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

It’s Already Happening

Since the election, I’ve emphasized to our reporters that we want to focus less on what Trump might do or is threatening to do, and more on what he is actually doing. The main reason for this is to try to break free of the chaos that Trump sets off with each threat, declaration, feint, and emission and focus instead on concrete and tangible actions. But there’s another salutary reason for directing our finite resources to what is actually happening as opposed to what might happen: It is already happening.

Trump II is unfolding before our eyes exactly as Trump promised it would and as experts warned. As you peruse the news items below, you’ll already see plain evidence of the erosion of the rule of law, of governing norms, and of protections against tyrannical rule. I don’t say that for dramatic effect. It’s just a fact that the damage is already being done now, before Trump is even inaugurated and will of course continue after Jan. 20.

Let me try to put it another way.

Forcing out the FBI director and trying to install the likes of Kash Patel is itself destructive. Whatever Patel ends up doing if he is confirmed as FBI director will be next level stuff, icing on the MAGA cake. The same goes for the damage caused by casting his administration like a reality TV show. Putting charlatans in charge is the point. Whatever they do or fail to do is gravy. It’s not as simple as his appointees being unqualified. It’s that their own lack of seriousness mirrors the contempt and lack of regard they have for the institutions they are set to lead. It’s all part of the destructive impulse.

The descent towards a less democratic America isn’t a cliff’s edge we fall over but a steepening slope. We’ve already come down a considerable distance and the speed of the descent is quickening. This is what it looks like. Right now.

Trump’s Corruption Of The FBI

Garrett M. Graff:

The only reason Trump wants to change FBI directors is he doesn’t think he can boss, bend and break Wray to his will sufficiently, that Wray would not be personally loyal to him in the way that he has wanted his FBI directors to be — and which, institutionally, they’re explicitly not supposed to be. Every single part of that is a dire warning sign about what’s to come under Trump II and what he and Patel intend to do with the bureau.

We’re Not Going To Be Out The Woods For A Long Time

New polling shows many Republicans are okay with Trump ignoring the law to target his enemies.

FAA Chief Resigns

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker, barely a year into his five-year term, is resigning before Trump takes office.

If the presidential appointees whose terms are longer than the president’s – precisely in order to make them more independent and less susceptible to political interference – keep resigning at the end of the president’s term, then they’re basically turning these positions into the same as those held by any other administration appointee.

‘Personalist Rule’

NYU professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat was on MSNBC the other night talking about FBI Director Chris Wray’s resignation and the broader authoritarian context in which it is happening:

“The core definition of authoritarianism is that the executive overwhelms the other branches of government and all checks on power and the situation of the president, or head of state, are removed,” she said.

“This is actually something called personalist rule. It’s a type of authoritarian where you have a very strong one person […] and the purpose of the party and ultimately government is to solve the legal and financial and other problems of the leader. And so everybody becomes a personal tool to the leader and that’s what is happening now. Everybody is folding to his will,” she said.

Sign Of The Times

— Mike Luckovich (@mluckovich.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T18:22:47.906Z

The Destruction And Corruption Are Inextricable

WSJ:

The Trump transition team has started to explore pathways to dramatically shrink, consolidate or even eliminate the top bank watchdogs in Washington. 

In recent interviews with potential nominees to lead bank regulatory agencies, President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers and officials from his newfound Department of Government Efficiency have, for example, asked whether he could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., people familiar with the matter said.

Just to be clear: Abolishing the FDIC, which insures bank deposits, would be insane for the banks, too.

Oligarchy Watch

• WSJ: Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Plans to Donate $1 Million to Trump’s Inauguration
• The LAT’s billionaire publisher has effectively spiked another editorial, this one critical of Trump considering bypassing the Senate’s confirmation process for nominees.
• The junior senator from Connecticut, no less:

Chris Murphy: "We talk a lot about the coming dictatorship, but I think what's really coming is what you would call an oligarchy."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2024-12-13T02:18:07.614Z

Fake Oligarch Wannabe?

In an amazing story on Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, whom her dad picked as his new White House adviser on the Middle East, the NYT suggests he’s not a billionaire as advertised or a lawyer as claimed or even involved in his wife’s family’s company, which had been seen as the source of his wealth.

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

He Took The Easy Wray Out

It’d be a little precious for me to sit here at my keyboard and proclaim that FBI Director Chris Wray should have made Donald Trump go through the process of actually firing him and pay the political price for doing so rather than deciding to resign in advance and avoid the blood bath.

It’s impossible to guarantee that if Wray had forced the issue it would have raised national awareness of Trump’s corruption, cost Trump politically, put Republican senators in more of an awkward bind over Kash Patel’s nomination for FBI director, and generally made the MAGA GOP pay down political capital on this fight that it then wouldn’t have available to use elsewhere.

But it’s guaranteed now that none of those things will happen.

In the Washington of old, there was a reasonable argument that if a presidential appointee had lost the president’s confidence, they should resign. But this isn’t the old days. Trump and the man he wants to replace Wray have loudly and proudly proclaimed their intentions to corrupt the FBI. Removing Wray before the end of his 10-year term is the first step in executing that corrupt plan.

The essential corruption here is two-fold: (i) using the powers of the state through DOJ and FBI to target people who are a threat to Trump, without regard to the law; and (ii) protecting Trump and his minions from investigation and prosecution for actual violations of the law.

I don’t want to lose focus on what this is all about, but like you I am eager to see some real-world examples of people who are in positions to do so standing up to the Trump II corruption even when it comes at a high personal price. Not for the theater of it, not to satisfy some vague sense of hitting back, not because it will by itself work some miracle. But rather because we need some real-world models for how to conduct ourselves in this unprecedented new period of history.

Inside The Effort To Save Pete Hegseth … For Now

The NYT goes deep on the Trump transition’s decision to keep Pete Hegseth’s nomination for defense secretary on life support:

The campaign to revive Mr. Hegseth’s nomination was led internally by Mr. Vance and orchestrated externally by a small group of Mr. Trump’s most aggressive allies.

The group included his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and MAGA media figures who are seen as most effective at quickly whipping up the base, chief among them Stephen K. Bannon; the radio host Charlie Kirk; and the Breitbart reporter Matt Boyle. A key behind-the-scenes operator in the pressure campaign has been Arthur Schwartz, who has been serving as Mr. Hegseth’s media adviser and who is a close ally of Mr. Vance and Donald Trump Jr.

Kari Lake To Head Voice Of America?

Arizona election denier Kari Lake was as recently as two days ago under consideration for ambassador to Mexico. That would have been better than this: Trump now wants her to lead Voice of America.

But it’s a little more complicated than that. The president doesn’t directly make that pick. The president does pick the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA. Trump suggested he will direct his soon-to-be-announced pick for UASGM to install Lake at VOA. In addition, there is a presidentially appointed USAGM board that is “empowered … to approve appointments or dismissals of any network heads.”

Here’s how CNN put it:

First, Trump has to nominate someone to run the U.S. Agency of Global Media. Then, that person and the advisory board will consider the VOA position. The board’s makeup will tilt in the GOP’s favor next year because one member will come from Trump’s State Department. But the other board members have terms that somewhat insulate them from political pressure.

So the upshot is probably going to be the same: Lake at VOA. But the process is more convoluted than it may appear on the surface and already suggests a high level of White House interference. Stay tuned.

Why Even Have A Senate?

Tommy Tuberville: "The people of Alabama gave a referendum to me. They said, 'You vote for whatever Donald Trump wants.' And that's exactly what I'm doing."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) December 11, 2024 at 11:23 AM

Generational Change

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) has secured the support of a majority of the Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee and is poised to become its new ranking member, Politico reports.

About That Alleged Assault On Rep. Nancy Mace …

A foster care advocate arrested for allegedly assaulting virulently anti-trans Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) on the Hill pleaded not guilty. Witnesses disputed that he assaulted her, calling it a brief handshake during which he urged her to support transgender foster youth.

The charging documents in the case offered some new details on the incident:

In an account of the incident filed Wednesday in D.C. Superior Court, police said a member of Congress reported that McIntyre “took her hand with both of his hands and shook her arm up and down in an exaggerated, aggressive hand shaking motion” that lasted three to five seconds.

According to the charging document, she told police that she tried to withdraw her arm but could not and that “she was experiencing pain in her wrists, arm and armpit/shoulder due to the incident.” She declined medical treatment, the responding officer wrote.

Trans Rights Watch

• Pro: The Montana Supreme Court upheld a preliminary injunction blocking the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors from going into effect.
• Con: The House passed the annual defense authorization bill that included a provision slipped in by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) that bans gender-affirming care for the children of military service members.

NC GOP Completes Its Lame-Duck Power Grab

Before its supermajority comes to an end in January, the GOP-controlled legislature in North Carolina completed its brazen move to strip power from newly elected Democratic officeholders by overriding Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto.

Biden Commutes The Sentences Of 1,500 People

“President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic and is pardoning 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. It’s the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.”–AP

Rebuke Of Hunter Biden Pardon From Unlikely Source

Former senior Biden White House adviser Anita Dunn: ““I do not agree with the way it was done, I don’t agree with the timing, and I don’t agree, frankly, with the attack on our judicial system.”

Sign Of The Times

Three Republican members of Congress have joined in inviting a Jan. 6 felon still on probation to Trump’s inauguration, a trip that requires a judge’s approval.

Oligarch Watch

• Elon Musk became the first person with a net worth north of $400 billion.
• Departing from its past practice, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms has contributed $1 million to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund.

The Recent Wave Of Immigration Really Was Historic

A NYT analysis of recent immigration to the United States shows just how remarkable the recent influx has been:

• The pace of immigration from 2021-23 was faster than at any previous period in U.S. history, including the peak of Ellis Island.
• As a share of total U.S. population, the average annual change in the foreign-born population went up faster than any period since at least the 1850s.
• The percentage of the U.S. population born in another country reached a new high of 15.2 percent in 2023. The previous high was 14.8 percent in 1890.

Painful To Witness

"You're okay, you're okay."

A remarkable moment as CNN's @clarissaward and her team find a Syrian prisoner left behind in a secret prison, alone and unaware the Assad regime was no more. pic.twitter.com/Cz6TBWHvts

— Lauren Cone (@LConeCNN) December 11, 2024

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

What We Take For Granted

Among the institutional pillars of democracy – a free press, an independent judiciary, robust civic and religious organizations – a nonpartisan professionalized military may be the one we take most for granted and overlook.

Set aside for the moment your concerns about American imperialism, the military-industrial complex, and the deep streak of jingoism that has long infected domestic politics and foreign policy. All legitimate concerns in their own right, but they can mask the U.S. military’s mostly sterling record at staying out of the partisan political fray. That includes developing and sustaining an highly educated officer corps that provides continuity and professional judgment regardless of which party is in the White House.

Like he has with other democratic underpinnings that represent a threat to his power, Trump is promising to remake the military into a compliant, servile, compromised husk of its former self. Trump has surrounded himself with some of the loudest, most extreme right-wing advocates for bringing the military to submission.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Pentagon secretary, emerges from this right-wing subculture. It’s fortuitous that Hegseth is a dim bulb with a sordid personal and professional life that may ultimately scuttle his own nomination. But Hegseth is not alone, and the vision for the military that he represents is shared in Trump’s circle and by Trump himself, who had praised Hitler’s generals because he perceives them (wrongly) to have put personal loyalty to the leader above all else.

Trump’s undermining of the military fits neatly into our matrix of Trump II threats – retribution, corruption, and destruction. Among those, it’s destruction first and foremost, which almost inevitably leads to opportunities for corruption. The retribution element is more nuanced than, say, Trump’s jihad against the Justice Department. But having surrounded himself in his first term by “my generals” – nearly all of whom ended up betraying him in his own mind – Trump’s urge to bring the military to heel isn’t that hard to figure.

All of this comes to mind today because of an important new piece by Don Moynihan, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, about Trump’s planned military purge. Here’s an excerpt:

In the short run, we should be very worried about what Trump will do with a military repurposed to serve him, and not the constitution. In the long run, the politicization of the American military will undermine its capacity. What happens if every new President distrusts the generals in place because they were selected via a politicized process? They then choose their own, adding to the instability in leadership. Under such circumstances, expect a Putinification of the military, where officers are afraid to tell the President the truth.

It’s worth a read.

Nepotism Watch

Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée (still?) Kimberly Guilfoyle is President-elect Trump’s pick for ambassador to Greece.

Trump II Clown Show

• Tom Barrack, the chair of Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee who was acquitted on 2021 charges of illegally lobbying for the United Arab Emirates: ambassador to Turkey.
• At least three GOP senators are noncommittal about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.‘s nomination to be HHS secretary.
• Harmeet Dhillon‘s nomination as assistant attorney general for civil rights prompted outcry from civil rights groups.

GOP Senators To Watch

It’s a fool’s errand to expect Republican senators to save the Republic from a Trump II presidency. Full stop. But there is some subtlety and nuance around some senators some of the time that may help illuminate where the tectonic plate boundaries of the MAGA movement lay. Especially with MAGA leaders promising to defeat any GOP senators who impede Trump, these may be active fault lines for the next four years.

Heritage Action is launching a pressure campaign against these GOP senators to support Trump’s nominees. It’s small, mostly nothingburger effort to allow Heritage Action to tout its pro-Trump bona fides, but it’s a reasonably good proxy for the list of GOP senators to keep an eye on:

• Senate Majority Leader John Thune (SD)
• Mitch McConnell (KY)
• Lisa Murkowski (AK)
• Susan Collins (ME)
• Joni Ernst (IA)
• Bill Cassidy (LA)
• Thom Tillis (NC)
• Todd Young (IN)
• John Curtis (UT)

Corruption Watch

“Eric Trump flew across the world to headline a cryptocurrency conference in the United Arab Emirates this week and told thousands of enthusiastic attendees that he and his father, the U.S. president-elect, were effectively working in tandem to push crypto, a business sector the family is directly invested in.”–NYT

The Last Dregs Of Trump Accountability

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is still trying to salvage what he can of Trump’s conviction in the hush money case. In a new filing, Bragg offered the trial judge some alternatives to dismissing the case outright, which is what Trump has asked for:

The proposals include freezing the case until Trump is out of office, or agreeing that any future sentence wouldn’t include jail time. Another idea: closing the case with a notation that acknowledges his conviction but says that he was never sentenced and that his appeal wasn’t resolved because of presidential immunity.

In related news, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office rejected Trump’s request that she agree to vacate the $454 million civil fraud judgment against him.

New Charges In Wisconsin Fake Electors Case

In the fake electors scheme prosecution in Wisconsin, prosecutors have filed 10 new felony charges each against Trump attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, and Trump’s director of Election Day operations Mike Roman.

Oops …

“Leak investigations during the Trump administration extended far deeper into Congress than previously known, leading to scrutiny of the records of dozens of staff members, the Justice Department’s inspector general found in what he described as worrisome overreach.”–NYT

Congresswoman Allegedly Assaulted In Rayburn Building

A man was arrested for allegedly assaulting Rep. Nancy Mace on Tuesday in the Rayburn House office building. Few details about the incident were provided by law enforcement, but Mace suggested the assault was related to her anti-trans crusade, which she dubs her “fight to protect women.”

Hate As Official State Policy

This is what Florida’s new state prison policy limiting gender-affirming care for inmates looks like, according to accounts provided to The Marshall Project:

Earlier this fall, Florida officials ordered transgender women in the state’s prisons to submit to breast exams. As part of a new policy for people with gender dysphoria, prison medical staff ranked the women’s breast size using a scale designed for adolescents. Those whose breasts were deemed big enough were allowed to keep their bras. Everyone else had to surrender theirs, along with anything else considered “female,” such as women’s underwear and toiletry items.

Bernie’s Last Term?

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), 83, said his new term starting in January will “probably” be his last in the Senate.

Army Secretary Fires 4-Star General

“Army Secretary Christine Wormuth — in a dramatic and rare move — on Tuesday fired … Gen. Charles Hamilton … after what officials described as a flagrant abuse of authority aimed at securing a leadership role for a subordinate officer who was found unfit for command and had an inappropriate relationship with the general, according to the IG report. The move marks the first time in nearly 20 years an Army four-star general has been outright fired and comes after a Military.com investigation in March detailed how he attempted to intervene on behalf of the subordinate officer.”–Military.com

Shot/Chaser

Today’s monologue

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2024-12-11T00:16:16.359Z

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