Triumph Of The Bill: Amazon’s $75 Million ‘Melania’ Movie Is A Corrupt, Fascistic Cinema Fest

Posted on by Hunter Walker

In the 104 minutes of the movie “Melania,” there are only two real hints of how dangerous our world and politics have become. 

The supposed documentary on First Lady Melania Trump is largely set in the 20 days before her husband, President Donald Trump, returned to office for the second time last January. At one point, the couple are seen with staffers discussing grand plans for “a million” people to line the streets of Washington for the swearing-in ceremony. Staffers inform the family that they will ride in a motorcade along Pennsylvania Avenue and that, as per tradition, they will have a few opportunities to get out of the car and wave at the crowd. 

Continue reading “Triumph Of The Bill: Amazon’s $75 Million ‘Melania’ Movie Is A Corrupt, Fascistic Cinema Fest” →

Top Admin Officials—and Trump Himself—Are Clinging Hard To Insane Conspiracy Theories

Posted on by John Light

Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️

In some ways, we’re still living in the world that emerged in the month or so that led up to January 6. 

Continue reading “Top Admin Officials—and Trump Himself—Are Clinging Hard To Insane Conspiracy Theories” →

Senate Vote on Government Funding Back on Track After Graham Gets Promise of Floor Votes

The Senate Thursday evening struck a deal with the White House to fund the federal government. The plan, which came together after negotiations between the Trump White House and Senate Democrats, includes a two-week continuing resolution for the DHS funding bill alongside the passage of the remaining five full-year appropriations bills. The House is expected to vote on the package on Monday; House Republican leadership is reportedly maneuvering to get it passed over various right-wing objections.

That means that, after a weekend shutdown, Democrats will have two weeks to attempt to recruit Republicans to their wish list of ICE reforms. If Republicans fail to get on board, funding for DHS will expire, causing that department, but no others, to shut down. It would not halt ICE or CBP operations — both agencies have a considerable pool of money awarded by the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act that they can tap — but it would start to drain those resources.

Put another way, Democrats go into next week with a considerable amount of leverage.

2020’s Most Insane Conspiracy Theory, ItalyGate, Returns

Posted on by Josh Kovensky

President Trump is bringing back the most bizarre conspiracy theory for why he lost the 2020 election. It’s ItalyGate, which pins his loss to Joe Biden that year on an elaborate conspiracy in which Barack Obama and China teamed up to use Italian military satellites to zap the election away from him.

Continue reading “2020’s Most Insane Conspiracy Theory, ItalyGate, Returns” →

Reality Distortion in the Age of Trump and the Corrupt Court

Posted on by Josh Marshall

With a hearing on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship now on the calendar, I want to return to a basic point we’ve discussed several times over the last year. Given our experience living mostly in “normal” times, many of us are used to the idea that the law evolves over time. When judges create new case law, the law evolves and changes. And we accept that it has “changed” — in a certain meaning of the word — even when we may not agree with the change. But with so many other things that have changed slowly since 2016 and then rapidly from early 2025, these are outdated ideas, outdated understandings of how the world and the law works.

Birthright citizenship is a key example of this.

Birthright citizenship is clearly, explicitly and incontestably written into the U.S. Constitution. It’s the country’s fundamental law and more than 150 years of American history have been lived on that basis. There’s a reason why no one has doubted this over all those years even if many have opposed it.

Continue reading “Reality Distortion in the Age of Trump and the Corrupt Court” →

As Congress Begins to Grapple With Restrictions on ICE, States Take Matters Into Their Own Hands

Posted on by Layla A. Jones

On Thursday, a Michigan State Senate committee held a hearing on a package of bills that restrict federal immigration enforcement in the state, legislation that comes amid a nationwide outcry over immigration enforcement operations that have grown increasingly deadly. The three bills would make it a misdemeanor for law enforcement officers to wear masks, except in certain health-related circumstances; limit government agencies from sharing information with ICE; and outlaw immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations” like schools, places of worship, hospitals, women’s shelters, and courthouses.

Continue reading “As Congress Begins to Grapple With Restrictions on ICE, States Take Matters Into Their Own Hands” →

Feds Arrest Journalist Don Lemon in Church Protest Case

Posted on by David Kurtz

Judge Already Said No Evidence of Crime

Journalist Don Lemon was covering a Grammy’s event in Los Angeles last evening (pictured above) when he was arrested on federal charges relating to the anti-ICE church protest he covered in St. Paul on Jan. 18, his attorney says. The church was a target of protesters because one of its pastors also works as the acting director of the ICE field office in St. Paul.

The unspecified new charges against the former CNN anchor came after a federal magistrate judge in Minnesota had already rejected a warrant for Lemon’s arrest. Of the eight originally targeted defendants, which included six protestors plus Lemon and his producer, the magistrate only approved three arrest warrants.

The Trump Justice Department then appealed on an emergency basis to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, in an effort to force the chief district judge to overrule the magistrate’s decision. The appeals court declined last week to do so.

In the course of the rapid-fire appeal, the chief judge dismissed out of hand criminal charges against Lemon and his producer, writing in an extraordinary letter to the appeals court:

The government lumps all eight protestors together and says things that are true of some but not all of them. Two of the five protestors were not protestors at all; instead they were a journalist and his producer. There is no evidence that those two engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.

News of Lemon’s Thursday night arrest broke Friday morning after his attorney, Abbe Lowell, released a statement:

 “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi later confirmed the arrest of Lemon and three others — Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy — in a post on X, accusing them of a “coordinated attack” on the church.

It’s not clear which federal agency arrested Lemon, who was due to appear in federal court in Los Angeles this morning, the NYT reported.

Judges Rail Against Trump DOJ’s Conduct

In addition to his unusually frank exchanges with the appeals court in the Lemon case, you probably saw that U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, the chief judge in the Minnesota district, also blasted ICE this week for defying 96 court orders in 78 cases since Jan. 1 in that state alone.

Schiltz was not the only one. In two other cases this week in different states, federal judges have excoriated the Trump DOJ for its conduct in immigrant detention cases.

At issue has been the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy, a new unilateral interpretation of federal law that it rolled out last year. Judges around the country have been rejecting the administration’s interpretation in droves, but some of them have also been deeply disturbed by how the Justice Department keeps advancing the same argument without acknowledging the many losses.

Here’s U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton of the Middle District of Florida, who was so incensed that he has ordered the U.S. attorney and the assistant U.S. attorney on this case to show cause why they should not be sanctioned for their conduct:

If the Government is going to argue for expanding the interpretation of a law or maintain a widely rejected position to preserve its appellate rights, it may do so. But its lawyers must make those arguments in a way that comports with their professional obligations, as lawyers have done since time immemorial: Cite the contrary binding authority and argue why it’s wrong. Don’t hide the ball. Don’t ignore the overwhelming weight of persuasive authority as if it won’t be found. And don’t send a sacrificial lamb to stand before this Court with a fistful of cases that don’t apply and no cogent argument for why they should.

The other related issue is that the Justice Department seems overwhelmed by the sheer number of detention cases, unable to keep up and therefore coming into court with little information or facts about the cases. That prompted this withering assessment from U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin in the Southern District of West Virginia:

The Government presented no witnesses. It offered no affidavits. It introduced no testimony. The Government put no one on the stand: not an arresting officer or an immigration officer or a custodian or a decisionmaker. It offered no warrant, of any kind, nor did it offer evidence that any warrant was sought or obtained. … Basic questions about Petitioner’s detention were also left unanswered. When asked who ordered the stop, why the vehicle was stopped, what legal authority was invoked, what facts were known at the time, what statements were made, what notice was given, what process was available, and when any hearing would occur; the Government repeatedly answered: “I don’t know.” …

Here, the Government presented no evidence. This was not a technical failure. It was a complete one.

In both cases, the detainees were ordered released.

Big Lie Never Ends: Georgia Edition

Two of the big questions coming out of the FBI seizure of Fulton County’s 2020 voting records are partially, if unsatisfactorily, answered:

  • Why did the U.S. attorney in St. Louis sign a search warrant in Atlanta? Thomas Albus received a special appointment by Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate what the right wing cunningly refers to as “election integrity” cases nationwide, according to Bloomberg.
  • Why on earth was DNI Tulsi Gabbard present for the FBI search of the Fulton County voting hub? Gabbard is leading the administration’s effort to re-litigate the 2020 election and look for potential crimes, the WSJ reports, all part of President Trump’s larger campaign of retribution for losing his re-election bid. It also appears to be part of a preemptive effort to tee up executive orders ahead of this year’s midterms:

[Gabbard] has regularly briefed Trump and chief of staff Susie Wiles about her inquiry in recent months along with others involved in the investigation. Those include senior Justice Department officials, Trump’s outside ally and lawyer Cleta Mitchell and Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who pushed claims in 2020 that the election was stolen and joined the administration as a special government employee. …

She is expected to prepare a report on her work, the people said. The administration has discussed executive orders on voting ahead of the midterm elections, two of the officials said. 

Stay tuned.

Thanks For Coming Out Last Night!

Many thanks to everyone who joined us last night in D.C., despite the frigid weather and stubborn ice, for the first Morning Memo Live event. Huge props for the reader who trekked all the way from Newport News, Virginia, for our discussion of the politicization of the Justice Department.

I am indebted to our fantastic panelists, who all brought their A games: Stacey Young, Kyle Freeny, and Anna Bower were knowledgeable, witty, self-effacing, and super engaging.

At one point the Q&A veered into the question of hope versus optimism, and Kyle re-upped this Václav Havel quote as a guidepost for our current predicament:

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Amen.

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.

The Originalists Are Getting the Birthright Citizenship Case Spectacularly Wrong

Posted on by Allegra Kirkland

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes.

Last month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear oral argument in Trump v. Barbara, a case that challenges the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order purporting to redefine birthright citizenship. Although the Court has not yet put the case on the calendar, it will likely do so during this term, and issue an opinion before the justices adjourn for the summer.

The Fourteenth Amendment, which Congress adopted in the years following the Civil War, extended citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Yet Trump declared last January that going forward, persons born in the United States would not be citizens unless at least one parent is a citizen or a lawful permanent resident. If the Court allows the executive order to take effect, it would deny citizenship to hundreds of thousands of newborn babies every year, and recreate an antebellum caste system in which social disadvantage is passed down by law from parent to child.

Continue reading “The Originalists Are Getting the Birthright Citizenship Case Spectacularly Wrong” →

The Feverish View From Stephen Miller’s Office 

Posted on by Hunter Walker

The intense backlash against the ongoing immigration raids in Minnesota and the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents has led to some backpedaling and a reported tone shift from the White House. The much vaunted toning down even included a rare moment of moderation and mea culpa from one of President Trump’s most notoriously hardline aides, Stephen Miller. However, while Miller walked back claims Pretti was a “domestic terrorist,” on social media, he and his team have continued to promote a paranoid narrative that the people protesting ICE are violent and even reminiscent of armed insurgents in the Middle East. 

“Working under the most adverse conditions imaginable, stalked, hunted, tailed, surveilled and viciously attacked by organized violent leftists every hour of the day, our heroic ICE officers selflessly defend our sovereignty and the lives of our people. True courage and devotion,” Miller wrote in one X post on Tuesday. 

That overheated commentary came at the same time Miller was calling reporters trying to clarify the Trump administration’s initial comments about Pretti’s death.

In the hours after Pretti was shot multiple times on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement claiming he was present at the scene of an immigration raid to “massacre law enforcement.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem additionally described Pretti as a domestic terrorist, which is a label she also applied to Renée Good, another activist who was killed by federal agents earlier this month. Both Pretti and Good were among the community members in Minneapolis who arrived at the scenes of immigration raids. This type of rapid response has been a core part of the growing nationwide movement opposing ICE. 

While rapid responders aim to disrupt the immigration enforcement operations, they have largely been non-violent. ICE, on the other hand, killed dozens of people last year. Pretti was a licensed gun owner and was carrying a pistol when he was killed, but video analysis of the incident shows that it was not drawn and agents removed it from his person before shooting him.

There are many signs that Americans are not buying the Trump administration’s narratives about ICE. Recent polls have shown that a majority of Americans believe ICE is too aggressive, that they are making communities “less safe,” and that their operations should be decreased. More broadly, polls indicate overall approval for Trump’s immigration policies is underwater, with a majority of people convinced too many people are being deported and that many do not fit the administration’s claim these operations are focused on violent criminals. There’s good reason for the public skepticism. While the Trump administration has consistently insisted they are targeting the “worst of the worst,” data has shown the majority of people being detained and deported have no criminal records. Trump seems to be acutely aware of all the negative reactions and, in a speech earlier this month, he openly worried about having “bad public relations people.”

That context helps explain why the response to Pretti’s death descended into what Politico later described as “finger pointing” on Jan. 27 with Noem attributing the initial comments to Miller, who reached out to reporters suggesting the characterization of Pretti as a terrorist was based on inaccurate information from Border Patrol. This back and forth — and a dramatic reshuffling of the officials leading the charge in Minneapolis — are indicative of mounting political pressure and opposition to ICE. Yet, while Miller is dutifully participating in the public and official toning down, he and his team are also continuing to spin wild fantasies casting the protesters as a terrifying guerrilla insurgency. 

In other X posts in the days since Pretti’s death, Miller has accused Democrats of trying to incite attacks on ICE and of fomenting “armed resistance.” Kara Frederick, who White House salary records identify as a special assistant to the president and senior policy advisor to Miller, also reposted a lengthy message from a man identifying himself as a special forces veteran who compared rapid responders to Middle Eastern insurgents because they are tracking ICE vehicles, have encrypted group chats, and are receiving “mutual aid from sympathetic locals.”

“When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers … you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies,” the man wrote. 

On Instagram, Frederick also shared a post comparing criticism of ICE to a “psy op.”

TPM asked the White House how the overheated and dramatic posts from Miller and his team likening protests to militancy square with the administration’s supposed tonal shift. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson responded by pointing to an incident where a woman allegedly bit a Border Patrol officer and severely injured them during the protests that erupted in Minneapolis in the hours after Pretti was shot on Saturday. A second woman was also charged with biting an officer in a separate incident near the same time and vicinity.

“Earlier this week, a violent rioter in Minneapolis bit off an ICE officer’s finger. Violent rioters who assault federal law enforcement officers and impede law enforcement operations are not merely ‘protestors,'” Jackson said.

Miller also shared a post highlighting the biting incident from the Department of Homeland Security on his X page. Along with all of the messages painting the protesters as part of a violent campaign, Miller has also continually advanced a very hyperbolic Great Replacement vision of the overall immigration picture. 

“The Democrat Party yearns and fights and struggles for nothing more than a fully open border to the third world,” he wrote on Wednesday evening. 

The administration’s public posture may be changing, but these posts are a window into Miller’s mind. It’s a frightening, feverish place. 

— Hunter Walker

Dems Want To Know Why Tulsi Gabbard Was At FBI Raid

Multiple reports have now confirmed that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was present at Wednesday’s FBI raid of an election office near Atlanta in Fulton County, Georgia.

“Director Gabbard has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election infrastructure,” a senior Trump administration official told NBC News. “She has and will continue to take action on President Trump’s directive to secure our elections and work with our interagency partners to do so.”

In a post on X on Thursday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) questioned Gabbard’s presence at the raid. 

“Why did Tulsi Gabbard take part in a raid on an elections office? We need to step up to protect our elections from this administration’s meddling,” he wrote. 

During a press briefing on Thursday, David Becker, a former DOJ lawyer and the executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research said,  “there is no reason for the Director of National Intelligence to be in any kind of voting site.”

“She has neither the authority nor the competence to assess anything in that voting site,” he added. “Having someone from another agency, particularly an intelligence agency is entirely odd and unusual.”

— Khaya Himmelman

Georgia Senator in the Dark on Fulton County Election Raid

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) told TPM Thursday that he hasn’t learned anything more about the Wednesday FBI raid of the Fulton County election office.

Agents seized “all physical ballots from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County,” “tabulator tapes for every voting machine used in Fulton County” and “all voter rolls from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County,” per the warrant.

Ossoff did not sound optimistic that more information on the raid — which seems born of President Trump’s conspiracy theory-inflected grievance from losing the 2020 election — would be forthcoming. 

 “It’s not an administration known for its transparency,” he quipped as the Senate elevator doors slid close.

— Kate Riga

In Case You Missed It

Catch up on our live coverage of the Senate’s handling of DHS reform here: Vote Fails but Schumer, White House Negotiations Progress on DHS Funding Bill

TPM Cafe: Why Conspiracy Theories About the Minnesota Protests Are Falling Flat

Morning Memo: Content Creator Pam Bondi Happily Does Trump’s Dirty Political Work

Yesterday’s Most Read Story

Democrats Unveil ICE Demands as Partial Shutdown Inches Closer

What We Are Reading

ICE ending Maine surge, Senator Collins says 

Battles Are Raging Inside the Department of Homeland Security

Trump faces fresh MAGA blowback for efforts to ‘de-escalate’ in Minnesota

This post was updated with a statement from the White House.

ICE Masks, Billionaires and the Politics of Anti-Accountability

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Masks have become the central symbol of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement wilding sprees across America in 2025. They are emblems of a secret police. Their gaiters and balaclavas convey menace. But their central justification is the idea that the agents themselves are endangered by their work, that their identities must be kept secret because they are endangered by the very public they menace while at least notionally working to serve and protect. The general argument is that ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents risk being “doxxed,” being identified and having their private information and home addresses made public. But the word has been the subject to an absurd expansion. Earlier this week I heard an anecdote about a group of ICE agents who were eating at a Minneapolis restaurant. A right-wing account said the agents were then “doxxed,” which in this case meant that activists saw them and sent out word to other activists who then started protesting outside the restaurant.

It’s remarkable how accepted this purported need for anonymity has become. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has become increasingly outspoken about ICE and called for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to lose her job. But he still thinks ICE agents should remain masked because of this fear of “doxxing.” A bunch of the country seems to have forgotten that even the most abusive of metropolitan departments require their officers to show their faces and wear name tags as a matter of course.

In this post I want to dig more into that rationale: that the people who are entrusted with the power to wield legitimate violence to serve the public need special protection, special rights to privacy and anonymity in order to do so. What is implicit in this claim is that ICE needs to do its work in a highly abusive manner, or perhaps even that its work is to be as abusive as possible. Why else do they need to be more anonymous than your average beat cop? If they’re going to get a lot of people mad, it just follows that they need some additional protection from the consequences of generating that kind of anger.

Needless to say this argument treads a pretty slippery slope.

Continue reading “ICE Masks, Billionaires and the Politics of Anti-Accountability” →