I’ve made versions of this argument here in the Editors’ Blog and on the podcast many times. But it’s so critical and so beyond dispute I wanted to state it here as clearly as possible. There is no future for civic democracy in this country without reforming the Supreme Court. Putting that more specifically, the only way to recover from Donald Trump’s rapid lunge into an authoritarian American future is a future point at which Democrats regain control of the federal government — a trifecta — and institute a series of laws which cut off the channels Trump has exploited to get us to this point. That doesn’t solve the problem of Trumpism. The core issue is that very large minority of Americans who support his style of autocratic government. But that cuts off many of the paths Trump has used to build a presidential autocracy under the thinnest cover of law. You need, among other things, a federal law to place strict limits on partisan and racial gerrymandering. It’s only one example out of many – you need laws re-instituting true independent agencies, drastically limiting the use of military forces on US territory, barring president’s from claiming budgeting authority, et al. I note this example because it came up today when Kate and I recorded this week’s podcast. But even this comparatively uncontroversial federal statute would certainly be overturned by the Republican justices.
Continue reading “There Is No Democratic Future Without Supreme Court Reform”The Administration’s Ghastly Game Plan for Savaging Abrego Garcia
The Savagery Is the Point
It’s difficult to convey the full scope of the Trump administration’s misdeeds in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but let’s give it a shot.
You know the broad contours of the story already. The administration illegally removed Abrego Garcia from his home in Maryland to El Salvador, where he was thrown in prison for months. Despite the Supreme Court ordering that the administration facilitate his return, the executive branch dragged its feet for weeks. When the administration did finally return him to the United States (without notice to his lawyers or the judge in the case), it did so only to lock him up again on criminal charges that had been secretly filed in Tennessee.
It’s what’s happened since then that has become more difficult to convey because it’s not been clear what exactly the administration’s end game is here. You might have thought the endgame was the criminal case in Tennessee: Win a conviction then deport him either before or after he served his sentence here. Nope, as it turned out.
It’s become apparent now that the administration is not driven by a desire for any particular outcome, but for whatever outcome among the available choices inflicts maximum pain and suffering on Abrego Garcia.
If that sounds overstated, let me quickly walk you through the administration’s threat to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country because it’s the best example of the bobbing and weaving that’s marked the administration’s ungrounded approach to the case.
At first glance, you might think that the third country removal is the story now. Hasn’t the man suffered enough without being sent to a country on the African continent with which he has no ties, where it’s unclear if he’ll again be incarcerated without being charged, and where the assurances are shaky at best that he won’t simply be forward on to El Salvador? You might be inclined to follow the ins and outs of that story, with the ultimate question being whether the administration succeeds in shipping him off to Africa. But as it turned out you’d have been wrong.
Once the Trump administration had Abrego Garcia in custody again in Maryland in his immigration case (after he’d been ordered released from custody in Tennessee while his trial was pending), it made little effort to find a third country willing to accept him. His lawyers suspected that the administration was content to just hold him indefinitely and so forced the issue by moving to secure a court order to release him. In a hearing earlier this month before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland, she sussed out that almost nothing had been done by the administration to find a third country and what had been done had been undertaken immediately before the hearing in anticipation of having to answer for its conduct.
So now your inclination might be to track whether Abrego Garcia wins by securing his release rather than being subject to indefinite detention by a foot-dragging Trump administration. Wrong again!
Facing the prospect of a potentially adverse ruling from Xinis, the administration declared on Friday that it had found a third country for Abrego Garcia. Liberia, take a bow. Xinis summoned the parties for another hearing yesterday, where the administration said it’s preparing to remove him to Liberia by as soon as Oct. 31. I should mention here that Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have told Xinis he is willing to accept removal to Costa Rica. To Xinis’ puzzlement, the administration has not accepted that option.
The administration’s shifting priorities reflect not some grand plan or strategy, but at each juncture choosing the option before it that most torments Abrego Garcia. It’s really the only explanation that accounts for the meandering series of positions by the administration. But there’s one other wild card in the mix.
Abrego Garcia still faces criminal trial in Tennessee on the human smuggling charges the administration whipped up. So far, he’s convinced a judge — not that hard on the facts I’ve already laid out here — that he’s established a prima facie case of vindictive prosecution by the Trump DOJ. That shifts the burden to the administration to establish that it undertook the prosecution on a legitimate basis. Importantly, it also opened the door for Abrego Garcia to conduct discovery on how the administration handled his case.
The administration is fighting like hell to head off that discovery, which includes a subpoena of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and other high-ranking DOJ officials. The judge in the criminal case has set two days of hearings on Nov. 4-5 for all the pretrial motions, including the vindictive prosecution claim. Witness testimony is expected. The Trump DOJ moved yesterday to quash the subpoena in the hopes of preventing testimony from Blanche and others. Meanwhile, the judge in the criminal case smacked the administration yesterday for its “exaggerated if not simply inaccurate” out-of-court statements about Abrego Garcia
So you can see now the added advantage to the administration of resuming the third country removal plan, whether it’s Liberia or somewhere else (it’s likely the Abrego Garcia will formally express in a hearing today a fear of being sent to Liberia which will trigger additional delays). They’ll be happy to avoid further scrutiny of their conduct in the criminal case even it means effectively dropping the case by deporting him.
The criminal case, third country removal, and prolonged detention are all just tools the Trump administration is using to savage Abrego Garcia. The savagery is the point.
Coverup?
A Homeland Security Investigations officer accompanying local police fired his gun into a car during a traffic stop in DC earlier this month, but the police report of the incident contained no mention of shots being fired. All charges against the unarmed Black man who was stopped were dismissed after a judge concluded there was insufficient evidence that he tried to flee, his lawyers told the WaPo. The man was uninjured in the incident but spent three nights in jail before the charges were dismissed.
Former DOJers Side With Comey
In an amicus brief, more than 100 former DOJ officials urged a federal judge to dismiss the criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey, arguing that it is vindictive.
Ball Now in Trump DOJ’s Court
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith sent a letter to the Trump Justice Department asking for access to his old files and seeking guidance as to what he can say in testimony that Hill Republicans are demanding that he provide.
Mass Preemptive Pardons Alert
Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, a former DOJ official under Bush II, anticipates that President Trump will issue mass preemptive pardons toward the end of his term, especially if a Democrat were to succeed him:
[O]ne can be absolutely certain that Trump will issue preemptive pardons at or near the end of his second term, probably on an enormous scale—especially since … he will anticipate that a Democratic administration may have little reason to respect Trump OLC opinions in deciding whether to prosecute Trump officials. Pardons blunt this possibility. I expect Trump to issue hundreds and possibly thousands of preemptive pardons to everyone in his administration who may conceivably be subject to future investigation or prosecution, especially if a Democrat wins the presidential election in November 2028.
Trump Appeals Hush Money Conviction
President Trump filed an appeal of his conviction in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, in which he was sentenced to no punishment, in hopes of having the convicted felon tag removed from his biography.
Paul Manafort Is Still at it
Kenneth Vogel traces Paul Manafort’s “unlikely full-circle journey from high-flying global fixer to federal inmate and back.”
A Race to Beat Midterms Clock
Red states are salivating over the prospect of the Roberts Court eviscerating what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, and some of them are beginning to plan for redrawing their congressional districts maps if the Supreme Court rules in time for the 2026 midterms, Politico reports.
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Responses on Mamdani and Those Rabbis #2
From TPM Reader AF …
Continue reading “Responses on Mamdani and Those Rabbis #2”From my perch as a rabbi’s kid, a decently religious Jew, not an anti-Zionist, and someone who spends many hours a week (a day?) occupied by these issues of Jewish community politics, I want to say: “What the fuck are we talking about” is exactly right.
I would add two things. First:
Responses on Mamdani and Those Rabbis #1
Publishing two very different responses, first from TPM Reader JS …
Continue reading “Responses on Mamdani and Those Rabbis #1”I bet you’re not surprised that I disagree about this. The #1 threat faced by Jews right now in the US is stochastic terrorism from both the left and right and Islamic terrorists, whether it’s more like the Tree of Life shooting (right wing), the attack on the Boulder group (left wing) or the very recent shooting in Manchester (Islamic), or, in my community an actual bomb attempt on local synagogues (right wing). This is the heart attack; fascism—or whatever you want to call what Trump is doing—is like cancer. At this point, just living until the cancer kills you is lucky. It doesn’t mean you don’t try to cure the cancer, but first things first.
The Cabinet in My Apartment That Explains How Journalism Broke During COVID
There’s a cabinet in my apartment that tells the story of how journalism broke during the pandemic. Vitamins, supplements, mushroom coffee from the Midwest, superfood powders from the Amazon, prebiotic syrup from Japan, bone marrow protein from England, liver detox from a lab — each bottle represents a different “expert” I encountered online, a fragment of information that promised to reveal what mainstream media wouldn’t tell me. About 90% of these purchases were triggered by social media ads that positioned themselves as news sources, alternative journalism, citizen reporting.
This cabinet is a physical manifestation of the COVID-19 infodemic — the first time in human history that a global crisis unfolded entirely within social media platforms, where the line between news, advertising, and conspiracy theory dissolved completely. Traditional journalism competed directly with wellness influencers, political provocateurs, and foreign disinformation campaigns. The World Health Organization adopted the term, warning that we were fighting not just a pandemic, but an “infodemic” — a parallel epidemic of misinformation that spread faster than the virus itself.
I had become both victim to and perpetrator of this information chaos, an unlicensed curator of alternative facts, dispensing health advice to friends based on Instagram stories and Facebook ads that masqueraded as investigative journalism.
Continue reading “The Cabinet in My Apartment That Explains How Journalism Broke During COVID”Random Thought
Does any of this make sense? If you follow equities markets you’d think we’re on the brink of a period of historic or at least very robust growth. And yet at the same time the global economy is in a period of growing dislocation and uncertainty creating what can only be called a high-fear, high-risk economic climate. It’s hard to see how these two things can both be true.
Trump Admin’s Laziness Is Messing Up Its Effort to Deploy the National Guard to Portland
A Baffling Legal Blunder
For some inscrutable reason, the Trump Justice Department appealed only one of two temporary restraining orders blocking it from sending National Guard troops into Oregon.
Continue reading “Trump Admin’s Laziness Is Messing Up Its Effort to Deploy the National Guard to Portland”What To Make of Those Anti-Mamdani Rabbis
In the last couple of weeks, the questions about Jews, Israel and Zohran Mamdani have rushed back into the news. It began with a dramatic speech from the pulpit from the rabbi of a prominent New York City synagogue, Elliot Cosgrove, and its been kept in the news by a public letter signed by 600 or so rabbis and cantors. I don’t know how much this has broken through into the mainstream press but it’s been on a loud speaker in Jewish communal publications. Cosgrove began his speech (you can call it a sermon if you want) saying he believes “Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of the New York Jewish community” and a “danger to the Jewish body politic of New York City.” The public letter hit similar points and is generally the same message.
I don’t have anything unique or new to add but since I’ve written here and there over the last two years about Israel and Jews and Gaza, as well as once or twice about Mamdani, I thought I should share my opinion. More specifically, a growing number of TPM Readers have asked me to address these accusations, either from the perspective of agreeing with them or wanting me to denounce them.
So with that introduction out of the way, these claims not only strike me as wrong but as borderline absurd. Like absurd as in, What the fuck are we talking about? absurd. And I say this notwithstanding the fact that I disagree with Mamdani on numerous points tied to Zionism and Israel.
Continue reading “What To Make of Those Anti-Mamdani Rabbis”At Moms for Liberty Summit, Parents Are Urged to Turn Their Grievances Into Lawsuits
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education.
KISSIMMEE, Fla. — It’s not a rebrand. But the Moms for Liberty group that introduced itself three years ago as a band of female “joyful warriors” shedding domestic modesty to make raucous public challenges to masks, books and curriculum, is trying to glow up.
The group’s national summit this past weekend at a convention center outside Orlando leaned into family (read: parental rights), faith — and youth. The latter appeared to be a bid to join the cool kids who are the new face of conservatism in America (hint: young, Christian, very male), as well as a recognition of the group’s “diversity,” which includes grandparents, men and kids.
But even as the youth — including 20- and 30-something podcasters and social media influencers, as well as student members of the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA — brought a high-energy vibe, stalwart members got a new assignment. Where past Moms for Liberty attendees were urged to run for school board, this year they were encouraged to turn their grievances into legal challenges.
Moms for Liberty CEO and co-founder Tina Descovich acknowledged that while many of them had experienced backlashes as a result of running for school board or publicly challenging books, curricula and policies, they needed to continue the fight. (The more pugnacious co-founder, Tiffany Justice, is now at Heritage Action, an arm of right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation.)
“You have lost family, you have lost friends, you have lost neighbors, you’ve lost jobs, you’ve lost whole careers,” she said. Yet she insisted that it was vital that they “shake off the shackles of fear and stand for truth or we are going to lose Western civilization as a whole.”
The gathering held up “the free state of Florida” as an example of Republican policies to be emulated, including around school choice and parental rights. The state’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, boasted of having created a state Office of Parental Rights last spring, describing it as “a law firm for parents.”
He trumpeted the state’s lawsuit against Target over the “market risks” of LGBTQ+ pride-themed merchandise and encouraged parents to reach out with potential legal actions. “If you’re identifying one of these wrongs that’s violating your rights and then subjecting our kids to danger and evil, then we want to know about it,” he said. “And we’re going to bring the heat in court to shut it down.”
The shifting legal landscape, not just in Florida but nationally, had speakers gushing about the opportunity to file new challenges, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor in June. It gives parents broad power to object to school materials, including with LGBTQ+ themes, and the right to remove their children from public school on days when such materials are discussed.
“This is where we need to take that big Supreme Court victory and start fleshing it out,” said Matt Sharp, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian law firm. He added that they were “needing warriors, joyful warriors, to file cases to start putting meat on the bones of what that does.”
The directive to file suit was not just around opt-out policies, which were the basis for the Mahmoud case. (Moms for Liberty has opt-out forms and instructions on its website.) Rather, attendees were also urged to file lawsuits in support of school prayer; against school policies that let students use different names and pronouns without parental consent (what Moms for Liberty terms “secret transitions”); and to give parents access to surveys students take at school, including around mental health.
“We need people willing to stand up legally and be, you know, named plaintiffs,” Kimberly S. Hermann, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative policy group, said on a panel featuring two moms who sued their school districts. Winning a lawsuit or even just bringing one in one state, said Hermann, can get other school districts and states to adopt policies, presumably to avoid lawsuits themselves.
“One offensive litigation can have this amazing ripple effect,” she said. She and others made clear that there is staff to provide support. The legal groups will “stand with you,” said Sharp, “whether you’re passing the law or passing the local policy all the way to litigating these cases.”
Even as speakers criticized public schools particularly around LGBTQ+ issues, not as a form of inclusion but as foisting views into classrooms, they relished the chance to infuse their values into schools.
Filing these lawsuits is more than “just fighting for your role as parents,” Sharp told parents in a breakout session. “You’re ultimately fighting for your kids’ ability to be in their schools and make a difference, to be the salt and light in those classrooms with their friends and to take our message of freedom, of faith, of justice and to really spread it all across the schools.”
Overall, this year’s Moms for Liberty event lacked the obvious drama of recent years. The flood of protesters in 2023 in Philadelphia required a large police presence and barricades around the hotel, along with warnings not to wear Moms for Liberty lanyards on the streets.
This year, there were no protests. That was partly because the event was held in a secluded resort convention center that could accommodate 800 (larger than the 500-ish of past hotels). But the group failed to fill the venue or attract much media attention. There was on-location broadcast by Real America’s Voice, a conservative news and entertainment network, from a set outside the Sun Ballroom. (Steve Bannon interviewed Descovich on his show, “The War Room.”)
It also didn’t draw opposition because protesters had a bigger target. Saturday saw “No Kings” rallies across the country, with thousands decrying what they see as President Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. “I forgot it was happening since they’re mostly ignored these days,” state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, (D-Orlando) and a senior advisor to LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Florida, said in a text message about the Moms for Liberty event. Liz Mikitarian, founder of the national group, Stop Moms for Liberty, which is based in Florida, said the moms “are still a threat” but not worth organizing a protest against.
It was also a quieter affair than last year’s in Washington, D.C. There, Trump’s appearance fed a party atmosphere with Southern rock, sequined MAGA outfits and a cash bar. (This year, Trump appeared, but only in a prerecorded video message.)
The three-day event, of course, aired familiar grievances in familiarly florid language — conservative school choice activist Corey DeAngelis railed against teacher unions over the “far-left radical agenda that they’re trying to push down children’s throats in the classroom.” Other sessions covered the expected — the alleged dangers of LGBTQ+ policies, in sports, restrooms, school curricula and books — but there was also discussion of concerns (shared on left and right) over youth screen use, online predators and artificial intelligence.
The event made room for MAHA, the Make America Healthy Again movement led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services. Descovich interviewed Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general who is working to eliminate all vaccine mandates for the state’s schoolchildren.
But the move by Moms for Liberty to attract young conservatives elevated the energy in the room. It was apparent not only in a tribute to Kirk, the slain founder of Turning Point USA, which trains young conservatives on high school and college campuses. About 40 Florida TPUSA members took the ballroom stage to accept the “Liberty Sword,” the group’s highest honor, posthumously awarded to Kirk.
Related: Red school boards in a blue state asked Trump for help — and got it
It also showed up in a breakout session of mostly conservative social media influencers and podcasters who offered tips on using humor and handling online trolls: Lydia Shaffer (aka the Conservative Barbie 2.0), Alex Stein, Gates Garcia, Kaitlin Bennett, Angela Belcamino (known as “The Bold Lib,” who said she was surprised to have been invited), and Jayme Franklin, who in addition to her podcast is the Gen Z founder of The Conservateur, a conservative lifestyle brand that The New Yorker called “Vogue, But for Trumpers.”
They have built huge followings based on their compulsion to provoke. “We need to go back to biblical values of what it means to be a real man and what it means to be a real woman,” urged Franklin. “People want that guidance, and that needs to begin at church. We need to push people back into the pews.”
Their inclusion, like that of conservative commentator Benny Johnson, who moderated a panel, “Fathers: The Defenders of the Family,” appeared to recognize a need to expand the base — and be edgier. Johnson charged out on stage and trumpeted that “God’s first commandment to us was, ‘Go, be fruitful, multiply.’ Go make babies!!!!” He quipped that “right-wing moms, they’re happier, right?” and asked the crowd, “Any trad wife moms out there?”
The phrase is shorthand for a woman who embraces a traditional domestic role, often with an emphasis on fashion and style. Johnson — who credited Kirk for prodding him to find Jesus, get married and become a father (he has four children) — argued that Republicans, especially those in Gen Z, should embrace the traditional nuclear family identity as a winning political move.
“We are the party of parents. We are the party of children,” he said, adding that traditional values were already dominating culture and politics. “We live in a center-right country. And I’m tired of pretending that we don’t,” he said, and showed a map of red and blue votes in the 2024 presidential election. “This is the shift. You live in a red kingdom.”
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org.
This story about Moms for Liberty was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
Indiana Gov Announces Special Session to Act on Trump’s Gerrymandering Squeeze
Succumbing to mounting pressure from the Trump administration and the president’s allies, Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun announced on Monday that a special session focused on redistricting will convene on November 3.
Continue reading “Indiana Gov Announces Special Session to Act on Trump’s Gerrymandering Squeeze”