I wanted to alert you of something we’re on today. Among other things, it’s the kind of off-the-beaten-path reporting your membership dollars pay for. We sent David Kurtz to Nashville today for a hearing in the Abrego Garcia case. Since we’re a number of ICE murders and false imprisonments down the line at this point, remember that the Justice Department conceded that Abrego Garcia had been erroneously included among those sent last spring to the bespoke dungeon facility in El Salvador. He was brought back to the U.S. only after he was hit with a new indictment. His lawyers have argued to the judge in the case that the charges should be dismissed because this is a case of vindictive prosecution. Normally this is an extremely high bar for the defense to clear. But in this case, the judge replied by saying that he’s inclined to think that the defense is right. Today’s hearing was scheduled to give the government the opportunity to prove that the defense and (mostly) the judge are wrong.
Continue reading “Big Hearing in Nashville Today”Showdown Over Interim US Attorneys Brewing In Seattle
Greetings from Nashville
It’s 4 a.m. as I begin to write here in Nashville, where I’m jamming out Morning Memo before heading over to the new federal courthouse for the vindictive prosecution hearing in the Abrego Garcia case.
A special shoutout to The Hitchcock, a brand new bar about a block from the courthouse that kept Morning Memo well lubricated upon arrival in Nashville last night. Ask for Justin. He’ll take good care of you.
Before I jump into the news, a quick reminder of the special promotion we’re running for Morning Memo readers who aren’t TPM members: 40% off an annual TPM membership. We’re gearing up for TPM’s annual membership drive, which kicks off next week, and this pre-offer is a great deal that I hope will lure you into officially joining the TPM community.
Keep an Eye on Seattle
The all-Biden-appointed federal district court in Seattle may be where the Trump administration’s fight to keep judges from appointing interim U.S. attorneys comes to a head, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
Some alum of the Seattle U.S. Attorney’s Office are leading a charge for the judges there to pick an interim U.S. attorney who is willing to sue when the Trump DOJ purports to fire them, as it’s already done to judge-appointed interim U.S. attorneys in the Northern District of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia.
The Western District of Washington’s U.S. Attorney’s Office is currently without a U.S. attorney, after the judges there declined to extend the initial 120-day term of Charles Neil Floyd, who is now running the office as the designated first assistant.
The Bloomberg piece does a good job of describing why — beyond faintness of heart or the complex legal questions involved – judges so far haven’t challenged the firings. It’s practical. For obvious reasons, finding a candidate willing to put their legal careers on hold to fight it out with the Trump administration isn’t easy:
Former US attorneys said a surefire public firing shrinks the candidate pool for a traditionally highly coveted job. That leaves retirees, law professors, or people in small law practices nearing the end of their careers as the more likely contenders. Finding someone willing to take up a legal dispute with the Trump administration further narrows the list.
Plus, even if you win, where does that leave you?
“It would probably only be worth the battle as a matter of principle,” said Mark Yancey, a former acting US attorney in Oklahoma City who led DOJ’s training academy for prosecutors. “But even if you win that battle, have you lost the war if you’re in office and have an unsupportive department who could make your life miserable?”
Among the reported contenders for the role who arguably fits the criteria for someone willing to challenge their presumptive firing: John McKay, the former U.S. attorney and TPM fave who was … wait for it … famously fired by the Bush II administration in the now-quaint U.S. attorneys scandal where TPM made an early mark. McKay declined to comment to Bloomberg.
The Retribution: Kash Patel CYA Edition
In hot water for his use of the FBI jet and last weekend’s junket to the Winter Olympics in Italy, FBI Director Kash Patel appears to be using retributive purges to shore up his own position.
At least 10 FBI personnel, including at least half a dozen agents, with ties to the Mar-a-Lago search have been fired, NBC News reports.
Specifically, the fired personnel were involved in a request during the Mar-a-Lago investigation for phone toll records for Patel and Susie Wiles, who later became the White House chief of staff, the NYT reports.
Abrego Garcia: Substack Live
I’ll be doing a Substack Live report immediately after today’s hearing in the Abrego Garcia criminal case in Nashville. No telling how long the hearing will go, but if you’re signed up through Substack to receive Morning Memo via email, you should get a notification when we start. And of course we’ll post the video, so you’ll be able to watch it at your leisure later.
I’ve previewed the heck out of this hearing so I won’t belabor the point except to say again that this is the preeminent vindictive prosecution challenge anywhere in the country right now. If you need more of a preview:
- The Intercept: Trump Won’t Stop Trying to Punish Kilmar Abrego Garcia
- WaPo: Prosecution of Kilmar Abrego García faces critical test in court hearing
Major Decision on 3rd Country Removals
In a significant ruling in a case where the Trump administration has repeatedly violated court orders, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of Boston has declared DHS’s third country removal policy illegal:
This case is about whether the Government may, without notice, deport a person to the wrong country, or a country where he is likely to be persecuted, or tortured, thereby depriving that person of the opportunity to seek protections to which he would be undisputedly entitled. The Department of Homeland Security has adopted a policy whereby it may take people and drop them off in parts unknown—in so-called “third countries”—and, “as long as the Department doesn’t already know that there’s someone standing there waiting to shoot . . . that’s fine.”
It is not fine, nor is it legal.
Murphy paused the effect of his ruling for 15 days to give the administration a chance to appeal, in a case that has already made it to the Supreme Court once and is likely to end up there again.
Must Read
Investigative Post: Blind refugee abandoned by Border Patrol is dead
Mass Deportation Watch
- Texas: A state grand jury unanimously declined to indict a federal agent in the killing of a U.S. citizen last March. The involvement of a federal agent in the shooting did not become publicly known until last week.
- New Jersey: State Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill to rein in ICE: Fight Unlawful Conduct and Keep Individuals and Communities Empowered (FUCK ICE).
Thomas Goldstein Convicted
SCOTUSblog founder Thomas Goldstein, once a premier Supreme Court advocate, was convicted on 12 of 16 counts in a tax and mortgage fraud case arising from his double life as a globe-trotting high-stakes poker player.
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Johnson Says He Will Let Gonzales Allegations ‘Play Out’
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) — the congressman who has been accused of having an affair with a former staffer, who later died by suicide — still has House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) in his corner.
Continue reading “Johnson Says He Will Let Gonzales Allegations ‘Play Out’ “Yes, This Latest Trump Revelation Out of the Epstein Files Seem Big
You’ve probably seen some hints of it. But I wanted to focus your attention on a genuine piece of news out of the Epstein Files, even weeks after their original release. In 2019, a woman came forward and spoke to the FBI claiming that Donald Trump had assaulted her in the early 1980s. In her allegations, Jeffrey Epstein essentially provided her to Trump. Other files in the Epstein trove say that the FBI conducted four interviews with the woman. But only one of them was released in the larger trove — one that detailed her accusations against Epstein. Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, says he went to view the unredacted version of the files that members of Congress can access and the missing interviews aren’t there either.
There have been other accusations against Trump in the files. But this one appears to be more specific and detailed. And there are various signs and reasons that the FBI took the allegations seriously: those reasons and details about the accusations are discussed in this NPR article once you get past the first few paragraphs. The accuser, according to one FBI note contained in the files, eventually refused to cooperate with the investigation.
Continue reading “Yes, This Latest Trump Revelation Out of the Epstein Files Seem Big”Cassidy Asks Trump’s MAHA Surgeon General Nom to Say Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism. She Wouldn’t
Dr. Casey Means — President Donald Trump’s pick for the surgeon general and a leader in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement — appeared in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Wednesday morning and refused to unequivocally say that vaccines do not cause autism.
Continue reading “Cassidy Asks Trump’s MAHA Surgeon General Nom to Say Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism. She Wouldn’t”Morning Reactions to The Speech
I had some additional thoughts I wanted to share about last night’s speech.
The first seems unsurprising to me. A snap CNN poll last night found that this was the weakest reaction to a State of the Union as any president’s this century. Since presidents generally did better (less divided audience) in the past, it was probably the weakest ever. It was weaker than any of Trump’s State of the Unions. So people weren’t wowed. And remember that a State of the Union is disproportionately watched by the presidential speaker’s own partisans.
This matches my impressions. It seemed tired like Trump seems tired, literally and figuratively. It had some of the feel of a nostalgia act to me. No new material and not a lot of energy or interest in doing something new. Which, again, is really where Trump and the administration itself seems to be. It fits.
Trump CBP Accused of Contempt of Court for Coercing Minors into Self-Deporting
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SOTU-Free Zone
The State of the Union address has been bled of any civic utility, but if you’re desperate for a recap, we have you covered here.
‘Coercion, Threats, and Fear’
Attorneys who succeeded in blocking a middle-of-the-night effort to deport unaccompanied Guatemalan minors over the Labor Day weekend are now seeking a civil contempt of court ruling against the Trump administration for allegedly circumventing a judge’s order that continues to bar their deportation.
In the new filing in federal court in D.C., the lawyers alleged that Customs and Border Protection is “using misinformation, coercion, threats, and fear” to convince Guatemalan minors who arrive at the border to relinquish their rights and to self-deport before they enter the system designed to give special protections to minors.
In one of the declarations filed in support of the contempt request, the legal director of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project recounted several alleged examples of children being coerced to self-deport, including this one:
An indigenous Guatemalan boy at Compass Connections Harlingen told me his father is disabled and his parents cannot protect and support him. CBP agents detained him around October 14, 2025. According to the child, CBP agents shouted, cursed, and threatened the child with a dog and a stun gun. A CBP agent told him he could accept a “voluntary return” or he could remain detained for an extended period of time. The child asked if he could speak with his family before he decided, but the officer refused. The child signed the paperwork. However, an officer then told him he was being sent to a shelter. The child believes his prayers were answered.
The original injunction blocking the Labor Day deportations was issued by U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, the emergency duty judge on call over the holiday, who raced to respond to reports that children were already being loaded aboard planes in Texas, in an echo of the swift and secretive Alien Enemies Act flights from last March.
The injunction was later extended by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee who found that the administration’s claims about the deportations fell apart on closer examination. Kelly is now being asked to find the administration in civil contempt over the new policy, word of which began to emerge in November in a separate lawsuit and was spotted by former TPMer Matt Shuham, whose report on the policy is cited in the request for a contempt finding.
Preview: Abrego Garcia Hearing
A quick word ahead of tomorrow’s evidentiary hearing in Nashville on Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s vindictive prosecution claim, which I’ll be attending in person:
With the James Comey and Letitia James cases dismissed for now, the Abrego Garcia case has become the preeminent vindictive prosecution claim pending anywhere in the country. As you know by now, vindictive prosecution claims are notoriously hard to win. Defense attorneys throw those claims against the wall and hope they stick. They rarely do.
But U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr., has found that Abrego Garcia has already cleared the initial hurdle in a vindictive prosecution claim: showing that there is a “realistic likelihood of vindictiveness.” That opened the door to discovery and to tomorrow’s evidentiary hearing, where the burden will be on the Trump DOJ to, in the judge’s words, “produce objective, on-the-record explanations for Abrego’s prosecution that rebuts the presumption of vindictiveness.”
If the Trump DOJ fails tomorrow to rebut the presumption now in Abrego Garcia’s favor, it loses, and Crenshaw could dismiss the indictment. The stakes are high. See you tomorrow from Nashville.
Mass Deportation Watch
- The Trump DOJ sued to overturn New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s executive order barring ICE from enforcing immigration laws on state property absent a judicial warrant or court order, claiming it violates the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.
- A group of Catholic bishops, mostly from dioceses along the southern border, called for the humane enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.
- The top vote-getter in Chicago’s name a snowplow contest: “Abolish ICE”
Trump’s ‘Law and Order’ Facade
The capacity of the wrecked Trump DOJ is so reduced that it is now unable to prosecute some run-of-the-mill criminal cases.
A felon-in-possession case in Minnesota was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Paul A. Magnuson this week over a speedy trial violation, astonishing even the defendant’s lawyer, the NYT reports: “I’ve been practicing law for 30 years, a lot in federal court, and I’ve never had an indictment dismissed by an order of a judge,” attorney Kevin DeVore said.
In his order dismissing the indictment, the judge additionally noted that the Trump DOJ “failed to comply with the ordered briefing deadline” on the motion to dismiss. The especially beleaguered Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office attributed the missed filing deadline to counsel’s unexpectedly early parental leave for a medical emergency and “other issues relating to staffing turnover at the United States Attorney’s Office.”
The judge considered the government’s late response anyway and still ruled against it.
Thread of the Day
A closer look at the Trump administration’s new lawsuit against University of California system for UCLA’s handling of protests over Israel’s war against Hamas:
Judge Will Search Reporter’s Devices
Rebuffing the Trump DOJ, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Porter of the Eastern District of Virgina rescinded the portion of the search warrant he signed that allowed it to “open, access,
review, or otherwise examine” the electronic devices seized from WaPo reporter Hannah Natanson last month.
Porter had approved the highly controversial search warrant in a government leak case without being briefed by prosecutors on a federal law that limits seizures of reporters’ materials. In his ruling, Porter took responsibility for “that gap in its own analysis” but was still mad about the government’s failure to brief him on it: “This omission has seriously undermined the Court’s confidence in the government’s disclosures in this proceeding.”
Given that and the other circumstances of the case, Porter decided to screen Natanson’s device himself for relevant information rather than allow a DOJ filter team to do it, which he called “the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse.”
Jeffrey Epstein Watch
Following up on reporting by Roger Sollenberger and NPR, CNN has its own version of the story of documents allegedly missing from the tranche of Epstein files released by the Trump DOJ that relate to a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her.
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Five Takeaways From Trump’s Plodding, Scattered, and at Times Eerie State of the Union
President Donald Trump’s first official State of the Union back in office was previewed as “long,” and it met expectations. And though it clocked in as the longest ever, listeners will be left wondering what, exactly, warranted that length. The night was a slow plod through Trump’s take on his first year back in office, with vanishingly little grounding in fact, punctuated by moments that Trump clearly enjoyed more than the recitation of policy: introducing various guests, game show style, to laud their accomplishments or detail the horrors that were visited upon them.
Large sections of the speech focused on these bizarre, staged displays. One involved a grimacing helicopter pilot who received a Medal of Honor for his actions during the Venezuela raid last month; another saw the U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey team stand for a seemingly endless amount of time around the press corps.
Democratic members of Congress who were actually in the chamber during the speech refused to stand or clap or, except for a few moments, even speak out in protest. The silence seemed to get under Trump’s skin. He repeatedly chastised the group for not applauding things he felt should be applauded, like his campaign to terrorize blue cities as part of his mass deportation operation.
The speech ended on a saccharine note. Trump read off lines about the country’s founding, the moon landing, westward expansion — all in florid language linked back to the country’s 250th anniversary this year. It was mostly devoid of the attempts to define America as belonging to an old stock of white settlers, a theme that makes its way into many other Trump administration speeches and that his administration is pursuing through its attempt to end birthright citizenship and through the continued employment and existence of Vice President JD Vance. But that was, in a way, fitting: there wasn’t one theme tonight. It was scattershot; two hours of jumping from grievance to accomplishment to applause.
Here are five takeaways from the night.
ICE’s violent spree loomed over the night
One of the more dramatic moments of the night arrived as Trump went on an extended monologue about immigration with several complaints about the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. Democrats in attendance began to object. “You have killed Americans,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) shouted.
Trump didn’t acknowledge the point directly, saying only: “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
The killings of American citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good, both observers of his administration’s violent immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, Minnesota in January, hung in the background of much of the speech. Trump declared a new “War on Fraud” directed at the Minneapolis Somali community, and did not expand on why it is that DHS is shut down. Rep. Omar gave the answer.
Trundling through affordability spin
Much of the first hour of the speech was an ambling tour through a series of statements misrepresenting Trump’s record on issues of affordability, including plugging the Don Jr.-linked “TrumpRX” website.
While he spouted lies about the impacts of his tariffs, Trump’s diatribe on tariffs was relatively tame compared to his reaction last week after SCOTUS blocked many of the tariffs levied under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.
“We’re making a lot of money,” Trump said about the tariffs. “There was no inflation, tremendous growth.”
In fact there was inflation, and growth, especially in jobs, is gnawingly stagnant.
Trump pitted himself as superior to Nobel laureate economists, and falsely claimed tariffs are paid for by foreign countries. Several studies have found U.S. companies and consumers foot the tariff bill.
On the SCOTUS ruling, Trump had only a few minor lines. “The big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly,” he says, before adding: “Then just four days ago an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court just came down.”
The ‘Big Lie’ rears its head as Trump touts the SAVE Act
Parroting part of the Big Lie, Trump falsely claimed undocumented people voting in elections is “rampant.” He took the opportunity to plug the SAVE America Act. Trump called it a voter ID law, but it’s much more than that. It’s a proof of citizenship law that would, among other things, require registering voters to show a passport or valid ID along with a birth certificate.
The law actually stands to disenfranchise millions of voters across the political spectrum, with voters in middle America red states being least likely to own a passport, according to a study from the left-leaning think tank, the Center for American Progress.
Dems destroyed the country, and are still destroying it, Trump insists
If you chose to drink each time Trump name checked former President Joe Biden tonight, you would have had to check out early. Trump mentioned the former president as the source of America’s woes early and often, attempting to achieve the impossible feat of remaining the outsider-populist while holding power.
Democrats writ large were blamed for even more. At one point, the president blamed Democrats’ shutdown of the DHS for the snow blanketing the east coast, claiming the funding lapse meant there was no money to clean it up.
Now that peace is taken care of, war?
After telling Congress that he ended eight wars last year, Trump moved on to one that he may start: Iran.
He makes a new claim, without evidence: that Iran is working on “missiles that could reach the United States.” He says that the country is doing the unspeakable, returning to its “sinister” nuclear ambitions. (Trump claimed over the summer that last year’s strike put a permanent end to all that — what changed?)
Trump adds that he’d prefer to resolve this “through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror to have a nuclear weapon.”
The mixture of vague threats, unsupported claims about foreign threats, and insincere cops to diplomacy are all extremely redolent of Bush-era War on Terror speechmaking. And his ominous tone toward Iran cast in a different light the night’s focus on patriotism and the military.
Trump Wraps Plodding Speech on a Saccharine Note
President Trump gave what he promised would be a “long speech” to the nation Tuesday night amid a flurry of bad-for-Trump headlines.
His approval rating, particularly among independent voters, has sunk to new lows; his Department of Homeland Security — the one tasked with carrying out his top campaign promise to deport undocumented immigrants en masse — is stuck in shutdown purgatory, with immigration enforcement operating on a slush fund and key TSA and FEMA services on the brink of suspension; the Supreme Court, which he stacked with his own conservative nominees, just blocked his signature tariff policy; and he is mulling taking military action in Iran, a move that is unpopular even among his supporters.
Catch up on our live coverage below:
Sum Up
The first half of the speech was very low energy. Trump didn’t seem to have his heart in it. He roused to talk about tariffs and then gruesome murders by undocumented immigrants. American Carnage, Part II, basically. My overall sense is still that it was generally shambling and scattered, which is to say more or less like the administration itself at the moment. The non-standing and non-clapping by Democrats really seemed to get to him. It was kind of remarkable how much it seemed to get to him. Like, they’re the opposition. They’re really against him. Did it surprise him? On tariffs, what did he say exactly? The vibe seemed to be that they’ll continue? Or in spirit? What? I see nothing here that changes a bit of the current political trajectory. The speech writers don’t seem to have had much idea of how that could happen. It’s still full speed ahead with the same program until November, perhaps slightly warmed over. The collision is inevitable.