This excerpt is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
A question at the center of our political moment is what happens when state power operates without meaningful accountability? We are living through a period of profound distrust in institutions, from courts to law enforcement to political leadership, and in today’s political climate, where arguments about “law and order” often crowd out conversations about fairness, it is worth asking who bears the cost of that momentum.
Below, I tell the story of Jannell, a Bronx public school employee charged with felony insurance fraud based largely on a mistaken date and a false prosecutorial theory. Her case was eventually dismissed. But it took years — and in the meantime she lost her job, her stability, and nearly her life.
In a time when debates about crime, public safety, and prosecutorial authority dominate headlines, Jannell’s story — excerpted from my new book The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, A Violent System, and a Public Defenders Search for Justice — shows how easily ordinary people can be swept into the machinery of accusation. Unfortunately, this is not a unique story of sensational miscarriage of justice, it reflects routine damage inflicted by a dysfunctional “justice” system. Jannell’s story is a reminder that the system’s reach is already vast and has profound collateral consequences, even if the defendant’s case is dismissed or if they are found not guilty.
President Trump got some decent news on the inflation and jobs front in the January data. There are signs that the January jobs number may just be a positive blip in an overall downcast trend from 2025. The cooling inflation numbers may be offset by price hikes from manufacturers who have been holding off on passing on tariff costs until the new year. Still, for a president with sinking popularity, those numbers are better than nothing. And yet, despite some nods to affordability, there’s really little evidence that Trump is in any way shifting course or doing anything likely to shift the downward pressure on public support which threatens to wash away Republicans’ congressional majorities in November. They made some nods to that in Minneapolis. But we can be confident now that it’s window dressing on a mass deportation program that remains intact and bounding forward. On the contrary, everything we see suggests a pedal-to-the-metal, double-down approach. The main effort focused on the election is not one focused on increasing public support but putting a thumb on the scales with the administration’s so-called SAVE Act to suppress the vote. Everything points to a collision between these two forces, Trump and the American public, in November.
It appears Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is attempting to evade responsibility for the situation that unfolded this week on “The Late Show” — despite the fact that it all unfolded after the FCC launched an investigation into the daytime talk show “The View,” which, like Late Show host Stephen Colbert, had interviewed Democratic Texas Senate candidate and state Rep. James Talarico.
And as Hunter Walker explained during a Wednesday Substack Live, “the call is coming from inside the house.” The raid came about thanks to a referral from special government employee Kurt Olsen, and thanks to the analysis of another special government employee, Clay Parikh.
In a conversation with editor Allegra Kirkland, Hunter breaks down exactly who these people are and why the Fulton County raid is so dangerous.
The White House wanted investigations into those it describes as left-wing activists and the groups that fund them. And now, FBI Director Kash Patel says, the FBI is delivering.
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For months, President Donald Trump has railed against Latin American narcoterrorists flooding the United States with “lethal poison.” He has used the scourge of drug trafficking as a rationale for dozens of military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, which have left more than 140 people dead.
Last month, Trump cheered a military assault by U.S. forces that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and brought them to the U.S. to face charges related to cocaine trafficking. Maduro, Trump said, led a “vicious cartel” that “flooded our nation with lethal poison responsible for the deaths of countless Americans.”
But when it comes to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was tried and convicted in the U.S. in 2024 and sentenced to 45 years in prison for taking bribes and allowing traffickers to export more than 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S., Trump has taken a decidedly softer tone.
McLaughlin was a key contributor to a particular Trump II aesthetic: young, photogenic, often blonde women going feral in front of cameras on behalf of President Trump and his most odious nativist policies, in a performative spectacle that rejected the very premise of transparency and public accountability.
The peak example of McLaughlin’s angry-white-woman theatrics came in May, when the Trump administration rushed out a planeload of immigrants to South Sudan, in violation of an order from U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy of Boston. McLaughlin raced in front of the cameras to attack Murphy as he was convening an emergency hearing in the matter:
The deportees sat on a tarmac in Djibouti for days while the case made its way to the Supreme Court, where the six-justice conservative majority stayed Murphy’s order over a vigorous dissent from the three liberal justices, allowing the deportations to South Sudan to be completed.
No accountability then, and no accountability now.
In the Trump administration, where time is a flat circle, McLaughlin’s departure is virtually meaningless. It doesn’t represent a rejection of the mass deportation policy after the debacle in Minnesota, of the white nationalist gloss of DHS social media posts, or of her rampant false statements and made-up facts. It’s not a retrenchment or a retreat.
In its own odd way, it’s just the typical cycling through of staff at the one-year mark of a new administration — but with the twist of Trump bringing the prerogatives of reality TV casting to bear. Someone else — probably young, blonde, female, and snarling — will emerge as Trump’s favorite bombastic spokesperson, dodging tough questions from the press with pro-wrestling bluster and playground taunts. Rinse and repeat.
Mass Deportation Watch
Minnesota: State and federal authorities are investigating last month’s alleged beating of a Mexican national by federal agents in a St. Paul parking lot that left him in the ICU with eight skull fractures.
New York: An immigration judge dropped the Trump administration’s case against Columbia University graduate student Mohsen Mahdawi, a pro-Palestinian protestor, because the government failed to properly authenticate a key document, his lawyers say.
Nationwide: In an attempt to prevent a repeat of Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, Democratic mayors in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Boston, Oakland and Seattle have signed executive orders attempting to restrict how and where ICE can operate in their cities, while a coalition of local Democratic prosecutors is warning that they will prosecute ICE agents who break the law.
Judge: ICE Can’t Re-detain Abrego Garcia
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland issued a new order barring ICE from re-detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the wrongfully deported El Salvadoran national that has been relentlessly targeted by the Trump administration.
In extending her prior injunction prohibiting ICE from taking Abrego Garcia back into custody, Xinis rejected a bad faith Trump administration argument that because last month it had issued an order of removal for Abrego Garcia retroactive to 2019, the clock restarted on when he could be detained and for how long.
Three Lawless Boat Strikes in One Day
Eleven people were killed Monday in a trio of unlawful U.S. strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, raising the known death toll in the months-long campaign to 144 or 145 (reports vary).
About Those Supposed ‘Rescues’ …
I’ve treated with considerable skepticism the reports that the Pentagon has summoned the Coast Guard to rescue survivors of its lawless boat strike campaign. Given the distances and time lag involved, the rescue efforts seem half-hearted at best. Now The Intercept puts some meat on the bone of at least one supposed rescue attempt and shows how inadequate and belated it was:
Eight men leapt into those rough seas on December 30 when the U.S. rained down a barrage of munitions, sinking three vessels. They required immediate rescue; chances were slim that they could survive even an hour. In announcing its strike, U.S. Southern Command or SOUTHCOM, said it “immediately notified” the Coast Guard to launch search and rescue protocols to save the men. …
Using open-source flight tracking data, Airwars and The Intercept learned that a Coast Guard plane did not head toward the site of the attack for almost two days. A timeline provided by the Coast Guard confirmed that it was roughly 45 hours before a flight arrived at the search area.
The slow response and lack of rescue craft in the area suggests there was scant interest on the part of the U.S. in saving anyone. It’s part of a pattern of what appear to be imitation rescue missions that since mid-October have not saved a single survivor.
The Corruption: Drone Edition
WSJ: Eric Trump Invests in ‘Low Cost Per Kill’ Drone Company
The Corruption: Ballroom Edition
President Trump has named his longtime executive assistant Chamberlain Harris — a 26-year-old with no relevant experience — to the 116-year-old Commission of Fine Arts, which will review Trump’s plan for his vanity ballroom project. The WaPo wryly notes that the commission’s initial membership included Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Daniel Burnham. Trump has similarly placed loyalists on the National Capital Planning Commission, which must also review the ballroom plan.
Thread of the Day
Mistrial in Texas ‘Antifa’ Case
The judge in the federal terrorism trial of protestors allegedly involved in the July 4 incident at an ICE detention center in Prairieland, Texas, where a police officer was shot declared a mistrial during jury selection because a defense attorney was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with images of civil rights leaders.
Back to the Well on Islamophobia
With Texas Republicans trying to juice their midterm election chances by whipping up a fresh round of Islamophobia, the Trump Department of Housing and Urban Development has opened a new discrimination investigation into a large housing development centered on a mosque outside of Dallas.
The Trump DOJ had already quietly closed an investigation into the development last summer, but HUD Secretary Scott Turner jumped loudly into the fray with early voting already underway ahead of the March 3 primary election, which features a hard-fought GOP race for U.S. Senate.
Meanwhile, Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), a Jewish first-term congressman, engaged in straight-up anti-Muslim bigotry, posting on social media: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Quote of the Day
“Censoring science and erasing America’s history at national parks are direct threats to everything these amazing places, and our country, stand for. As Americans, we deserve national parks that tell stories of our country’s triumphs and heartbreaks alike. We can handle the truth.”—Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources at the National Parks Conservation Association, which filed a new lawsuit in federal court in Boston challenging President Trump’s March 2025 executive order on “restoring truth and sanity to American history”
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I’ll be chatting with Hunter Walker about the Fulton County election office raid and the fringe characters driving the Trump administration’s latest push to interfere in U.S. elections this morning. Join us on Substack Live at 11 a.m. ET. See you there!
Comedian and “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert called out his network for its compliance with the Trump administration’s ongoing attempt to crack down on dissent.
I got a number of fascinating replies to yesterday’s post about the federal calendar and presidential holidays, specifically whether we should ditch Columbus Day in favor of a national holiday celebrating Abraham Lincoln. I also learned a bit more about how Lincoln never got a national holiday originally because the states of the old Confederacy, whose representatives and senators had outsized seniority throughout the 20th century, simply wouldn’t hear of it. Indeed, the 1968 federal law which clustered federal holidays into long weekends and which in effect though not formally consolidated Washington’s birthday into “President’s Day” was still under the shadow of southern resistance to anything commemorating Abraham Lincoln.
