Sebastian Gorka released a new counterterrorism strategy on Wednesday, singling out “violent left-wing extremists,” “extreme transgender ideologies,” and “violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
Continue reading “Gorka Fumes Against the Left in New Counterterrorism Strategy”Americans Think That Maybe These Two Shouldn’t Be Talking About God
‘Do So With the Truth’
It’s not just the evangelicals who were incensed and wringing their hands at President Trump’s blasphemy after he shared an AI-generated painting of himself healing the sick, depicted as Jesus Christ alongside a series of patriotic images and people praying to him.
Continue reading “Americans Think That Maybe These Two Shouldn’t Be Talking About God”The Law Is Coming
I’m hoping to bring you some news on the DOJ-in-Exile front in the not-too-distant future. It was probably simply too early in the spring and summer of 2025. It’s not too early now. But the DOJ-in-Exile idea was and is part of a more general ambition and agenda — to create a baseline record, a predicate and an expectation of future accountability for the Trump administration’s criminal conduct. Some of that effort is a kind of opposition therapy, resisting the authoritarian aim of convincing the public that the law, the ecosystem of criminal accountability has disappeared. It heartens people. It provides a framework of expectation: the law hasn’t disappeared. We’re in an interregnum. It will return, as will accountability. The battle over expectations about the future is a central battle in any authoritarian takeover.
But it’s not solely a matter of heartening, strengthening the morale of the opposition. It is also very directly and literally laying the groundwork for criminal accountability for a renegade executive and all the corrupt actors and criminals who now populate the executive branch.
Continue reading “The Law Is Coming”Assume DOJ Criminal Conduct
And there you have it. As the White House licks its wounds after Virginia’s successful move to redistrict its House map and net Democrats as many as four new seats, the leader of that effort (and most high-profile advocate) has her office raided by the FBI in some hitherto unknown federal investigation. The fact that the Feds tipped Fox News to the raid on state Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas’s office probably tells us all we need to know about this FBI action.
We Aren’t Paying Enough Attention to What the SCOTUS VRA Decision Means for State Legislatures
This post is a part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
In the fog of the redistricting wars to come, it may be easy to remember the audacity of President Trump demanding state legislatures immediately redraw maximally rigged maps. But this didn’t come out of nowhere. It is the next logical step in decades-long sequence of events that have led, rather predictably, to this moment.
In 2021, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brnovich v. DNC deeply eroded the Voting Rights Act, I wrote with FairVote’s David Daley that “a central goal of conservative jurisprudence is the carving back of federal protections, and the empowerment of states over vast swaths of social and civil life.” We warned that Chief Justice John Roberts had been “patiently preparing to dismantle Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act for 40 years,” and that “his careful long game may end in checkmate for majority rule as we know it.”
That checkmate has arrived. In Louisiana v. Callais, the Court’s 6-3 ruling gutted Section 2 — the last enforceable provision of the Voting Rights Act — by requiring plaintiffs to prove intentional racial discrimination while allowing partisan gerrymandering as a defense. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, the “decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”
The immediate headlines focused on Congress: the potential loss of as many as 19 House seats held by Democrats, including as much as 30% of the Congressional Black Caucus. These consequences are grave. But an equally consequential and far less discussed impact is what Callais means for state legislatures — the overlooked institutions that have quietly been growing in power over the past few decades, and that now hold more of it than ever, with even fewer guardrails.
Continue reading “We Aren’t Paying Enough Attention to What the SCOTUS VRA Decision Means for State Legislatures”The Iran War May Be the Beginning of the End of Fossil Fuel Dominance
This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.
For almost half a century, the vast majority of climate experts have agreed on a solution to global warming: stop burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. But despite the political efforts of governments across the world to promote replacing these fuels, fossil sources have remained a stubbornly large share of global energy — around 80 percent at last count.
But the war in Iran, which the United States and Israel launched two months ago this week, may turn out to be the push that dislodges fossil fuels’ place atop the world’s energy system. The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway near Iran through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies flow, has been blocked since early March, with no relief in sight. This has created the biggest energy crisis in modern history. Twenty-five countries are now reporting critical road fuel, jet fuel, or heating oil shortages.
But unlike the oil shock of the 1970s, which occurred in a time when substitutes for fossil fuels were not yet powerful or cheap enough to build at scale, this disruption is happening as renewable energy sources are beginning to outcompete fossil fuels, providing countries with new energy options at costs that have plummeted in recent years.
Continue reading “The Iran War May Be the Beginning of the End of Fossil Fuel Dominance”Trump DOJ Appears Ready to Drop Case Against GOP Rep
Sword for Foes and Shield for Friends
It appears the Trump DOJ is 86-ing the campaign finance investigation into Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), Phil Williams of Newschannel 5 in Nashville reports.
There were already signs that the investigation, which began before Trump was re-elected, had stalled out since his second inauguration.
Then yesterday, Ogles notified the court that he was withdrawing his long-standing motions for the return of his phone and emails seized by the FBI because the Justice Department had agreed to give it back to him voluntarily without even examining it.
“In discussions with the Office of the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice, the Government has advised defense counsel that it will promptly return or destroy the property and information obtained pursuant to the respective search warrants at issue,” Ogles’ attorneys said in the filing.
Ogles hailed the apparent end of the criminal probe.
“From the day the FBI showed up, I said this investigation should never have happened and that the Biden DOJ had no right to rummage through a sitting congressman’s legislative communications. Today, the Justice Department has effectively acknowledged I was right.”
Career prosecutors in Nashville withdrew from the case shortly after Trump re-took office, and the case was transferred to the Main Justice’s Public Integrity Section, which has since been decimated by the Trump II purges.
Ogles originally claimed that he’d personally loaned his 2022 congressional campaign $320,000. But in the wake of the fabulism and campaign finance fiasco surrounding the eventually expelled Rep. George Santos (R-NY), savvy investigative reporting from Newschannel 5’s Williams exposed a number of fabrications and exaggerations by Ogles and questioned whether Ogles had the financial resources to make such a loan, since his financial disclosure form didn’t even list a savings account.
Ogles later admitted the filing was in error and made an amended filing that reduced the personal loan amount to $20,000. The FBI executed a search warrant in the case in August 2024, seizing, among other things, Ogles’ cell phone. It also obtained a warrant to seize his personal email records from Google.
As is not uncommon in criminal investigations of sitting members of Congress, Ogles objected on constitutional grounds to the seizure of his phone and emails. The Justice Department agreed not to examine the seized material until a court ruling on the matter. The case has since languished, without a ruling from the court. The new agreement between Ogles and the Trump DOJ means the FBI will never review the materials, a sign the criminal case has or is about to be abandoned.
“This is a complete win for the responsible exercise of prosecutorial discretion and respect for the Constitution’s Separation of Powers,” Ogles said in his statement.
A separate but related House Ethics Committee investigation has also languished since January 2025.
Quote of the Day
“We can survive a lot: bad policies, funky elections. There’s a bunch of stuff we can overcome. We can’t overcome the politicization of the criminal justice system — the awesome power of the state. You can’t have a situation in which whoever is in charge of the government starts using that to go after their political enemies or reward their friends.”—former President Barack Obama, in an interview with Stephen Colbert at the soon-to-open Obama Presidential Center in Chicago
Judge Refers DOJ Attorney for Possible Discipline
U.S. District Judge Melissa R. DuBose of Rhode Island said Tuesday she is referring a Trump DOJ attorney for possible discipline after he withheld from her the existence of an overseas arrest warrant for murder charges against a ICE detainee whom she ordered released.
Kevin M. Bolan, the head of the civil division of the Rhode Island U.S. Attorney’s Office, apologized to DuBose in court on Monday for failing to divulge the information to the court, saying ICE instructed him not to reveal it.
“It’s the candor and the lack of candor to this court that has to be addressed,” DuBose said Tuesday in making the referral of Bolan. “And it has to be fully investigated, so we don’t have anything like this happen again.”
DuBose was especially incensed because the Trump DHS issued a press release (the link is still live) titled “Activist Biden Judge Releases Violent Criminal Illegal Alien Wanted for Murder” even though the administration failed to inform her of the outstanding warrant.
Mass Deportation Watch
- Illinois: State police said Tuesday that they’re investigating the fatal ICE shooting of Mexican national Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez last summer in suburban Chicago.
- Minnesota: The Department of Veterans Affairs conducted internal investigations into employees who attended the vigil for VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by federal immigration officers.
- Nationwide: The Trump administration is abandoning the accelerated training program it used to quickly deploy the thousands of recently hired ICE agents and will instead provide them with additional instruction in the field, Politico reports.
2026 Ephemera
- OH-09: Former ICE official Madison Sheahan lost the GOP primary to challenge Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D).
- OH-Guv: Vivek Ramaswamy won the GOP nomination for governor.
- MI: Democrats held onto a narrow majority in the state Senate on Tuesday by winning a special election in a closely divided district.
- IN: In the Republican primary, President Trump succeeded in ousting five incumbent GOP state senators who voted against his mid-decade redistricting proposal.
Lawless Boat Strike Campaign: 190 Deaths
Three people were killed Tuesday in a U.S. strike against an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific, bringing the death toll to at least 190 in the lawless high-seas campaign.
We’re Almost There
Okay, folks, TPM is closing in on our goal of adding 1,000 new members during our annual membership drive. This morning we’re at 915.
I know some of you want to join and just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I totally get it. My to-do list is always burdened by stragglers that I keep rolling over to the next day … week … month.
So I’m asking you to please go ahead and check off that box today. It’ll just take a moment, it will help us immensely, and it will be one more thing off your mind.
It matters. Every additional membership helps. We run a tight ship. We feel the difference with every new signup.
For existing members, thanks for your support, especially at a time when politics is hard to take. A lot of people have averted their gaze from the daily carnage. Not Morning Memo readers. You’re confronting the tough realities every day.
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Indiana Republicans Who Wouldn’t Cave to Trump Pressure See Sweeping Losses in Primaries
In the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s failed push to redistrict Indiana, he vowed political retribution against Republican state senators who refused to cave to his pressure to gerrymander their state.
On Tuesday, voters did as Trump asked, primarying five of the seven legislators Trump campaigned against. One senator held onto his seat, and a seventh race remains too close to call.
The results of Tuesday’s election suggest that, at least in an Indiana Republican primary, GOP voters retain a loyalty to Trump that trounces broader ideals about democracy, and are on board with his campaign to gerrymander maps nationwide ahead of the midterms.
Continue reading “Indiana Republicans Who Wouldn’t Cave to Trump Pressure See Sweeping Losses in Primaries”DOJ Demands Poll Worker Info as it Seeks to ‘Take Over Elections Nationally,’ Fulton County Official Tells TPM
‘We Are Going To Fight Like Hell’
The Justice Department demanded in April that Fulton County hand over names and other personal information about the thousands of people who helped administer and run the election in the county in 2020. That fact became public this week, when the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections responded in a filing formally asking a federal judge to quash the grand jury subpoena.
Continue reading “DOJ Demands Poll Worker Info as it Seeks to ‘Take Over Elections Nationally,’ Fulton County Official Tells TPM”Is the Strait Crisis Driving an Energy Transition?
Living as we must, in history, it is always important to distinguish between the mostly contingent events of the moment and the deeper trends that will affect the future. Call it, perhaps, the difference between the libretto and the score. I was thinking about this while I was trying to make sense of the latest jousting over the Strait of Hormuz. Trump remains in the same space, having gotten himself into the crisis with no plan for how to get out of it. He’s now making limited efforts to contest control of the Strait. Iran says it remains completely in control of it. But, in a way, that’s a trap for Trump, because if passage through the Strait requires using military force, it’s precisely the use of military force, the danger and uncertainty it creates, which makes it impossible to use the Strait as a secure and safe means of transit. Force may be the medium-term answer to Trump’s problem. But in the short term it makes things worse. And Trump’s not a delaying-gratification, thinking-long-term kind of guy.
But the deeper impact of this crisis, one entirely of Trump’s own making, has been to convince many countries, especially but not only in East Asia, that oil and gas are too vulnerable to price shocks and supply instability. Meanwhile, renewables like solar and wind have now crossed the threshold where they are not only simply cheaper than fossils fuels but, as a tech product, will continue to get cheaper over time. Wind and solar energy can be produced entirely within your sovereign borders. So the Strait crisis is looking like it may be a turning point in the climate/renewables energy transition.
Continue reading “Is the Strait Crisis Driving an Energy Transition?”