The U.S. and Iran both announced this morning that the Strait of Hormuz is now fully open for the duration of the current ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. While the news is positive on the surface for global commerce and the global energy-economic crisis, few developments better illustrate the situation Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have gotten the U.S., the global economy and Israel into. What we see now is that the health of the global economy is, going forward, subject to fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. In a way Iran has always had a tacit or latent hold on the Strait of Hormuz. Simple geography tells you that. But it was only when Trump forced the matter that Iran learned how comparatively easy a lever that was to pull. They didn’t have to sink any oil tankers and even seriously damage one. They just had to issue threats and do some drone harassment. Maritime insurance markets would take care of the rest. There’s no way not to see this as a massive strategic win for Iran.
ICE Agent Faces State Charges in Minnesota
A Potentially Important Test Case
Local authorities in Minnesota have charged an ICE agent for brandishing his gun in a road-rage-style incident that could end up being an important test case for whether states can successfully prosecute federal agents for their misconduct in Trump’s mass deportation operation.
The two-count criminal complaint accuses Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., 35, of Maryland of second-degree assault for pointing his gun at the driver and passenger of a vehicle he was attempting to pass on the shoulder of the road as he and his partner made their way back to the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis at the end of their shift on Feb. 5. A warrant has been issued for Morgan’s arrest.
The complaint states: “During his interview, Defendant made no claim that he was conducting any law-enforcement operation or activity or responding to any emergency situation during the incident.”
Much will ride on whether Morgan was still on duty at the time of the incident and whether passing cars on the shoulder in an unmarked vehicle without lights or sirens, then flashing his gun, were part of his official duties. Those will be among the issues that Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty will have to overcome to sidestep the defenses the officer is likely to raise, including immunity from state prosecution.
In that sense, the Morgan case may not be the optimal test case for Moriarty if she is exploring the waters for bringing state charges against the federal agents in the three major shootings during Operation Metro Surge. But unlike in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, where the feds have refused to cooperate in any way, the Morgan case played out differently.
“This is the only case that we actually know what the federal officers say,” Moriarty told the Star Tribune. “We have their statement. We have video. The difference is that it came to us just like any other case would have.”
Minnesota State Police responded to the scene after a 911 call from the passenger of the vehicle Morgan allegedly assaulted and were able to gather evidence unobstructed by federal law enforcement. The passenger in the vehicle had video of Morgan’s license plate, which state police were able to link to a rental vehicle leased by Morgan’s partner, according to the complaint. A license plate reader at the Whipple Building clocked the vehicle, and state police learned the next day that both agents were at the building, the complaint says.
Critically, Morgan and his partner agreed to voluntary interviews with state police, the complaint says, in which they confirmed key details of the incident, including Morgan having drawn his weapon. Morgan told state police he “feared for his safety and the safety of others.”
The Star Tribune reports it this way: “The trooper called his lieutenant, who was at Whipple, gave him the license plate and asked him to look for the SUV. It was in the parking lot. The trooper interviewed the ICE agents with his body camera recording.”
Notably, neither Morgan nor his partner reported the incident, Morgan’s supervisor told state police, according to the complaint.
Mass Deportation Watch
- Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, who has suffered from stress-related symptoms that have landed him in the hospital twice during his tenure overseeing Trump’s mass deportation operation, plans to resign next month.
- In a rare rebuke of Trump’s mass deportation policies, 11 GOP House members defected to help Democrats pass a bill to continue temporary protected status for 350,000 Haitians.
- The French foreign minister announced that an 85-year-old French widow of an American military veteran returned to France this morning after being held in ICE custody since April 1. The woman was apparently detained at the behest of one of her stepsons as part of an ugly inheritance battle, a probate judge in Alabama found.
Latest on the Middle East …
- A tentative 10-day ceasefire was reached between Israel and Lebanon. Hezbollah was not a party to the agreement, but civilians began streaming back into southern Lebanon Friday morning after the ceasefire was announced.
- With European airlines facing looming fuel shortages within weeks, Iran announced that the Strait of Hormuz is now open for the duration of the ceasefire: “The passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open.”
- The Trump White House is considering a $20 billion cash-for-uranium deal with Iran, Axios reports, the irony of which is hard to overstate. For years, Trump has mischaracterized the cash component of President Obama JCPOA’s agreement with Iran and made it a recurring rhetorical set-piece, including as recently as last month.
The Christian Nationalist Project
Sarah Posner in TPM: “The Trump regime has a preferred religion — a bellicose, nationalist Christianity — but its expression, as we saw this week, can be very erratic and often theologically incomprehensible. But one thing is clear from all the chaos. The Trumpist establishment of religion is made up of various fiefdoms within the federal government, all aimed at protecting, and even justifying, the regime’s impunity.”
Quote of the Day
“Blessed are the peacemakers! But woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”—Pope Leo XIV
Judge Scoffs at Trump’s New National Security Rationale for Ballroom
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of D.C. has once again blocked above-ground construction of Trump’s vanity ballroom project on top of the ruins of the demolished East Wing of the White House. An appeals court shipped the case back to Leon for clarification on Trump’s spurious new claims in the case that the ballroom construction is driven by national security imperatives.
Leon was having none of it. “National security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity,” he wrote, as he allowed below-ground construction of bunkers and other security measures to continue.
Impoundment? What Impoundment?
Russ Vought to Congress: Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?
Trump DOJ Seizes on Swalwell Scandal
In an alternate universe, you would applaud the Justice Department investigating alleged serial sexual assaults by a member of Congress, but the Trump DOJ jumping in to investigate disgraced Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) smacks of retributive prosecution all the same, especially given the president’s own predilections.
Deep Dive on Presidential Records Act
Christopher Fonzone, who was the last head of the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel before Trump retook office, takes a close look at why the Presidential Records Act is constitutional, has been adhered to by every administration in the 50 years since it became law, and how the new OLC memo to the contrary is a shoddy piece of slapdash legal analysis.
For Your Radar …
It’s not precisely clear in the strictest scientific terms whether the National Weather Service belatedly recognized the tornado threat in the Kansas City area Monday night because of agency staffing shortages and budget cuts, but the evidence is striking that weather balloon launches upstream were delayed from the normal 7 a.m. to noon, too late to be ingested by the morning runs of some forecast models.
“It’s like we’re conducting a real-time experiment without any way to evaluate what the impacts of it are,” Alan Gerard, a meteorologist who retired last year as the director of analysis and understanding at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, told NBC News.
For its part, NOAA denied the change to weather balloon launch times adversely impacted forecast models. “NOAA’s weather model performance shows no evidence of degradation,” a spokesperson said.
ICYMI: Zeldin Doesn’t Talk Like an EPA Chief
NYT: “A New York Times analysis of thousands of public communications by E.P.A. administrators, including news releases, social media posts, television appearances and podcast interviews dating back three decades, shows that Mr. Zeldin has fundamentally shifted both the agency’s mission and the words he uses to describe it to reflect President Trump’s desire to maximize economic development and industrial activity while downplaying environmental consequences.”
See You Back Here Monday
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Neomi Rao Understands What It Means to Be a Trump Judge
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes.
For a full year, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has been trying to hold the Trump administration accountable for violating a court order that prohibited the government from arbitrarily sending immigration detainees to be imprisoned in El Salvador. Trump-appointed judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals have spent that year preventing him from doing so. On Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit issued its fourth order halting Boasberg’s contempt inquiry, which Judge Neomi Rao, a first-term Trump appointee, characterized in her majority opinion as “improper,” “unnecessary,” and “a clear abuse of discretion.”
The D.C. Circuit’s latest order directs Boasberg to “terminate” his criminal contempt proceedings. But the contempt inquiry is not likely to end here. Rao, a rumored candidate on Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist, was writing for a divided three-judge panel and joined by fellow Trump appointee Justin Walker. The attorneys for the wrongfully removed people plan to petition the full D.C. Circuit to review the panel’s decision. And six of the court’s 11 judges are already on record saying that Boasberg properly exercised his contempt authority, and that an earlier panel was wrong to cut off the district court’s investigative process.
Continue reading “Neomi Rao Understands What It Means to Be a Trump Judge”The Feuding Little Christian Fiefdoms of the Trump Administration
In Church, Merch, and State, Sarah Posner writes about the intersection of religion and politics in the United States. This column is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
From AI blasphemies to attacks on the papacy to prayers from the filmography of Quentin Tarantino, the Trump administration has managed to pack what feels like a year’s worth of breaking religion news into the past week. Since Sunday, when Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as a healing Jesus Christ and then bizarrely attacked Pope Leo XIV as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” matters have escalated, or rather descended, into greater depths of what many Catholics and Christians would consider rank heresy. Reacting to the Pope’s criticisms of the Iran War, Vice President JD Vance, speaking at a sparsely attended Turning Point USA event in Georgia on Tuesday, lectured that “it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” and questioned the Augustinian pope’s understanding of, well, St. Augustine. On Wednesday, at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth offered a prayer for “great vengeance and furious anger” that was derived from a fictitious elaboration on Ezekiel 25:17 by Jules Winnfield, the character played by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.
It is easy to get distracted by the bonkers content creation, but we should not lose sight of the fact that the First Amendment proscribes government establishment of religion, even if the founders could not imagine AI or dark Hollywood crime comedies, much less their misappropriation to wage an illegal war. The Trump regime has a preferred religion — a bellicose, nationalist Christianity — but its expression, as we saw this week, can be very erratic and often theologically incomprehensible. But one thing is clear from all the chaos. The Trumpist establishment of religion is made up of various fiefdoms within the federal government, all aimed at protecting, and even justifying, the regime’s impunity.
Continue reading “The Feuding Little Christian Fiefdoms of the Trump Administration”Understanding What ‘Inflation’ Really Means in Electoral Terms
In the middle years of the Biden administration there was an idea that right-wing dominance of the media ecosystem, or simply social media breaking people’s brains, had blinded people to the fact that inflation was actually coming down fast. Indeed, by the time the 2024 election came around, inflation had come down dramatically and was close to what economists consider optimal — between 2% and 4%. (For all the ribbing economists took about predicting the COVID inflation would be “transitory” by any historical metric, it was.) Yet most people refused to believe that inflation had, in fact, been subdued. And “affordability” continues to be the political buzzword of the day going into the 2026 midterm elections. But this always struck me as a basic failure of analysis, imagining that the public at large and economists mean the same thing by inflation. They don’t. That should be obvious. And it probably is obvious to most of us. But a lot of us, including myself for at least part of the time, failed to draw out the proper conclusions.
Continue reading “Understanding What ‘Inflation’ Really Means in Electoral Terms”Trump, Grassley Publicly Speculate About Alito Replacements
‘I Hope He Doesn’t Retire … But If He Does …’
As the end of the Supreme Court term inches closer, Republicans’ nudging of Justice Samuel Alito toward the exits has become more public.
President Trump broached the topic for the first time Wednesday on Fox News.
Continue reading “Trump, Grassley Publicly Speculate About Alito Replacements”‘He Just Lied to America’: Russ Vought Denies Violating Impoundment Laws, Prompting Sharp Response
Despite his central role in the Trump administration, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought had not appeared before Congress to answer questions since last June. That changed this week. And members of Congress had a lot of them.
Continue reading “‘He Just Lied to America’: Russ Vought Denies Violating Impoundment Laws, Prompting Sharp Response”Mike Lindell Won’t Let a Pesky Contempt of Court Finding Get Him Down
Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise!
There’s a lot to discuss this week, but first a little check-in with our favorite pillow maven-turned-election conspiracy theorist, and now also a Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidate (ugh, yes, this is still happening), Mike Lindell.
Lindell was held in contempt of court late last month by a Trump-appointed federal judge for not paying over $50,000 in sanctions to Smartmatic related to Lindell’s “frivolous” lawsuit against the voting machine company. The court has ordered Lindell to pay Smartmatic additional fees if he fails to comply.
I asked Lindell about this and how the order might impact his gubernatorial run. He had a lot to say, mostly focused on his ongoing fight against voting machines and the supposedly stolen 2020 election.
“I will not back down at all,” he told me. “We’re still going all the way to court. These will end up in trial years from now. It’s still not to trial. I’m taking it all the way to jury trial because we have to save our country.”
We really must give the man credit for his undying devotion to the Big Lie.
If the election system is so unsafe, how do you expect to run for governor and trust the results of the election, I asked him. I never got a solid answer to this one, unfortunately.
Here’s what he did say, though.
“The people know that I’ve been out there, that I’m fighting to save our country … and like I say, I’ve had more problems with Republicans blocking me than Democrats, for sure. All the people want secure elections.”
“The fraud’s really a blessing in Minnesota because now we can get stuff opened up and, and show the…Minnesota’s kind of the tip of the spear with all the fraud in our welfare programs,” he concluded, incoherently nodding at a current right-wing fixation with social services fraud in Minnesota that is being investigated but also used as a justification for President Trump’s lethal immigration enforcement and suspension of federal funding there.
Anyway, that’s all from Lindell for now…
There’s a lot more to unpack. Let’s dive in.
An Election Denier is Trying to Run the Show in Arizona
GOP Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, who is an election denier running for attorney general, is asking the Justice Department to investigate the person whose job he wants, Attorney General Kris Mayes, as well as Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, both Democrats. He claims they should be investigated for obstruction of justice and witness tampering related to the DOJ’s investigation into 2020 election records.
Let’s back up a little bit first.
In March, the Trump administration expanded its supposed 2020 election probe to Maricopa County, Arizona, which has been a hotbed for election conspiracy theories for years now due to the size of the county and the fact that it is purple.
Following the 2020 election, Arizona state Senate Republicans initiated a very obviously partisan “audit” of the 2.1 million ballots cast and the 400 voting machines used in Maricopa County. The “audit” was very much not an audit, but a partisan election review that election deniers insisted on, even though the state had conducted several official audits that found no evidence of fraud.
The administration is now looking into records from this “audit” — as all of Trump’s cronies in his administration look for ways to examine his delusion that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Petersen had no issue complying with the subpoena last month.
After the state Senate received the subpoena, Mayes and Fontes sprinted to send out letters, warning county recorders to not hand over sensitive data to the DOJ as part of this 2020 election probe.
Mayes also sent a letter to Petersen at the time, asking him if he had handed over voter registration information to the DOJ that is “not generally available for public inspection,” according to the Arizona Mirror.
Petersen, of course, had an issue with all of this, and is now asking for federal prosecutors to investigate Mayes and Fontes for not complying with the federal grand jury subpoena. It’s absurd on its face because Petersen is trying to unseat Mayes for attorney general, so there are clearly some other motives involved here!
“The threats of the Attorney General and Secretary of State are incompatible with the United States Constitution, which enshrines the grand jury in our constitutional order, and only serve to hinder voters’ confidence in our elections. Instead of fighting over these issues, we should all be working together to ensure the election integrity necessary to realize our country’s democratic promise,” Petersen wrote in an April 7 letter. “The Attorney General and Secretary’s phobia of fair and secure elections is impossible to explain absent nefarious motives.”
Mayes, in response to Petersen, issued a statement of her own that same day, railing against the years-old “audit” and pointing out that Petersen is simply caving to Trump’s will.
“After wasting taxpayer dollars on the laughable Cyber Ninja’s audit, Petersen again wasted Arizona’s taxpayer dollar on a legal opinion that painstakingly tries to justify his failure to uphold Arizona’s constitutional right to protect its voters’ privacy,” she wrote. “This is yet another example of Petersen desperately seeking favor from a president who cannot accept that he lost his re-election in 2020 fair and square. Arizonans will not be fooled.”
Another Update in the DOGE Voter Data Agreement Saga
We have some updates in the ongoing DOGE Social Security Administration voter data pact saga.
For a quick refresher: in January the DOJ admitted that in a March 2025 court filing that two members of the DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration signed a pact with an “advocacy group” to use Social Security data as a way to find voter fraud to overturn election results in specific states.
The legal nonprofit organization Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit against the Social Security Administration last month to get the agency to turn over records related to this apparent pact for sensitive voter data.
Last week, a federal appeals court called the details of the case “alarming” and said there are “even more alarming” developments in the case that a lower court must examine.
“The government’s recent acknowledgments are alarming and raise serious questions about its earlier conduct before the district court,” the appeals court order read.
Only days later on Tuesday, per Democracy Docket, a federal judge ordered discovery in the case, meaning that the SSA and DOGE could be mandated to turn over records and we might actually get some more clarity on what happened here.
So, stay tuned for more.
Around the States: The Latest in State-Level Proof of Citizenship Bills
While the SAVE America Act languishes in the Senate and Republicans in both chambers try to figure out they might potentially stuff provisions of the SAVE Act into an unrelated potential reconciliation package (they likely won’t be able to get away with this), red states around the country are attempting to pass their own versions of disenfranchising proof of citizenship bills. Here’s the latest:
Florida
Earlier this month, GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Florida SAVE Act into law. The bill requires voters to provide proof of citizenship as part of the basic registration process.
Kansas
Last week, the Republican-controlled Kansas state legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of The SAVE Kansas Act, which is also modeled after the SAVE America Act.
Kelly has said that the bill would “suppress civic engagement and make it harder for Kansans to vote.”
Mississippi
Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed The Mississippi SHIELD Act into law earlier this month. The law, also modeled after the SAVE America Act, mandates that election officials check citizenship status of voters using the federal SAVE system run out of the Department of Homeland Security.
In Other Election News
Washington Post: A GOP-aligned group is using Klan imagery to target Black voters
ProPublica: Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections
AP: Gov. Wes Moore falls short in push to redraw Maryland’s congressional map to boost Democrats
Politico: ‘It would be catastrophic’: A Supreme Court decision could upend Alaska’s crucial Senate race
Trump’s DOJ Keeps Making Things Worse for His Fed Nominee
Late last month, Layla A. Jones wrote a piece for us detailing the ways in which Trump’s attack on Jerome Powell had “backfired royally.” It’s only gotten worse since then.
Continue reading “Trump’s DOJ Keeps Making Things Worse for His Fed Nominee”Hegseth to Reporters: Whose Side Are You On?
Compares Press to the Pharisees
A thin-skinned and prickly Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went off on journalists in his press conference this morning, resorting to the classic “attack the messenger” defense to a unpopular war going poorly.
It’s not the first time Hegseth has succumbed to blaming a lack of patriotism among reporters for unfavorable headlines and critical reporting on a Middle East conflict ignited by the Trump administration. But today’s screed was striking for how it mixed the old worn-out reflexive questioning of the loyalty of reporters with biblical references that reflect Hegseth’s personal Christian nationalism:
“Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on,” Hegseth said. “It’s incredibly unpatriotic.”
In the decades since the Vietnam War, the Pentagon had haltingly moved away from the defensive crouch it often took in the face of criticism toward a more transparent and self-reflective public response to bad news. It was not always consistent and the backsliding was dramatic during periods of sustained setbacks, like in Iraq during the aughts, but the general trajectory was away from the kind of knee-jerk circle-the-wagons approach that Hegseth rolled out this morning.
Questioning the loyalty of journalists — or any regime critics — harkens to earlier dark eras of America history and to authoritarian regimes worldwide. But Hegseth’s diatribe came with a strong Christian twist, as he compared journalists to the Pharisees who rejected Jesus in the Bible:
“The Pharisees, the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down, to record, but their hearts were hardened, even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter,” Hegseth said.
“They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda. As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him, how to destroy him,” he continued.
“I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees, not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press, your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors,” he added.
Hegseth — callow, reactive, driven by a warped theology of nationalism, and poorly grounded in history — personally represents a dramatic break from decades of training, education, and refining of a professional officers corps. In 15 months in office, Hegseth has done more to politicize the military than any secretary of defense in at least the last half century.
Third Boat Strike in Three Days
The accelerated pace of unlawful strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats continued in the eastern Pacific, with the third such strike in the last three days. Three people were killed in the 51st strike of the U.S. campaign, bringing the death toll to at least 177 people.
What Trump Foreign Policy Looks Like
- USA Today: Pentagon ramps up planning for possible military ops in Cuba
- WSJ: Pentagon Approaches Automakers, Manufacturers to Boost Weapons Production
- WaPo: Trump administration pushes nations to sign ‘trade over aid’ declaration
SCOTUS Watch
- Justice Sonia Sotomayor apologized privately to Justice Brett Kavanaugh and followed up with a public apology released by the Supreme Court for remarks last week that, without naming him, attributed his defense of what have become known as “Kavanaugh stops” to his posh upbringing.
- In a public appearance at Yale Law School, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the Roberts Court’s handling of its emergency docket.
- In unusually pointed remarks carried live by CSPAN, Justice Clarence Thomas launched a broadside at progressivism.
Jan. 6 Never Ends
- Trump lawyer and coup plotter John Eastman was officially disbarred in California after the state Supreme Court declined to take up his appeal.
- Trump I White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is seeking reimbursement from the Trump DOJ of his legal fees incurred as a witness in both of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations.
Must Read
Heather Cox Richardson draws a straight line from Lincoln’s assassination to Jan. 6 and the events of this week.
Do as We Say Not as We Do
NBC News: “Anti-abortion advocates met with Justice Department officials Wednesday, just hours after the Trump administration fired prosecutors it accused of coordinating too closely with abortion-rights advocacy groups during the Biden administration.”
Election-Year Islamophobia
When all else fails and their election prospects look dire, Republicans fall back on various forms of racist appeals to solidify their base and wrong-foot Democrats. This year, top Texas Republicans have landed on Islamophobia as the racist appeal of choice. TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports on the ground from Grapevine, Texas, where he talks to right-wing activists who are back again to warning about Sharia law and portraying Muslims as an external threat to “real” Americans.
Too often, gullible national media outlets treat these racist effusions like an organic upwelling of nativism, rather than a calculated election year strategy. TPM, I’m proud to say, has never been suckered in.
Thread of the Day
The Corruption: Bitcoin Jesus Edition
ProPublica offers a casebook study in the erosion of white-collar crime prosecutions under Trump II that includes the intervention of DOJ political appointees and the retention of a former Trump criminal defense attorney to outright kill one of the largest-ever cryptocurrency tax fraud cases.
Creepy Text of the Day
“Hearing u/r in town. Wishing you would let me know. I could have made some excuses to get out and show u around. Please keep this private.”—Richard Chavez, father of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, in a text to a young female staff member working for his daughter
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.