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

Welp …

In the up-is-down world of the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, prosecutors attempted to stanch Donald Trump’s vitriolic attacks on federal law enforcement – the kind of thing criminal defendants would not typically be allowed to engage in while on pre-trial release – and wound up themselves threatened with sanctions by the judge.

As Morning Memo recounted yesterday, the move by prosecutors to modify the terms of Trump’s pre-trial release came late Friday before the Memorial Day weekend and prompted a heated response from Trump.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon weighed in Monday, denying the prosecution motion, chastising them for playing loose with the local court rules, and threatening to impose sanctions on them in the future. One small bright spot, if you can call it that, is that she didn’t accede to Trump’s request to sanction the prosecution team immediately. Cannon’s denial was without prejudice, meaning prosecutors can refile their motion:

Cannon insisted that prosecutors had not sufficiently conferred with the defense team before filing and ordered that all future filings contain a statement of no more than 200 words by the opposing side of its position.

In a normal case, I’d applaud a judge keeping a tight leash on the prosecution team. But we’re in such uncharted territory here that you can’t attribute this to i-dotting or t-crossing by Cannon. Given any chance to chide the prosecution, she takes it. Given deplorable behavior by Trump that would normally never fly, she finds herself mute again and again.

The judge’s routine has become so predictable that even the analysis by legal observers bakes in a certain Cannon quotient: Anything that DOJ does that even arguably deviates from the rules leaves an opening that Cannon will take. So DOJ ends up graded on a weird Cannon curve while Trump’s dangerous and unprecedented conduct gets set to the side.

One pattern emerging with Cannon is that when prosecutors implore her to assert herself and take more control over the case like so many judges do, she retreats to treating everything as an adversarial contest that she merely referees. But when it’s a matter of importance to Trump, she regularly asserts herself, going so far as to raise issues on her own. It’s another way her handling of the case is imbalanced to Trump’s advantage.

The Hush Money Jury Finally Gets The Case!

With closing arguments in the hush money trial complete, we’re expecting the judge to spend about an hour instructing the jury on its duties before turning the case over to them to deliberate.

Let me caution again that predicting jury verdicts is not just a dangerous game, it’s damn near impossible. I would even go so far as to say that the rule of law has been honored here regardless of the verdict. The case was well tried, Trump had his day in court, his misdeeds weren’t swept under the carpet, and that all remains true regardless of how the jury comes down.

In oder to set your expectations a bit, I would say the most likely outcomes in descending order are: conviction -> hung jury -> acquittal. But a mix of outcomes – conviction on some but not all counts, hung jury on some counts, even acquittal on some counts – is defintely in play. Acquittal on all charges is I think very unlikely.

After a late night and early morning turnaround, TPM’s Josh Kovenky is back at it this morning. Follow his liveblog here.

The Alitos Are Quite A Pair

The NYT’s Jodi Kantor digs deeper into the neighborhood dispute that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito claims led his wife to fly the American flag upside down back in January 2021, sometime between the Capitol attack and Joe Biden’s inauguration.

What’s most striking is the sheer pettiness of the Alitos, but the one factual reveal is that the key confrontation that Alito said prompted his wife to raise the distress signal actually came after the flag at the Alitos was already taken down.

Not that it matters that much? Alito’s explanation never made sense. On what planet does your neighbor protesting a coup attempt require you to trot out pro-coup symbols? What else could it possibly mean?

A Sign Of Things To Come …

AJC: “A Republican member of the Fulton County elections board refuses to certify primary election results unless given access to detailed voting data, a move that Democrats worry could jeopardize certification of November’s general election results.”

DNC Comes Up With An Ohio Fix For Biden

The DNC will hold a virtual roll call of delegates to make Joe Biden its presidential nominee and beat the deadline to get Joe Biden on the Ohio ballot, resolving a mundane calendar issue that had bedeviled Democrats and the state’s GOP governor, who favored resolving the matter.

2024 Ephemera

• Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), a more moderate Republican by today’s standard, barely fended off a primary challenge from far-right candidate Brandon Herrera, winning by about 400 votes.
• WSJ: Democrats Plan $100 Million Push on Abortion Rights to Win House
• Ron Brownstein: The unusual turnout dynamic that could decide the 2024 election

Abortion Watch

• NYT: The Untold Story of the Network That Took Down Roe v. Wade
• Politico: Trump says he won’t ‘ban’ birth control. Here’s what he may do instead
• NPR: Here’s where voters will decide abortion at the ballot box in November

Infallibility Is Hard

Pope Francis apologies for using gay slur in closed-door meeting with Italian bishops. `

Peering Into The Beyond

The European Space Agency last week released five new images from the Euclid space telescope, among them this unprecedented shot:

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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.

Will Cannon Even Rule On It?

This happened late Friday before the holiday weekend so I’m assuming many of you didn’t see it: In the Mar-a-Lago case, Special Counsel Jack Smith moved to modify the terms of Donald Trump’s release, asking the court to prohibit him from further attacks on federal law enforcement.

The latest parry arises from Trump’s blatantly false and highly incendiary claims that President Biden effectively ordered Trump’s assassination by dispatching a FBI kill team to do the Mar-a-Lago search. It’s batshit crazy stuff, and Smith is asking U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon … sigh … to order a stop to it.

It’s not a gag order per se; it’s a modification of Trump’s terms of release, which keeps him out of jail pending trial. So it doesn’t have the same First Amendment issues that might accompany any order against a non-criminal defendant.

Yesterday, Trump filed a big, over-the-top response, asking for Smith’s motion to be stricken and any DOJ lawyers associated with its filing be sanctioned.

In a normal case, this would be set up a big showdown in front of Cannon – and either side might end up appealing her ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. This is of course not a normal case. Cannon’s M.O. so far has been simply not ruling on pending motions. Hard to have a showdown in front of the judge when the judge is a no show.

The underlying issue is a serious one: Trump’s sustained and ongoing attacks on federal law enforcement come after two separate attacks over the past couple of years on FBI field offices in Cincinnati and Atlanta.

Trump Verdict Could Come As Soon As This Week

Closing arguments are about to begin this morning in state court in Manhattan in the Trump hush money trial. TPM’s Josh Kovensky has resumed his stellar liveblogging from the courthouse.

Just Wow

So it turns out the WaPo knew at the time that the American flag was flying upside down at the Virginia home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in January 2021 – but decided it wasn’t worth reporting. The reporter and a key editor have since left the paper for unrelated reasons.

I’ll leave the media criticism on this to others because I think it’s more important for what it says about Alito and his wife: They were confronted by a WaPo reporter about this at their home, she freaked out about it in the presence of the reporter, and despite all of that another protest flag was flying at their New Jersey beach home as recently as last summer, more than two years after the run-in with the reporter.

But sure, blame your wife.

Quote Of The Day

There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Polarization or Radicalization?

Historian Kevin Kruse tackles bothsides-ism directly in an email to a leading practitioner of the dark art, a unnamed national columnist:

So I’d strongly disagree that the right and left are in comparable positions. Moreover, the idea that they *are* roughly equivalent seems to be a deliberate smokescreen by partisans to hide the real story, which is one of the unprecedented radicalization of the right in service of a minoritarian political project. 

I can’t think of any precedent to this moment, at least not in *American* history. The American right was committed to a politics that was similarly hostile to democracy in the 1930s, but they were marginalized. McCarthyism had its moment in the sun, but the GOP was still ideologically diverse with some internal checks. The Reagan-era GOP had some seeds of this but nothing as loud and open. 

Kruse is little snarkier than that excerpt suggests, in a totally justifiable way.

Rethinking The Concept Of Political ‘Leverage’

A thoughtful and well-written essay from Brian Beutler on the all-or-nothing extortion gambit coming from the left: “… as the progressive movement has matured, it has overtrained activists to think of politics as little more than a series of high-stakes leverage standoffs: Condition support for candidates on a particular set of policies, threatening their electability if they dissent, and discipline officeholders by leveling similar threats whenever they veer from those priorities.”

Well worth a read.

Biden’s Long Game on Climate

Robinson Meyer at Heatmap explores Biden’s climate policy in way that few people are able to do: with a keen grasp both of climate science and of politics. It’s hard finding people who can bring both to the table.

The thrust of Meyer’s analysis seeks an explanation for what on the surface can seem like contradictory efforts by Biden:

This is the guiding logic of Biden’s climate policy: that American politics must have a powerful, durable, and flexible pro-decarbonization coalition if the U.S. is to succeed in reaching net zero. Achieving this coalition is the underlying aim of the IRA, the EPA rules, and — yes — the recent tariffs.

This is one of smartest pieces I’ve read in a while.

Good Read

NOTUS: How Henry Cuellar and His Family Control Webb County, Texas

Look At What The Texas GOP Is Up To

Texas Tribune:

Republican Party of Texas delegates voted Saturday on a platform that called for … a constitutional amendment that would require statewide elected leaders to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas counties. … Under current voting patterns, in which Republicans routinely win in the state’s rural counties, such a requirement would effectively end Democrats’ chances of winning statewide office.

There’s more, including requiring the Bible be taught in public schools, but giving Texas what amounts to it’s own Electoral College to take advantage of the rural-urban split is the topper.

Florida Is Teaching Christian Nationalism?

Judd Legum: “Training materials produced by the Florida Department of Education direct middle and high school teachers to indoctrinate students in the tenets of Christian nationalism, a right-wing effort to merge Christian and American identities.”

2024 Ephemera

• WaPo: Trump makes sweeping promises to donors on audacious fundraising tour
• NYT: Trump Leans Into an Outlaw Image as His Criminal Trial Concludes

Amen

“Do not be seduced by easy equalization… We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.”

Ken Burns warns Brandeis grads — and the rest of us — about a second Trump term. pic.twitter.com/ZgNiSh6K3A

— Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) May 26, 2024

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