I wanted to direct your attention to this podcast episode from Slate. It’s actually the first episode of a series Slate is doing on popular constitutionalism. (The page linked above is paywalled. But, I’m told, the ‘By the People’ pod series itself is not. So you should be able to find it on podcast platforms.) It brings together in a engaging and coherent way a number of themes we’ve been discussing over the last couple years about the problem of and the corruption of the U.S. Supreme Court. And it frames the question around a 20-year-old book on popular constitutionalism by Larry Kramer (The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review).
The Outrageous House Republican Move to Enact Trump’s Vote Suppression Proposals By the Backdoor of Budget Reconciliation
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
House Republicans will bring forward this week a surprising and dangerous form of the voting restriction proposals that President Trump has been relentlessly pressuring Congress to pass for months. That act may well discourage or exclude millions of voters via draconian requirements for presenting proof-of-citizenship when registering, showing rigorous voter ID at the polls, or even purging voter rolls. Previously, Trump has pushed these notorious proposals under the guise of “election integrity,” termed the “SAVE America Act,” repeatedly and loudly, and they have even passed the House. But the proposals have failed in the Senate, for lack of the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster, thanks to unyielding Democratic resistance and an assist from some Senate Republicans. Trump has asked Senate Republican leadership to abolish the filibuster in order to get the legislation through, and even to fire the universally-respected Senate Parliamentarian, and has been repeatedly refused. It seemed dead. His threat is back, disguised in a new form.
Continue reading “The Outrageous House Republican Move to Enact Trump’s Vote Suppression Proposals By the Backdoor of Budget Reconciliation”The Lawless Trifecta of Trump’s Mass Deportation Apparatus
Retribution, Destruction, and Corruption
President Trump’s mass deportation operation continues to embody all of the worst elements of his second presidency: the retribution, the destruction, and the corruption, a lawless trifecta that subjugates immigrants while eroding the rights of American citizens.
The first handful of items in today’s Morning Memo captures different aspects of the lawlessness as manifested in developments from just the past few days. It comes as DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s supposedly “kinder and gentler” ICE is proving to be a short-lived election-year feint, not a real retrenchment. Two fatal ICE shootings within a week have a way of ripping away the mask.
While immigrants have borne the brunt of the Trump brutality, the administration has been eager to systematically use the powers of the state against protesters. The viciousness of the mass deportation operation has created its own feedback loop: spurring more protests which create more opportunities for the administration to crack down on dissenters. As you’ll see below, that has proven to be a very bad strategy once it gets to federal court.
Be sure to make it at least as far as the final item in the series, which is about the never-before-used Alien Terrorist Removal Court that the Trump administration tried to breathe life into last week.
Cases Against ICE Protesters Collapse
In a comprehensive review of hundreds of criminal cases against ICE protesters, the New York Times found that an extraordinary number of those cases have crumbled, especially when compared to the Justice Department’s typical 90% conviction rate:
The New York Times found that the Trump administration has filed assault charges against more than 550 people who were caught in its immigration dragnet — far more than previously known. Of the more than 400 cases resolved so far, nearly half have unraveled: Juries acquitted defendants, judges threw out charges, or prosecutors withdrew them. …
The review, the most comprehensive to date, suggests that the administration’s use of the law has often been less about protecting federal agents than about providing legal cover to cow protesters and immigrants into submission.
FBI Called Off of ICE Probes
The FBI issued guidance to managers nationwide on Thursday that the bureau would no longer investigate confrontations with immigration agents — although DOJ and DHS denied in a joint statement the change in policy, the NYT reports.
What’s the upshot? It’s not entirely clear.
The NYT casts the change as making it less likely that the FBI will turn up damaging evidence against immigration agents involved in confrontations with protesters, but FBI agents have been seriously constrained in their investigations since Trump’s mass deportation operation began, a point the NYT also makes: “Under the Trump administration, when ICE agents have shot and killed people, the F.B.I. has been assigned to scrutinize a narrow question: whether the agents were assaulted before the gunfire.”
So it seems at least possible that this policy shift gets the FBI out of the business of pursuing protesters at the behest of the White House — though its hard to imagine FBI Director Kash Patel having the spine to resist that kind of pressure in the future.
Stay tuned …
Protester Allegedly Shot by ICE Contractor
An employee of the contractor that runs the ICE Processing Center in Aurora, Colorado, was arrested in connection with the Thursday evening shooting of a protester outside of the detention facility.
Brandon Booth, 42, faces charges of attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault, felony menacing, and unlawful carrying of a concealed weapon in the shooting of the protester, who suffered non-fatal injuries to her lower body.
Mass Deportation Watch
- Houston: Video of ICE agents pursuing the van driven by Lorenzo Salgado Araujo before they shot and killed him doesn’t readily show them using lights or sirens on their vehicles. White House border czar Tom Homan wasn’t ready to concede the point in an interview Sunday, but did allow: “If they didn’t activate the lights, then it — then there’s an issue there.”
- Florida: The Mexican national hit and killed by a semi truck while fleeing an encounter with ICE was legally in the country on a tourist visa and had planned to return to his home country on Saturday, according to an account given by his wife that has not been independently confirmed.
- Maine: DHS still continues to refuse to release the name of the ICE agent involved in the fatal shooting of Colombian national Johan Guerrero last week, part of a pattern of concealing the identities of officers involved in shootings. In a ironic twist, DHS provided a statement to the NYT on this practice — but “would not identify the person who sent the statement.”
Sign of the Times
Politico crashed a boozy yacht party thrown in D.C. by the Mass Deportation Coalition that drew former GOP Reps. Steve King (IA) and Tom Tancredo (CO) and former officials from ICE and DOJ, including the pardoned coup plotter Jeffrey Clark.
Medicaid -> ICE -> Palantir
ICE shared Medicaid data it wasn’t supposed to have with Palantir, according to new court filings reviewed by NPR.
Meet the Alien Terrorist Removal Court
The Alien Terrorist Removal Court has existed since 1996, but it was never used until last week.
Seamus Hughes of Court Watch broke the news Saturday of its first use — and the creation of a bare-bones court website.
In its first order, the Alien Terrorist Removal Court rejected for now the Trump administration’s application to remove an unidentified individual but gave it a chance to supplement the record, noting that “the Government could benefit from the opportunity for more thoughtful consideration.”
The best reporting and analysis on this new development:
- Politico: Trump administration activates never-before-used ‘alien terrorist’ deportation court
- Chris Geidner: The Trump admin DOJ went to a secretive deportation court this week
- Steve Vladeck: Here’s what we know, and why we should (and shouldn’t) be worried.
Judge: Firing of FEMA CFO Was Unlawful
In a very important decision on the scope of the president’s powers to fire civil servants, U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff of Alexandria, Virginia, ruled from the bench Friday that the termination of FEMA’s chief financial officer Mary Comans last year without a hearing or the chance to transfer to another job was unlawful, Politico reports.
The Corruption: In All Its Dimensions
- IRS: Kenneth Kies, the Treasury Department’s top tax policy official who was appointed by President Trump, “was forced out of his job after he warned that the White House was at risk of violating a federal law prohibiting senior officials’ involvement in IRS audits,” the WSJ reported.
- DOJ: The Trump administration continues to pull back across the board on prosecuting corporate crime, the WSJ reports.
Quote of the Day
“Well, it has — it has a lot, and you know it has a lot of capability, but as I understand it, in about a month or so, they’re going to send it to have it be maxed out. So they’re going to be sending it, and they’ll have it be maxed out.”—President Trump, apparently conceding that his beloved Qatari Force One doesn’t have all the capabilities of its predecessors (a fact reported by the NYT that led to its reporters being subpoenaed in a leak investigation)
Mullin Threatens to Jail Election Officials
Following up on President Trump’s inane speech on election security, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened local election officials Friday with jail time if they don’t comply with the administration’s demands to change election policies.
2026 Ephemera
- Maine-Senate: In the race to replace Graham Platner, Troy Jackson has all but locked up the Democratic nomination after dominating county-level meetings this weekend, which prompted his top rivals — Dr. Nirav Shah, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, and Dan Kleban — to drop out of the race.
- Nebraska-Senate: After independent Dan Osborn qualified for the ballot on Thursday, Democratic nominee Cindy Burbank withdrew from the race on Friday, clearing the way for Osborn to have a clean shot at unseating Sen. Pete Ricketts (R).
- Minnesota-Governor: Far-right conspiracist Mike Lindell, President Trump’s pick in next month’s GOP primary for governor, is registered to vote in Texas, not Minnesota, the Star Tribune reported.
DoD Withheld Iran War Casualty Figures
The Friday attack by Iran in Jordan that killed two U.S. service members and left a third missing and presumed dead was not the first attack in the country during the Iran War. At least three other Iranian attacks in Jordan in the week before the Friday attack injured dozens of American service members and damaged helicopters — but the Pentagon did not disclose those attacks or the casualties and damage they caused, the NYT reports.
New World Record in the Mile
Perhaps overshadowed by the final weekend of the World Cup (congrats, Spain), Britain’s Josh Kerr broke the 27-year old world record for the mile:
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Getting Close to 300k
First, thank you again to everyone who has contributed to keep us moving forward toward our goal in this year’s Annual TPM Journalism Fund Drive. We have a chance to hit $300,000 tonight. If you’ve been considering joining us by making a contribution this afternoon and evening are great times for it. Just click right here. And thank you for supporting our work.
Fraudsters, Politicos and Trump Pals: Ranking Trump’s Most Egregious Pardons
[Essay]
A Closer Look at the Beneficiaries of President Trump’s Pardon Spree
If only someone had warned Boosie Badazz. The U.S. rapper is seeking a refund from Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman after the wannabe lobbyist goofballs failed to secure Boosie a pardon from President Trump. Wohl and Burkman built a reputation — and a rap sheet of their own — during the first Trump administration for absurd schemes to smear the president’s foes and for trying to suppress the Black vote. NOTUS reported this week that Boosie is now pursuing an arbitration against the two men, trying to claw back half of the $600,000 he paid them to advance his push for a pardon for charges of possessing a firearm as a felon.
You can’t blame Boosie for trying. Under the second Trump administration, the “pardon economy” is booming. Beginning with the blanket pardon of some 1,600 individuals involved with the January 6 riot on his first day in office, Trump has been handing pardons out like candy to people convicted of federal crimes who he claims were victims of retaliation by the Biden administration; who are donors to or allies of his own administration; or whose lobbyists or lawyers really do have the access to the president that Burkman and Wohl pretended to possess. Trump installed his all-purpose lout Ed Martin as U.S. pardon attorney and largely abandoned the traditional pardon process, which requires the filing of official petitions, demonstration of good conduct and remorse, and other key guardrails.
As my colleague Derick Dirmaier put it, “Anytime you introduce a new genre and economy type, that’s something.”
Below, we run through some of the most absurd pardons of Trump II.
Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras
If there’s one thing the Trump administration claims to hate, it’s drug trafficking. The U.S. military has even engaged in a lawless campaign against “narco terrorists” in the Caribbean, killing more than 200 people so far via unauthorized boat strikes. Yet Trump in November granted a “full and complete pardon” to former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, springing him from a 45-year sentence.
The U.S. government had convicted Hernández on drugs and weapons charges for being a co-conspirator in a drug operation that brought 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S., per the BBC.
Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City
In the mold of the January 6 pardons, Trump in October pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows, and other Big Lie promoters including attorneys Sidney Powell and John Eastman. Notably, presidents only have the power to pardon federal crimes, and this band of misfits had not received federal charges for their involvement in 2020 election schemes. Still, Martin insisted that the quartet had received a “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon, per PBS. As PBS noted, Giuliani and Meadows were charged by prosecutors in Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere over their 2020 election interference, but those cases are no longer being actively pursued.
Giuliani has taken the biggest personal hit of the four as a result of his efforts to assert that the 2020 election was stolen. He was disbarred in Washington, D.C. and New York, and had to pay $148 million for defaming two Georgia election workers with his conspiracy theories.
Chanpeng Zhao, co-founder and former CEO of Binance
Trump will often paint the individuals whose charges he’s clearing as, like him, victims of Democratic persecution. Such was the case with former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
In October 2025, Trump pardoned Zhao, who was sentenced to four months in prison after reaching a plea agreement acknowledging that he enabled money laundering at his crypto exchange. Under Zhao’s watch, Binance was used to conduct virtual trades involving child sex abuse, drug trafficking, and terrorism. At the time, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Zhao “was prosecuted by the Biden administration in their war on cryptocurrency,” per NBC.
In what is surely a completely unrelated move, Binance facilitated a $2 billion purchase of the Trump sons’ World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency in March 2025, months before Zhao’s pardon. Trump told 60 Minutes of Zhao, “I have no idea who he is. I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.”
Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois
After commuting his sentence during his first term in office, Trump pardoned his former Celebrity Apprentice co-star Rod Blagojevich in February 2025. Blagojevich was infamously convicted of corruption in 2011 for a bevy of crimes including trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat that Barack Obama vacated when he was elected president.
The former Democratic governor, who served from 2003 til he was ousted and impeached in 2009, rebranded himself as a “Trump-ocrat” after his commutation. In a bid for Trump’s attention, he even wrote a piece for Newsmax from prison arguing that modern Democrats would have impeached Abraham Lincoln. In announcing the full pardon, Trump called Blagojevich’s sentence a “terrible injustice” for a nice man, per NPR.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX)
Guess you can’t bat 1,000 when you’re trying to curry favor via sweeping pardons. Trump has admitted he regrets pardoning Rep. Henry Cuellar in December after the congressman decided to run for reelection as a Democrat rather than switching parties.
“Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like. Oh’ well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time. He has continued to lash out at Cuellar and make it clear this was not the outcome he expected. “Never assumed he would be running for office again, and certainly not as a Democrat,” Trump truthed in July after meeting with top congressional Republicans to talk midterms strategy, per Fox’s San Antonio affiliate.
Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, were indicted on 12 counts of bribery, conspiracy and money laundering in 2024 after the congressman allegedly accepted some $600,000 in bribes from the government of Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank, according to the Texas Tribune.
Scott Jenkins, former sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia
Martin really said the quiet part loud with this one. Scott Jenkins was a former Virginia sheriff convicted for bribery and sentenced to 10 years in prison for accepting $75,000 to hand out badges to untrained businessmen, making them auxiliary deputy sheriffs in his department.
But Jenkins is also a diehard Trump fan and Second Amendment advocate, and Trump went ahead and pardoned him last May, blaming his conviction on a “Corrupt and Weaponized Justice Department.” “No MAGA left behind,” Martin wrote on X at the time.
Michele Fiore, former judge of Pahrump, Nevada
Fiore, a classic TPM character, was pardoned last April while awaiting sentencing for ripping off funds she’d ostensibly raised to build a statue honoring a police officer killed in the line of duty. Per the Associated Press, Fiore had raised more than $70,000 for the statue, and spent some of that money “on cosmetic surgery, rent and her daughter’s wedding.” Classy.
The White House issued no comment after Trump pardoned her in April 2025, though she was facing decades in prison after being found guilty of six counts of federal wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Fiore is a diehard Trump supporter whose name might ring bells for longtime TPM readers. The former Las Vegas city councilwoman, state assemblywoman, judge and perennial candidate inserted herself into the Bundy ranch standoff in 2016, spreading conspiracy theories about the killing of a militia member by law enforcement at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge during that months-long incident. Fiore also drew attention for volunteering to travel abroad to “put a piece of brass” in the “ocular cavity” of Syrian refugees back in 2015. She ran unsuccessful campaigns for state treasurer and governor, and was appointed as a judge in the deep-red town of Pahrump, Nevada, though she does not have a law degree, per the AP. Fiore, who the Pahrump Valley Times reports ran to hold on to her seat “despite being suspended from the bench and facing disciplinary charges,” recently lost that race.
[Report]
SAVE Act Lite: A Plot to Distract Trump
In an alternate reality where you see the world through Trump’s rose-colored glasses, Senate Republicans would give a gigantic middle finger to the Democrats, decades of Senate procedure, the filibuster and, with that, their future ability to block any Dem priorities should their opponents retake control of the Senate, in order to pass the notorious SAVE America Act — the voter suppression bill that won’t leave the news cycle alone — without any hassle. But, that’s not the nightmare alternate reality we are living in. Republicans simply don’t have the votes to pass the SAVE Act in the Senate.
That means congressional Republicans are now settling for the next best thing. Try to pass a SAVE America Act Lite — a version so watered down that it’s hard to call it the SAVE Act with a straight face — and hope and pray that Trump doesn’t realize.
House Republicans released (and advanced out of committee) a budget resolution this week. The budget resolution — as the past two party-line reconciliation bills may have taught you already — is simply a blueprint that gives committees instructions and total targets for how much they can spend. This time around, fueled by Trump and his far-right MAGA allies’ obsession with the SAVE America Act, the blueprint includes instructions to put $10 billion towards election related matters — or, as I like to call it, SAVE Lite.
House Republicans can’t just plop the SAVE Act they already passed or the beefed up version Trump is yelling about (which implements a near all ban on mail-in ballots) into a budget reconciliation bill because it has nothing to do with the budget. Well, they can try — but the Senate parliamentarian will shut it down quicker than Trump can say “The 2020 election was rigged.” So in their minds, the next best thing is trying to bribe states with federal grants to make them voluntarily implement their own restrictive rules.
That is not the SAVE Act and will not have the same kind of sweeping restrictions. But it seems they are hoping it will be enough to shut up the president, some of their most vocal colleagues and the online MAGA troll army.
It is yet to be seen if House Republicans, who are leading the charge on this, can even get together as a caucus and pass the blueprint. But, even if they did, getting it through the upper chamber would be an uphill battle.
It doesn’t even seem Senate Republicans are remotely on board with this plan. “That’d be news to me,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said Thursday when asked about Johnson’s timeline for the Senate to adopt their budget resolution before the August recess.
The split between the upper and lower chamber is clear as day, even as the House forges ahead with their plan. Johnson and co. will, of course, eventually need the Senate to get onboard at some point or this will all be a colossal waste of time.
[Programming Note]
The Handbasket x TPM Are Hosting an Event!
There are a handful of tickets left for our upcoming event on July 29. We’ll be hosting an evening of trivia, drinks and conversation at the Crystal Lake bar in Brooklyn in partnership with the great independent journalist Marisa Kabas, founder of The Handbasket newsletter.
Come hang with us, and get your ticket now before they’re all gone!
[Good Posts]
(Don’t) Eat Your Vegetables
[TPM Trivia]
How Much of This Week’s News Do You Remember?
- Mitch McConnell shared a photo from his hospital room as proof he is recovering from his fall. What was included that could indicate the date: a) a digital clock b) a newspaper c) both d) a calendar
- What was Lindsey Graham’s cause of death?
- For what position did Trump endorse My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell this week?
Answers below
[Words of Wisdom]
You Said It
“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.” – Lindsey Graham, 2016
[Galaxy Brain]
Let’s Pump Our ‘Warfighters’ Full of Testosterone
Everyone’s favorite Big Strong Boy Pete Hegseth this week announced that the Department of Defense is making a “testosterone deficiency” screening a part of annual required medical screenings for troops 30 or older. He wants to use taxpayer funds to make voluntary testosterone replacement therapy available to those who want it.
The announcement came via a direct-to-camera X video literally captioned “the High-T Department of War.” As many commentators pointed out, Hegseth seems to be fully endorsing gender affirming care for dudes while banning transgender troops from service.
[In the Cafe]
Butler 2024, Meet Dallas 1963
Monday July 13 marked the two-year anniversary of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In his latest Rough Edges column, Mike Rothschild explores how Butler became the new Dallas 1963 — Ground Zero for a web of conspiracy theories about international plots, far-right or far-left agitators, and elaborate cover-ups. Mike breaks down the specific conspiracies that emerged around Butler and explains why they’re so salient — especially as the assassination attempts against Trump keep piling up.
[No Words]
What Summer Looks Like Now
Trivia answers: 1) b, a newspaper 2) aortic rupture 3) governor of Minnesota
Truth Social’s New Plan to Make Money May Be ‘Egregious,’ But Will Face Little Oversight
By now, you may have heard that the company behind Truth Social, Trump Media and Technology Group, plans to sell extra-fast access to the most influential posts on the platform to high-paying clients. Trump is the most-followed person on Truth Social, and so the product, called Truth API, appears aimed at monetizing early access to Trump’s market-moving “truths,” selling it to Wall Street banks and trading firms.
Continue reading “Truth Social’s New Plan to Make Money May Be ‘Egregious,’ But Will Face Little Oversight”We Really Need Your Help
We’re now ten days into this year’s Annual TPM Journalism Fund Drive. Just over half way to our goal we’re now into the toughest part of the drive. We’re past the first rush of contributions but still pretty far from the goal of $500,000 when momentum starts to build again. If you’ve been considering making a contribution this year please make it today. It will go a long way toward keeping us on track for our goal. Just click right here. It’s your dollars that make what we do possible, keep TPM vital and moving forward. We can’t do this without you.
State Sovereignty and Trump’s War Against the Constitution
In press conference comments today, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened that state election officials could face jail time if they fail to cooperate with the White House’s purported efforts to “secure” the midterm elections, which seems to involve a range of illegal demands from the White House, Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. The specific demand is for states to feed their voter rolls into the federal “SAVE” database which purports to identify noncitizens on the rolls. Mullin seems to be saying that if states refuse to bend to these illegal White House demands, the federal government will then scrutinize those states’ election returns (by seizing ballots?) and hold state election officials criminally responsible for any illegal voting. (Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has already sent out threats all 50 states and D.C. along these lines).
We have here again the old story. States run elections in the United States. This is guaranteed and mandated by the federal Constitution. Congress can set uniform rules for administering elections. The executive branch plays no role at all in setting rules for elections or administering them. The White House’s strategy is to use illegal means (threatened criminal punishment against state officials) to assert power or compel authority the Constitution simply doesn’t allow. This isn’t how anything works. A president cannot legitimately create by force powers that the Constitution specifically denies him.
In Major Shift, Trump Admin Prioritizes Fight Against ‘Left-Wing Terror’ Over Islamic Extremism
Inside Rubio’s Confab on Lefty Terrorism
The Trump administration’s effort to create a new bogeyman of left-wing terrorism has now resulted in a major policy change unveiled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio Thursday in a speech to officials from more than 60 countries whom he gathered in D.C.
Declaring Islamic terrorism “severely diminished,” Rubio said the counterterrorism apparatus must be retooled to confront the supposed threat from “far-left terror,” Reuters reports.
“We can and we must identify and map this threat and rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat it,” Rubio said, marking a dramatic shift away from the post-9/11 posture of U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
To this point, the administration has aimed to elevate political protestors and progressive groups and activists into a vast far-left “antifa” conspiracy at home — and link it up with imagined fellow travelers abroad with wild and unsubstantiated claims of international coordination and connections. Establishing a (flimsy) link to international terrorism — a related effort which has been spearheaded by White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka and Rubio — seems intended to invoke counterterrorism powers under U.S. law that simply don’t exist for combating domestic terrorism.
What made Rubio’s remarks especially notable was how he broke new policy ground in prioritizing the purported left-wing terror threat of MAGA fever dreams while deprioritizing the decades-old real-world threat from radical Islamists. Later in the day, Rubio announced a new visa restriction policy “targeting far-left terrorist and other aligned groups.”
Rubio’s speech was a tour de force of disinformation, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, and guilt by associations. He threw around terms like “Marxist” and “communist” while baselessly alleging that Iranian proxy networks are “intimately tied” to leftist militant groups and claiming that the George Floyd protests was left-wing terrorism that had been swept under the rug.
“They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist or Marxist,” Rubio said, according The Guardian. “It’s always the same. It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice liberation — an overwhelming need to tear down, to wreck, what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world through violence and through terror.”
But it was White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller who trafficked in the most reductionist and dehumanizing rhetoric in his speech to the gathered foreign officials:
The invention of a new turbocharged left-wing terrorism threat is bad enough by itself, but the real aim is to then conflate it with domestic political opposition to Trump and the exercise of constitutionally protected rights to dissent and protest. It’s a regime-protection racket, but now it’s coming at the additional expense of redirecting U.S. counterterrorism resources from actual threats to made-up ones.
The Latest on the Fatal Ice Shootings …
Maine
- The ICE agent who shot and killed Columbia national Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in a Monday traffic stop has been identified as David Brouillette, an Army veteran with an alleged history of mental illness, violent outbursts, and domestic abuse, some of his family members told the AP.
- Brouillette’s ex-wife Ashley told the Portland Press Herald that he called her after the shooting to ask her to vouch for his character and that she refused. “He was asking me to lie for him and to cover for his character,” Ashley Brouillette said. “I told him that I was not going to lie for him. And then he tried to say that it was a justified shooting because the guy tried to hit him with his car.”
Houston
- The family of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the Mexican national shot and killed by ICE in a July 7 traffic stop, says the baggies found in the work van he was driving didn’t contain meth but salt. “Our understanding is that this was granulated salt, which is paired with lemon and water as a homemade electrolyte mix used by outdoor workers in extreme Texas heat, not methamphetamine or any other illicit substance,” said an attorney representing the family.
- Controversial Houston U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz issued an unusual public statement commenting on the case that appeared intended in part to tamp down public outrage but at the same time was heavily coded in anti-immigrant language and also mentioned “several small bags of a white, crystal-like substance” in the van.
- In an interview on CNN, the Houston district attorney cast doubt on the FBI’s suspicion that meth was in the van: “Based on the information we have regarding who Mr. Salgado was, and just eyeballing the evidence as it was collected yesterday, we don’t believe that they are drugs,” Sean Teare said.
Quote of the Day
“It doesn’t matter whether or not there were drugs. It has no bearing on why Mr. Salgado and the other three individuals were targeted. It has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not the use of force that killed Mr. Salgado was justified.”—Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare
Sign of the Times
President Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator is under investigation for allegedly using his inside knowledge of the president’s speeches to win more than $100,000 on prediction markets. Gabriel Perez, who is on unpaid administrative leave, is in talks with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to settle the settle allegations against him, ABC News reports.
Shrewd Audience
A quick anecdote from seeing Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey last night. I’ll leave the reviews to others since movie blockbusters aren’t really my thing, but there was a memorable moment before the film even started.
It wasn’t clear at first if what was on screen was a trailer or an ad. It featured a slideshow of striking visuals with voiceovers intended to represent a diverse range of ordinary folks asking thoughtful and sometimes hard questions about AI. At the end, it was revealed to be an advertisement when the Anthropic and Claude logos appeared on screen — and the small audience in the theater immediately and spontaneously booed all around me.
It was especially striking because it didn’t feel in the moment like a blanket anti-AI reaction, but a more nuanced rejection of the pretense than any AI company could purport to act as a convener or moderator of the AI debate. Or maybe it was both.
This was a D.C. audience, perhaps inured to the constant barrage of reputational ads that target audiences in the nation’s capital, but even that sort of hard-boiled skepticism is more than I usually see in public settings. This is the ad in question, which you may have already seen because it’s gotten quite a bit of coverage.
See You Back Here Monday
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The Brief: Trump’s Primetime Address Backfires
Thanks for reading this last month as we soft-launch what we’re now calling “The Brief.” I’m taking a week off to bring my toddler to the beach. I’ll be back July 27. If you’re enjoying this morning dispatch, we’ll have the option for you to sign up for it as a newsletter by early August. See you all soon. Stay cool, and breathe fresh air if you can find any.
Primetime Flop
Trump’s election speech last night, which Democrats, election administrators, and Republican legislators were dreading (each for somewhat different reasons), was a dud. Trump insinuated, lied and selectively presented information as he sought to cast doubt on the 2026 midterms and again undermine 2020, but he did so while covering well-worn ground. Despite fears, he didn’t order anything new, beyond demanding Congress pass the SAVE America Act voter suppression bill — a demand he makes in some form nearly daily.
Continue reading “The Brief: Trump’s Primetime Address Backfires”