President Trump and White House officials have been picking and choosing what programs to fund while the federal government is shut down — and they’re doing it without permission from Congress.
A bipartisan handful of lawmakers aren’t happy.
Continue reading “Some GOPers Are Queasy About Trump Lawlessly Moving Money Around During Shutdown”Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) and Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva (D) sued on Tuesday to force House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to finally swear her in formally.
Continue reading “Arizona AG, Rep-elect Grijalva Sue House to Force Her Long-Delayed Swearing In”Here’s a funny little nugget about the Pat Fitzgerald/James Comey relationship.
You’ll remember that Pat Fitzgerald first came to be known by the broad politically-attuned public when he was special counsel investigating and eventually convicting Bush White House advisor Scooter Libby over the disclosure of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity. James Comey first became known to this broader politically-attuned public because of a series of actions he took during the Bush administration, stuff like the so-called “hospital bed” showdown over the admin’s domestic surveillance program. Now move forward to early 2007 and we at TPM were in the thick of the so-called US Attorney firings scandal, for which TPM eventually won a Polk Award.
Continue reading “The Pat Fitzgerald and James Comey Relationship and a Funny TPM Story”Acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan initiated a Signal chat two weekends ago with Lawfare reporter Anna Bower in which the newly-appointed federal prosecutor tiptoed to the verge of revealing grand jury information in the Letitia James case.
After Bower started reporting out the Signal exchange, including by calling Main Justice, Halligan sent Bower a final message late yesterday, more than a week after starting the chat: “By the way – everything I ever sent you is off record. You’re not a journalist so it’s weird saying that but just letting you know.”
The entire episode is madness. Halligan — who has no prior experience as a prosecutor — comes off as even less sophisticated than expected. She also seems peevish, self-consciousness, and in utterly over her head, in every possible way. You can read the entire exchange here.
Ironically, Halligan’s prosecution of former FBI Director Jim Comey is, in part, about Comey’s alleged contacts with the media, in his case through intermediaries. No intermediary here! Just Halligan herself recklessly bumping up against criminal case particulars with a reporter.
Bower recounted the whole crazy episode last evening:
Comey has filed the first two major challenges to his politicized indictment. The former FBI director is trying to get the indictment dismissed with prejudice (meaning it cannot be refiled by the government) on two primary grounds:
Both of Comey’s motions were well-written, tightly structured, and compelling. But more importantly, taken together they mount the first wholesale challenge to President Trump’s use of the Justice Department to conduct reprisals by prosecution. Some of the arguments are designed to appeal to conservative justices on the Supreme Court, and others are designed to appeal to the rule of law and long-standing DOJ traditions and norms. The effect, undoubtedly intended, is to make a Comey victory here have implications beyond this particular political prosecution.
Meanwhile, in a bit of gamesmanship, prosecutors fired a shot across the bow of Comey lead attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, suggesting he might need to be disqualified from the case because Comey allegedly used him “to improperly disclose classified information.” Comey fired right back against what it called the government’s effort to “defame” Fitzgerald, calling the allegation “provably false.” The judge in the case quickly denied prosecutors’ effort to expedite the briefing on this sideshow.
The Trump DOJ is scrutinizing a trip that Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis, the disqualified Trump prosecutor, made to the Bahamas in November, according to a subpoena obtained by the NYT.
It’s not clear if the trip is a focus of the investigation or if Willis herself is a target. The investigation is being led by Atlanta U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg.
Officials from across the Trump administration have been meeting since May under the auspices of what is called the Interagency Weaponization Working Group to coordinate the president’s retribution against perceived political foes, Reuters reports. The group draws from the White House, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Department of Homeland Security, Internal Revenue Service, Federal Communications Commission, Department of Defense, CIA, DOJ, and FBI, according to the report:
The existence of the interagency group indicates the administration’s push to deploy government power against Trump’s perceived foes is broader and more systematic than previously reported. Interagency working groups in government typically forge administration policies, share information and agree on joint actions.
Trump DOJ official Ed Martin, who is the U.S. pardon attorney and leads the Justice Department’s own weaponization working group, is “an important player in the interagency group,” a source told Reuters.
A Trump-pardoned Jan. 6 rioter has been charged with threatening to kill House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) ahead of his a Monday speech to the Economic Club of New York.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) sounded the death knell for the nomination of Paul Ingrassia as U.S. special counsel after Politico published texts in which Ingrassia admitted he had “a Nazi streak,” said the MLK holiday should be ““tossed into the seventh circle of hell,” and used an Italian slur for Black people. “He’s not gonna pass,” said Thune, who was one of at least four GOP senators to come out against the nomination.
A judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has already moved to hear the Oregon National Guard case en banc after a three-judge panel of the court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on Monday
In a powerful dissent, Judge Susan Graber essentially begged for patience from the public as she implored the full appeals court to act: “I urge my colleagues on this court to act swiftly to vacate the majority’s order before the illegal deployment of troops under false pretenses can occur. Above all, I ask those who are watching this case unfold to retain faith in our judicial system for just a little longer.”
Despite assurances that construction of President Trump’s unauthorized ballroom would not touch the White House, work crews began demolishing portions of the East Wing Monday. The ballroom is being constructed between the White House and Treasury building, where employees with a bird’s-eye view were told not to take or share photos of the project.
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
When I started Jacobin in 2010, my first milestone of the magazine “making it” wasn’t a glossy cover or a TV hit. It was landing on a Crooked Timber sidebar.
Continue reading “Can Substack Recover the Blogosphere We Lost?”One of President Donald Trump’s final actions in his first administration was a last-ditch attempt to confront the impermanence of a four-year term by leaving his mark on something that could last much longer: federal architecture.
Continue reading “Trump Is Using ‘Classical Architecture’ as ‘A Dog Whistle for White Nationalists’”The “No Kings” protests this weekend drew a massive, nationwide turnout. As I’m sure many are, I found myself wondering about the impact of these demonstrations and, more broadly, about the future for our country as it continues a speedrun into full-on authoritarianism. In conversations with friends and colleagues, I came across an academic theory that, I think, offers an interesting and productive rubric for analyzing mass protest.
Continue reading “Donald Trump, ‘No Kings,’ and the ‘3.5 Percent Rule’”A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled for the Trump administration Monday in its attempt to deploy the Oregon National Guard to Portland.
Continue reading “9th Circuit Rules for Trump, Potentially Allowing National Guard to Deploy to Portland”The turnout and character of the weekend’s No Kings demonstrations speak for themselves and at great volume. But I wanted to say something about the naming and the focus of No Kings, which is emerging as something between a protest and a protest movement. It is a great good fortune for the country and the anti-Trump opposition that it has emerged in the way that it has, by which I mean the name itself, a deceptively resonant name and slogan with the deepest possible roots in American history. This brings with it a critical inclusivity, which grows out of the name itself and the lack of those specific and lengthy sets of demands that often characterize and ultimately fracture such movements.
I’ll say a few things here that favorably distinguish No Kings from what we might call “traditional” liberal or left-leaning protests. That includes some of those that featured prominently during the first Trump administration. I’m not disparaging those. It’s simply that this is a specific moment in history and requires an especially broad tent. Its purpose and specific character must be different.
Continue reading “The Subtle Genius of ‘No Kings’”The Hechinger Report covers one topic: education. Sign up for our newsletters to have stories delivered to your inbox. Consider becoming a member to support our nonprofit journalism.
Two months after Education Secretary Linda McMahon was confirmed, she and a small team from the department met with leadership from the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an advocacy group that works on behalf of millions of students with dyslexia and other disorders.
Jacqueline Rodriguez, NCLD’s chief executive officer, recalled pressing McMahon on a question raised during her confirmation hearing: Was the Trump administration planning to move control and oversight of special education law from the Education Department to Health and Human Services?
Rodriguez was alarmed at the prospect of uprooting the 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), which spells out the responsibility of schools to provide a “free, appropriate public education” to students with disabilities. Eliminating the Education Department entirely is a primary objective of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has guided much of the administration’s education policy. After the department is gone, Project 2025 said oversight of special education should move to HHS, which manages some programs that help adults with disabilities. But the sprawling department that oversees public health has no expertise in the complex education law, Rodriguez told McMahon.
“Someone might be able to push the button to disseminate funding, but they wouldn’t be able to answer a question from a parent or a school district,” she said in an interview later. For her part, McMahon had wavered during her confirmation hearing on the subject. “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in HHS, but I don’t know,” she told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who shared concerns from parents worried about who would enforce the law’s provisions.
But nine days into a government shutdown that has furloughed most federal government workers, the Trump administration announced that it was planning a drastic “reduction in force” that would lay off more than 450 people, including almost everyone who works in the Office of Special Education Programs. Rodriguez believes the layoffs are a way that the administration plans to force the special education law to be managed by some other federal office.The Education Department press office did not respond to a question about the administration’s plans for special education oversight. Instead, the press office pointed to a social media post from McMahon on Oct. 15. The fact that schools are “operating as normal” during the government shutdown, McMahon wrote on X, “confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary.”’
Yet in that May meeting, Rodriguez said she was told that HHS might not be the right place for IDEA, she recalled. While the new department leadership made no promises, they assured her that any move of the law’s oversight would have to be done with congressional approval, Rodriguez said she was told.
The move to gut the office overseeing special education law was shocking to families and those who work with students with disabilities. About 7.5 million children ages 3 to 21 are served under IDEA, and the office had already lost staffers after the Trump administration dismissed nearly half the Education Department’s staff in March, bringing the agency’s total workforce to around 2,200 people.
For Rodriguez, whose organization supports students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, McMahon’s private assurances was the administration “just outright lying to the public about their intentions.”
“The audacity of this administration to communicate in her confirmation, in her recent testimony to Congress and to a disability rights leader to her face, ‘Don’t worry, we will support kids with disabilities,’” Rodriguez said. “And then to not just turn a 180-degree on that, but to decimate the ability to enforce the law that supports our kids.”
She added: “It could not just be contradictory. It feels like a bait and switch.”
Five days after the firings were announced, a U.S. district judge temporarily blocked the administration’s actions, setting up a legal showdown that is likely to end up before the Supreme Court. The high court has sided with the president on most of his efforts to drastically reshape the federal workforce. And President Donald Trump said at a Tuesday press briefing that more cuts to “Democrat programs” are coming.
“They’re never going to come back in many cases,” he added.
In her post on X, McMahon also said that “no education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education,” referring to the layoffs.
But special education is more than just money, said Danielle Kovach, a special education teacher in Hopatcong, N.J. Kovach is also a former president of the Council for Exceptional Children, a national organization for special educators.
“I equate it to, what would happen if we dismantled a control tower at a busy airport?” Kovach said. “It doesn’t fly the plane. It doesn’t tell people where to go. But it ensures that everyone flies smoothly.”
Katy Neas, a deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services during the Biden administration, said that most people involved in the education system want to do right by children.
“You can’t do right if you don’t know what the answer is,” said Neas, who is now the chief executive officer of The Arc of the United States, which advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “You can’t get there if you don’t know how to get your questions answered.”
Families also rely on IDEA’s mandate that each child with a disability receives a free, appropriate public education — and the protections that they can receive if a school or district does not live up to that requirement.
Maribel Gardea, a parent in San Antonio, said she fought with her son’s school district for years over accommodations for his disability. Her son Voozeki, 14, has cerebral palsy and is nonverbal. He uses an eye-gaze device that allows him to communicate when he looks at different symbols on a portable screen. The district resisted getting the device for him to use at school until, Gardea said, she reminded them of IDEA’s requirements.
“That really stood them up,” she said.
Gardea, the co-founder of MindShiftED, an organization that helps parents become better advocates for their children with disabilities, said the upheaval at the Education Department has her wondering what kind of advice she can give families now.
For example, an upcoming group session will teach parents how to file official grievances to the federal government if they have disputes with their child’s school or district about services. Now, she has to add in an explanation of what the deep federal cuts will mean for parents.
“I have to tell you how to do a grievance,” she said she plans to tell parents. “But I have to tell you no one will answer.”
Maybe grassroots organizations may find themselves trying to track parent complaints on their own, she said, but the prospect is exhausting. “It’s a really gross feeling to know that no one has my back.”
In addition to the office that oversees special education law, the Rehabilitation Services Administration, which is also housed at the Department of Education and supports employment and training of people with disabilities, was told most of its staff would be fired.
“Regardless of which office you’re worried about, this is all very intentional,” said Julie Christensen, the executive director of the Association of People Supporting Employment First, which advocates for the full inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. “There’s no one who can officially answer questions. It feels like that was kind of the intent, to just create a lot of confusion and chaos.”
Those staffers “are the voice within the federal government to make sure policies and funding are aligned to help people with disabilities get into work,” Christensen said. Firing them, she added, is counterintuitive to everything the administration says it cares about.
For now, advocates say they are bracing for a battle similar to those fought decades ago that led to the enactment of civil rights law protecting children and adults with disabilities. Before the law was passed, there was no federal guarantee that a student with a disability would be allowed to attend public school.
“We need to put together our collective voices. It was our collective voices that got us here,” Kovach said.
And, Rodriguez said, parents of children in special education need to be prepared to be their own watchdogs. “You have to become the compliance monitor.”
It’s unfair, she said, but necessary.
