DC Sandwich Guy Acquitted

Setting aside all the bad puns and the absurdist quality to the D.C. sandwich-throwing incident, you’re left with the Trump administration overcharging crimes in federal court, engaging in performative vengeance instead of actual justice, and wasting court time and resources to try to make political points.

A grand jury declined to indict, but U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro pushed the misdemeanor charge to a four-day trial.

There’s no way to know from the outside the jury’s rationale for acquittal after seven hours of deliberations. Did it think the government failed to prove its case? Did it agree with the government on the facts, but engage in jury nullification as a form of civic protest? Or was it a subtler decision that the the totality of the circumstances, including the government’s conduct, didn’t merit a conviction?

Judge Cracks Down on Bovino

Saying that the Trump administration’s “use of force shocks the conscience,” U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis extended a series of restrictions on the immigration enforcement officers in Chicago. Ellis in particular called out CBP commander Gregory Bovino for lying in her legal proceedings about their tactics and the actions of protestors. “I find the defendants’ evidence simply not credible,” Ellis said. “Overall, this calls into question everything the defendants are doing.”

Judge Says Admin Violated His SNAP Order

U.S. District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island says the Trump administration has violated his order on SNAP funding and gave a new deadline of today to restore full funding for the food assistance program. The administration filed an emergency appeal this morning.

SCOTUS Ratifies Trump Anti-Trans Policy

The most compelling reaction and analysis to the Supreme Court’s emergency decision to let the Trump administration proceed with requiring that all new passports include the bearer’s biological sex at birth:

• Law Dork’s Chris Geidner called it “an appallingly dismissive, horrifyingly abrupt order.”
• Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck: “The ruling … includes one of the uglier sentences I’ve seen a majority of the Supreme Court sign onto in quite some time.”

The Retribution: John Brennan Edition

The Trump DOJ is launching a new round of investigating the investigators, targeting former CIA Director John Brennan for his role in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, MSNBC reports.

Grand jury subpoenas are expected soon in an probe being run by Miami U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones that grew out of a criminal referral to Attorney General Pam Bondi by DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

GOP Attack on Higher Ed Takes Ominous Turn

The GOP anti-DEI jihad against universities is poised to turn into a criminal proceeding with reports that the House Judiciary Committee is likely to send a criminal referral to the Trump DOJ accusing George Mason University President, Gregory Washington, who is Black, of lying to Congress about DEI policies.

Trump DOJ Investigating D.C. Mayor

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington has opened a criminal investigation into a foreign trip paid for by Qatar for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who is Black.

Venezuela Watch

• The U.S. conducted its 17th lawless high seas attack on alleged drug-smuggling boats. The latest strike announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came Thursday in the Caribbean and killed three people, bringing the total death toll in the U.S. campaign to at least 69 people.
• “At least three U.S. military aircraft, including a heavily armed attack plane, have begun flying missions out of El Salvador’s main international airport in an expansion of the extraordinary U.S. troop buildup in the Caribbean,” the NYT reports.
• Steve Vladeck offers a refresher on why the attacks are “blatantly unlawful as a matter of U.S. domestic law—and a quickly spreading stain on whatever is left of the executive branch’s commitment to the rule of law.”

A Note on Nancy Pelosi

I get the urge to see the aging Democratic leadership give way to fresh blood, but I don’t want to let Nancy Pelosi’s decision to retire at the end of her term pass without acknowledging what a historic figure she’s been as the first woman speaker of the House, an extremely effective leader, and a dominant figure in the Democratic Party.

No one much disputes that, but I do wonder whether Pelosi being villainized by Republicans for the last two decades has colored Democrats’ view of her as carrying too much baggage, being too much a lightning rod, too controversial, etc. She’s been an unwavering spear-catcher for Democrats, under sustained rhetorical attack, much of it misogynistic. That wasn’t her doing. She didn’t bring that on herself. It was inflicted on her as part of a never-ending propaganda campaign that turned her into a caricature, and not just for Republicans.

TPM at 25: So Many Thanks

The two-day TPM 25th anniversary festival kicked off last night with a panel discussion on covering 25 years of American politics with current and former TPMers and a live taping of the Josh Marshall podcast featuring Kate Riga. It concludes tonight with a celebration in Brooklyn. Thanks to everyone joining us in person this week to help us celebrate and to all our readers over the years who got us to this point.

It’s not in my nature to mark occasions like this myself, but I’m grateful that others take the initiative to do so because I do see value in the remembering and the retelling. Preparing for the event has unearthed old memories, corrected some things I’d misremembered for a long time, and refreshed recollections that had grown fuzzy.

It’s been fantastic reconnecting with former TPMers who I hadn’t seen in a long time, in some cases more than a decade. In my 20-year affiliation with TPM, I’ve seen multiple cohorts of reporters come through our operation, pouring so much of themselves into this project. I’m grateful for their efforts, wowed by their skills and talents, and proud of them for their growth and development.

It’s taken 25 years to get TPM to the most durable, sustainable, and solid place it’s ever been as a news organization. So many people have contributed to that effort that it’s not possible to thank each one. But I recognize that the work here often demanded more of you than you thought you had to give — and you gave it anyway, even if it wasn’t always explicitly recognized or appreciated. Thank you for that.

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The Groyper Takeover of the GOP

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ initial defense of Tucker Carlson’s interview with the raging antisemite Nick Fuentes has now ignited an open revolt at the venerable right-wing think tank, the WaPo reports.

While Roberts has backed away some from his initial full-throated defense of Carlson, his apology didn’t keep a staff meeting at Heritage on Wednesday from turning into a shitshow. Some of the highlights from the WaPo:

• “Legal fellow Amy Swearer during the meeting called Roberts’s handling of the controversy ‘a master class in cowardice that ran cover for the most unhinged dregs of the far right’ and described a loss of confidence in his leadership.”
• “Asked later in the meeting about his use of the term ‘globalists’ — a common dog whistle for a conspiratorial view of world ‘Jewry’ — Roberts said he didn’t mean to imply criticism of anyone of any particular faith.”
• When Roberts’ speechwriter complained that countering the accusations of antisemitism might mean he would be required to attend a Shabbat dinner and violate his own faith, another Heritage executive shot back, “I’m deeply sorry that you could not see that as a generous offer but rather a personal attack on you.”

At least five members of Heritage’s antisemitism task force have resigned in protest, including lawyer Ian Speir, who emailed the WaPo:

When Kevin Roberts repeatedly defended Tucker Carlson after his kid-glove treatment of Nick Fuentes, I lost faith that Heritage is the right institution to lead this important fight. We cannot let this malevolent evil make further inroads into our politics and civil discourse. It will literally destroy us.”

At one level, it’s entertaining to watch conservatives squirm over the Groyperism of their party — although they’ve been very slow in responding to what has been obvious for years.

“The distance between Fuentes and the mainstream Republican Party isn’t really that large,” Richard Hanania told the NYT, whose description of him is itself instructive: “a conservative writer who once posted under a pseudonym in white supremacist forums. (He has since denounced his past writings.)”

Back at Heritage, Roberts threw his own chief of staff under the bus for writing the speech that got Roberts in so much hot water:

On Monday, Roberts reassigned his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, to a lower-ranking role. By Tuesday, Neuhaus was no longer employed by Heritage. On Wednesday, Roberts called him a “good man” who “made a mistake,” and said he was largely responsible for drafting Roberts’s controversial remarks.

The kicker was this line: “Two people close to Neuhaus said he views his departure as an attempt to appease Jewish Republicans.”

Good Read

WaPo: The secretive donor circle that lifted JD Vance is now rewriting MAGA’s future

Bad Day for Trump Tariffs at SCOTUS

You could feel the legal community breathe a sigh of relief that even the Roberts Court couldn’t bring itself to embrace President Trump’s tariffs. His wildly expansive view of presidential power at the expense of Congress was a bridge too far in oral arguments yesterday. How many justices will rule against Trump and how they get there remain open questions, but the alternative — a ruling in Trump’s favor — would have resulted in nearly boundless executive power and collapsed the already teetering constitutional order:

• TPM’s Layla A. Jones: Liberal Justices Cheekily Use Conservatives’ Favorite Legal Theories to Push for a Ruling Against Trump On Tariffs
• WSJ: A Justice-by-Justice Breakdown on Trump’s Tariffs
• Politico: 5 takeaways from the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in Trump’s tariffs case

Trump: ‘They’ll Most Likely Never Obtain Power’

Trump: "They're gonna make DC a state and they're gonna make Puerto Rico a state. So now they pick up two states, four senators. They're gonna pick up electoral votes. It's gonna be a very, very bad situation. Now, if we do what I'm saying, they'll most likely never obtain power."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-11-05T13:43:43.699Z

Early Theories of the Election

It will take some time to analyze Tuesday’s election results — and early takes are often wrong — but among the many analyses floating around in the ether, these three caught my eye:

• Pollsters struggled to identify the expected electorate — the partisan makeup of who would actually vote. Angela Kuefler, the pollster for the Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger campaigns, told the WSJ that the most accurate partisan mix turned out to be the 2017 election, first year of Trump’s first term. “Polls that used the 2017 electorate as a guide produced a 12- or 13-point Sherrill victory, which tracked the actual outcome,” the paper reported.
• Democrats succeeded at winning over “a modest but meaningful sliver” of Trump supporters, Nate Cohn reports. “[T]he available data generally suggests that Democratic gains were driven slightly more by flipping Mr. Trump’s supporters than by benefiting from a superior turnout,” according to Cohn’s analysis of the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey.
• Perhaps the internecine argument over whether to attack Trump or focus on kitchen tables issues is a false dichotomy, Greg Sargent writes: “The Democratic Party’s blowout wins on Tuesday night underscore a fundamental reality about the Donald Trump era: Anti-Trump politics is affordability politics, and affordability politics is anti-Trump politics.”

Judge Scolds Comey Prosecutors

In an early procedural hearing in the prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick deplored the government’s “indict first and investigate second” approach.

A frustrated Fitzpatrick said the prosecution was not a “traditional case” and that “the procedural posture of this case is highly unusual.”

Fitzpatrick largely sided with Comey, ordering prosecutors to turn over by today “all grand jury transcripts and materials from the current prosecution as well as evidence that FBI agents seized during a prior leak investigation in 2019 and 2020,” NBC News reported.

Quote of the Day

“Obviously some of these conditions are, in my word, disgusting. To have to sleep on the floor next to an overflowed toilet, that’s obviously unconstitutional.”–U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman of Chicago, who ordered the federal government to provide bedding, hygiene supplies, daily showers, clean toilets and three meals a day at the ICE facility Broadview

For Your Radar …

In the case of Chanthila Souvannarath, who was deported to Laos last month despite a federal court order barring his deportation, U.S. District Judge Shelly D. Dick of Baton Rouge has allowed limited written discovery into the circumstances of the deportation.

It’s “clear that there are factual questions about the timing and circumstances of the alleged violation of this Court’s TRO,” Dick said in her latest ruling. The Trump administration claims it didn’t receive the court order until after Souvannarath had already been deported.

In echoes of the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration is arguing, among other things, that Dick lacks jurisdiction because Souvannarath was removed from her judicial district to Alexandria, Louisiana, while the case was pending and because she can’t compel the government of Laos to return him.

Venezuela Watch

The Trump DOJ is working on a legal justification for targeting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as part of a military operation, the WSJ reports.

Someone Should Ask the Groper-in-Chief About This

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum is pressing charges after being groped on the street while walking from the National Palace to the Education Ministry: “If this is done to the president, what is going to happen to all of the young women in our country?”

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