s, when the Federalists, an early political party, controlled Congress. The Federalists wanted strong national government as well as harmonious diplomatic and trade relations with Great Britain.

The Federalists became outraged when the French government began seizing U.S. merchant ships in the Caribbean that were trading with Britain, which France was waging war against at that time.

The opposing Democratic-Republican Party, led by Thomas Jefferson, supported France in its fight against Great Britain.

The Federalists in Congress considered Jefferson’s pro-France position against the U.S. interests. They also were troubled that the Democratic-Republicans were backed by thousands of French and Irish immigrants who had some political clout in big cities such as Philadelphia and New York.

So in 1798 the Federalists tried to quell domestic opposition by passing the Alien and Sedition Acts, a series of controversial laws that banned political dissent by limiting free speech. The laws also made it harder for immigrants to become citizens.

One of these laws was the Alien Enemies Act, which gave presidents broad authority to control or remove noncitizens ages 14 or older if they had ties to foreign enemies during times of a declared war.

The Alien and Sedition Acts elicited a firestorm of criticism soon after they were passed, including from Jefferson and James Madison, who asserted that states have the right and duty to declare some federal laws unconstitutional. The populist backlash against the Alien and Sedition Acts helped propel Jefferson and Democratic-Republicans to victory in the 1800 presidential election. Nearly all of the Alien and Sedition Acts were then either repealed or allowed to expire.

Only the Alien Enemies Act, a law enacted without an expiration date, survived.

The history of the Alien Enemies Act

Madison, the fourth U.S. president, first invoked the Alien Enemies Act during the War of 1812 with Great Britain, which was sparked for several reasons, including trade and territorial control of North America.

Madison invoked the Alien Enemies Act in 1812 by proclaiming that “all subjects of His Britannic Majesty, residing within the United States, have become alien enemies.”

But rather than imposing mass deportations, Madison’s administration simply required British nationals living in the U.S. to report their age, home address, length of residency and whether they applied for naturalization.

More than 100 years later, President Woodrow Wilson invoked the Alien Enemies Act during World War I in April 1918.

Wilson used the Alien Enemies Act to impose sweeping restrictions on the residency, work, possessions, speech and activities of foreign nationals from places that the U.S. was at war with – Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. U.S.-born women married to any people born in these places were also deemed “enemy aliens.”

The U.S. Marshals Service carefully monitored about half a million Germans in the U.S. to make sure they followed Wilson’s restrictions.

Another 6,000 German “enemy aliens” were arrested and sent to internment camps in Georgia and Utah, where they were confined until after an armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany in November 1918.

Two decades later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt notoriously used the Alien Enemies Act in World War II.

In 1941, Roosevelt authorized special restrictions on German, Italian and Japanese nationals living in the U.S. More than 30,000 of these foreign nationals, including Jewish refugees from Germany, spent the war imprisoned at internment camps because the government considered them potentially dangerous. The U.S. government released these detainees after World War II ended.

The vast majority of the 110,000 Japanese American men, women and children interned during the war were not held under the Alien Enemies Act. The government used a separate executive order during World War II to intern most people of Japanese descent, some of whom were born in the U.S.

Donald Trump speaks about immigration at Montezuma Pass, Ariz., along the U.S.-Mexico border, on Aug. 22, 2024. Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images

What’s very old is new again

Civil liberties and immigrant rights groups have pledged to fight back by filing legal challenges if Trump forges ahead with plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act for the fourth time in U.S. history.

The Alien Enemies Act’s text and history present formidable legal hurdles for the Trump administration.

The 1798 law is clear that an “invasion or predatory incursion” must be undertaken by a “foreign nation or government” in order for it to be invoked.

Yet Congress has not declared war on any country in over 80 years, nor has another government launched an invasion against U.S. territory.

And drug cartels are not actual national governments running Latin American countries, so they don’t meet the criteria in the Alien Enemies Act.

Trump’s senior advisers, meanwhile, say with no clear evidence that the administration can justly claim that some Latin American governments, such as Mexico and Venezuela, are run by drug cartels that are attacking U.S. security. These officials also allege that these criminal organizations are launching state-sanctioned invasions of narcotics and unauthorized migrants.

Whatever the argument, the tenacious problem that the Trump administration will face is that neither the letter of the law nor historical precedents support peacetime use of the Alien Enemies Act.

None of these textual and historical realities will matter, however, if the courts choose not to intervene on the grounds that a president simply saying that the country is being invaded by a foreign nation is sufficient and is not subject to judicial review.

This possibility makes it impossible to automatically dismiss blueprints for using an 18th-century law, however dubious. If Trump succeeds at invoking the Alien Enemies Act, it would add another chapter to the Alien Enemies Act’s sordid history.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Judge Shuts Down Trump’s Latest Attempt To Skate On Hush Money Conviction

Posted on by David Kurtz

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

Holding The Line

I want to be clear up front that the “wins,” such as they are, in the coming months are likely to be small, incremental, and not very dramatic. Morning Memo is going to refrain from pumping them up into more than they are. But ignoring them entirely would be a disservice to the folks grinding to preserve the rule of law, fight off MAGA’s destructive impulses, expose Trump corruption, and otherwise hold the line against further erosion.

Which brings us to a long-awaited ruling yesterday in the Trump’s hush money case.

Judge Juan Merchan didn’t just deny Trump’s move to overturn his conviction on the grounds that some of the evidence introduced at trial was in violation of the Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling on presidential immunity. Merchan eviscerated Trump’s arguments and ruled in such a way that makes Trump’s expected appeal quite a bit more difficult.

In his 41-page opinion, the judge foreclosed every manner and form of argument that Trump had made. Merchan ruled that Trump had failed to preserve most of his arguments by not raising them in a timely fashion, but the judge considered those arguments anyway – then rejected all of them as not meeting the Supreme Court’s standard for official conduct. Merchan then went a step further and concluded that even if Trump’s argument satisfied the standard for official conduct, prosecutors had not intruded on the function and authority of the presidency and thus sidestepped the Supreme Court’s immunity protections.

As a final flourish, Merchan concluded that even if he was wrong on all of the above, the introduction of the challenged evidence was a harmless error in light of the “overwhelming evidence” of Trump’s guilt.

It was a belt-and-suspenders-and-garter-and-braces decision by Merchan, shoring up every angle of attack that Trump might launch on appeal.

Will it matter in the end?

Merchan is still considering a separate Trump motion that the case should be dismissed since he won re-election. Sentencing is forestalled for now. It still seems unlikely that this case ever produces any meaningful punishment for Trump. But let the record show Merchan is still holding the line where he can.

MUST READ

TPM’s Hunter Walker and Josh Kovensky, reporting from the New York Young Republicans Club’s annual gala:

Sunday night offered a sneak preview of what life might be like in President-elect Donald Trump’s second term at the annual black tie gala of Manhattan’s most MAGA political club. It’s a world where fringe media outlets are ascendant, a new wave of religious leaders are mixing politics and prayer, the global right-wing is rejoicing, and more established press are being subjected to a new level of restrictions and derision. 

More Reaction To ABC News Settling The Trump Case

  • TPM’s Josh Marshall: “The key here is that it is almost absurd to expect that these big diversified corporations are going to operate in the interests of or run major risks on behalf of their very small news divisions. These are in almost every case liabilities in the context of a Trump administration.”
  • Eric Wemple: “ABC News will never live down this capitulation. Never.”
  • Parker Molloy: “This is how press freedom erodes—not through dramatic crackdowns, but through corporate calculation. When news organizations are owned by massive conglomerates, journalism becomes just another business interest to be traded away when convenient.”

Trump Sues Iowa Pollster Over Outlier Poll

In an absurd legal move, Donald Trump has filed a state lawsuit in Iowa against Gannett, the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer over a poll they published the weekend before Election Day showing Trump trailing Kamala Harris in the state, according to Fox News Digital. The shock poll showed Harris up 3 points; Trump won the state by 13 points.

The Era Of Grandiose Feelings

Trump on Tim Cook and other CEOs traveling to meet with him: "In the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) December 16, 2024 at 12:21 PM

Quote Of The Day

Brian Beutler:

Democrats have, by contrast, affirmatively decided not to treat anything Trump’s doing as untoward unless and until it pertains to things like health-care and tax policy. And in their terribly narrowcast conception of politics, other potential bulwarks against mafia-style government are collapsing.

Pete Hegseth Continues To Be Awesome

  • CNN: Pete Hegseth spread baseless conspiracy theories that January 6 attack was carried out by leftist groups
  • NYT: Hegseth’s Security Guard During His Confirmation Process Left the Army After the Beating of a Civilian During Training

For Your Radar

House Democrats will vote this morning on who will serve as ranking committee members, in what has been a low-key changing of the guard post-election.

The most-watched race is the bid by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) to leapfrog the more senior Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) to replace Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) as the ranking member on Oversight.

The House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which effectively makes these decisions most of the time, voted yesterday 34-27 in favor of elevating Connolly over AOC. But’s it not unheard of for the full Democratic caucus to yield a different result.

EXCLUSIVE

NYT: Giant Companies Took Secret Payments to Allow Free Flow of Opioids

Black Enrollment At Harvard Law Plummets

The first entering class at Harvard Law School since the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard outlawing affirmative action in college admissions had less than half as many Black students as last year’s entering class.

Absurdism Is A Key Ingredient Of Trumpism

President-elect Trump, on his pick to be the next U.S. ambassador to Uruguay: "Lou is a great golfer, and will be in a Country with some terrific courses."

— David Gura (@davidgura.bsky.social) 2024-12-17T04:30:07.647Z

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MAGA Republicans Dodge Questions About Their Own Party’s Plans To Gut Social Safety Net

Posted on by Emine Yücel

Some House Republicans in recent weeks have not exactly been shy about their interest in reviving the party’s longtime passion for gutting the social safety net in the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection and the coming Republican trifecta. 

Reports have surfaced indicating that some congressional Republicans are in talks with Trump advisers about making cuts to programs like Medicaid and food stamps to offset the cost of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. Others are openly suggesting that Medicare and Social Security may be on the chopping block as part of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s performative venture into government spending cuts through the new Department of Government Efficiency. 

But MAGA Republicans on Capitol Hill who recently spoke to TPM were unwilling to be pinned down on the issue. 

Continue reading “MAGA Republicans Dodge Questions About Their Own Party’s Plans To Gut Social Safety Net” →

Senate GOP Surprised, Saddened To Discover That Filling Judicial Vacancies Can Be Political

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

Another federal judge has decided to reverse their retirement plans in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory — and a few Senate Republicans are performatively up in arms about precedent in response.

Continue reading “Senate GOP Surprised, Saddened To Discover That Filling Judicial Vacancies Can Be Political” →

The Ultimate MAGA: Global And Domestic Right Gathers, Ready For A New Trump Era 

Posted on by Hunter Walker

NEW YORK — Sunday night offered a sneak preview of what life might be like in President-elect Donald Trump’s second term at the annual black tie gala of Manhattan’s most MAGA political club. It’s a world where fringe media outlets are ascendant, a new wave of religious leaders are mixing politics and prayer, the global right-wing is rejoicing, and more established press are being subjected to a new level of restrictions and derision. 

Continue reading “The Ultimate MAGA: Global And Domestic Right Gathers, Ready For A New Trump Era “ →

How New York Republicans Helped Defend Daniel Penny In Controversial Subway Chokehold Case 

Posted on by Josh Kovensky

NEW YORK — Daniel Penny was not present at the New York Young Republican Club’s 112th annual gala on Sunday evening, but in many ways he felt like the guest of honor.

Continue reading “How New York Republicans Helped Defend Daniel Penny In Controversial Subway Chokehold Case “ →