President Donald Trump launched his second term by seeking to usurp Congress’ authority and challenge a nearly century-old legal precedent that shields independent executive branch agencies and the congressionally-confirmed officers who lead them from presidential overreach. In late January, Trump removed Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board and fired two commissioners of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In February, he dismissed a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board. And in March, he axed two commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission.
Continue reading “How the Supreme Court’s Work to ‘Bolster Executive Power at Congress’s Expense’ is Coming Back to Bite”Probes Into Racism in Schools Stall Under Trump
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LUBBOCK, Texas — The meeting of the local NAACP chapter began with a prayer — and then the litany of injustices came pouring out.
A Black high school football player was called a “b—h-ass” n-word during a game by white players in September with no consequence, his mom said. A Black 12-year-old boy, falsely accused last December of touching a white girl’s breast, was threatened and interrogated by a police officer at school without his parents and sentenced to a disciplinary alternative school for a month, his grandfather recounted. A Black honors student was wrongly accused by a white teacher of having a vape (it was a pencil sharpener) and sentenced to the alternative school for a month this fall, her mom said.
“They’re breaking people,” said Phyllis Gant, a longtime leader of the NAACP chapter in this northwest Texas city, referring to local schools’ treatment of Black children. “It’s just open season on our students.”
Continue reading “Probes Into Racism in Schools Stall Under Trump”Very Important Moment
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) went on CNN this morning and among other things said, “I think ICE needs to be totally torn down… People want immigration enforcement that goes after criminals, not the goon squad that has come from Stephen Miller and Trump.” This is where every Democrat should be. Shut down ICE and replace it with a new immigration enforcement agency built on the rule of law and actually enforcing the country’s immigration laws in a humane and lawful way, as opposed to ICE, which has turned into a presidential paramilitary focused on cleansing violence and treating Blue cities like conquered territories.
But these comments are more important as a signal. Gallego came out of the progressive wing of the House Democratic caucus and a pretty blue urban House district in Pheonix. But he made some significant shifts to run and win statewide. Among those was running significantly if not dramatically to the right of most Democrats on immigration issues. The fact that he’s now saying ICE should be “totally torn down” speaks volumes. He sees where the public is on ICE. He certainly knows where Arizonans are on ICE.
Continue reading “Very Important Moment”The Influencer-Administration Complex
Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
It’s a natural fit.
Continue reading “The Influencer-Administration Complex”Watch What They’re Doing: Trump Threatens to Make War on the States
We have late word this evening that the Department of Justice has launched a “criminal investigation” of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota Mayor Jacob Frey over a purported “criminal conspiracy” to impeded ICE’s work in the state. Let’s start with the obvious and important fact that the bar that has to be cleared to launch such an investigation is essentially nil. All you need is a couple toadyish and corrupt DOJ appointees and they are currently in oversupply. Getting a criminal indictment let alone a conviction is in a different universe of possibility. The main point of this is simply to generate the headlines you’re seeing this evening (“criminal investigation!”) and perhaps load state and local government with subpoenas or perhaps raids.
Continue reading “Watch What They’re Doing: Trump Threatens to Make War on the States”White House: Turns Out People Think ICE Kinda Sucks
There’s a fascinating and kind of hilarious item in Axios today. The headline is: Trump’s immigration erosion worries his team. Reading the piece, it all appears to be a reaction to the fairly obvious point that the highly visible and increasingly brutal ICE raids are not popular. And the American public is beginning to see these “surges” into Blue cities, rightly, not as aggressive immigration enforcement but as something more like punitive expeditions into what Trump views as enemy cities or something like occupied territory.
What I’ve noticed is how top administration leaders and especially the ICE agents on the ground are increasingly leaning into the visions of these “surges” and raids as a kind of cleansing violence, even much more than they were in the early period of this effort back in the summer. They increasingly look less like efforts to rack up deportation numbers ( that may be happening in a more piecemeal fashion across the country ) and more like hyper-violent expeditions targeting all the people who — in the MAGA vision — are getting in the way of Making America Great Again.
Continue reading “White House: Turns Out People Think ICE Kinda Sucks”What the ‘Federal Invasion’ of Minneapolis Looks Like on the Ground: Photos
Minneapolis is in the midst of what local leaders are calling a “federal invasion.” In the days since an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot 37-year-old resident Renee Good, reports have surfaced of a woman being dragged from her car while on her way to a routine appointment at the Traumatic Brain Injury Center. A Venezuelan man was shot in the leg by an ICE agent. A family of eight reported being teargassed on their way home from their son’s basketball game, causing a 6 month old to fall unconscious.
In the Trump administration’s telling, these incidents are all the fault of protesters, who are getting in ICE’s way. His supporters are generally in lockstep with the administration, echoing claims that Good was a “domestic terrorist” and that the images coming out of Minneapolis show protesters impeding law enforcement.
But many Americans are disturbed by what they’re seeing: seemingly indiscriminate violence being enacted by ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents against immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. The flood of photos and footage out of Minneapolis is having a real impact on public perceptions of the agency and what’s happening in the city.
Continue reading “What the ‘Federal Invasion’ of Minneapolis Looks Like on the Ground: Photos”There’s More at Stake Than Just Interest Rates. Here’s What Trump Could Do With the Whole Federal Reserve Toolkit
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether President Trump can continue his rampage through the federal government by removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook without due process, giving the executive unprecedented power over the nation’s premier financial institution.
Trump has since his first term openly tried to manipulate Federal Reserve governors into cutting interest rates, seemingly to benefit his own political and business interests and those of his allies. He’s taken unprecedented steps to apply pressure, including trying to remove Cook on a manufactured allegation of mortgage fraud and arguing with Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell in-person over the cost of renovations to two Fed buildings. Late last week, Trump’s administration launched a sham criminal investigation of Powell, accusing the Chair of lying about the cost of the renovations in a move decried by a bipartisan panel of experts and elected officials.
At its core, the Federal Reserve is America’s central bank. It consists of the Board of Governors in Washington D.C. and 12 regional banks, each responsible for its own multi-state district.
The Fed’s two main mandates are to maintain maximum employment and to control price inflation. For those aims, it wields just one tool: controlling interest rates that affect the cost of borrowing money and doing business. Using economic data, members of the Fed vote eight times a year on whether to raise, lower, or hold interest rates.
If the Supreme Court decides Trump can remove Cook, it will swing wide open the door that would give the president full power to pluck out Fed governors and replace them with his own loyalists.
A Trump takeover of the Fed could mean the president, through his chosen governors, would be able to slash rates at will, risking skyrocketing inflation and driving up unemployment, as has happened in countries like Argentina and Turkey.
But the Fed has many more tools the president could seize if SCOTUS kills Federal Reserve independence, a panel of experts said on a Thursday morning press call organized by Groundwork Collective, a left-leaning economic policy organization.
Beyond a protracted affordability crisis, here’s what else is at stake.
Trump Could “Reward His Billionaire Friends.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) highlighted the Federal Reserve levers Trump could pull to enrich himself and the billionaires who have adhered themselves to him in his second term, openly courting the president in exchange for preferential policy.
“Once Trump controls a majority of the Fed, he can use the Fed’s vast powers to enrich himself personally, to reward his billionaire friends, and to punish his enemies,” Warren said.
Trump could help himself and business owner friends by cutting interest rates and making it cheaper to do business.
He could also abuse the Fed’s role as the “bankers’ bank,” in which Federal Reserve Banks provide banks with commercial services the way banks serve their individual customers. Those responsibilities expanded during the 2008 global financial crisis, when the Federal Reserve bailed out Wall Street by purchasing tens of billions of dollars worth of “toxic” securities from the world’s largest financial institutions to bolster companies’ balance sheets.
Trump could further leverage that authority to lend money to financial institutions run by business people who have allied themselves with the president.
On the Flip Side, He Could Punish His Enemies.
A Trump-controlled Federal Reserve Board could withhold funds and services from banks whose leaders draw the president’s ire.
Trump has shown little to no restraint in weaponizing the federal government against his political opponents. He’s tried to yank funds from blue states, weaponized the Department of Justice against officials who have challenged him, and removed congressionally approved agency officials at-will, regardless of the law.
Exerting unprecedented influence over the central bank would give the president free rein to regulate and supervise financial institutions. The Fed helps write regulations for financial institutions, investigates banks for rules violations and enforces the law. The Fed has even more jurisdiction over the tens of state banks, those chartered by states rather than the federal government, including the power to force out-of-compliance state banks to “forfeit all rights and privileges of membership” in the Fed banking system. From there, it’s not hard to envision a megalomaniac president using the power of the Fed to bully blue states by manipulating their financial institutions.
“What if a bank doesn’t lend to a key ally of the White House?,” queried Rohit Chopra, former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director, on Thursday. “Will they face losing access to the Fed’s primary credit programs? Or what if they don’t cooperate with a key item on the president’s agenda? Do they have to worry about getting debanked?”
A Backdoor Power of the Purse
The U.S. Treasury holds its checking accounts at the Fed, where the government receives revenues and issues payments. The Fed also facilitates Treasury auctions of securities, including Treasury notes, bonds and bills, to investors to raise money.
A Fed controlled by the president could help facilitate Treasury auctions not when the department’s spending exceeds its income, but at the president’s whim to raise revenue for whatever reason. Trump could also abuse the Fed’s Treasury account by exerting more unilateral influence over the department withholding or issuing payments outside of congressional approval.
“The central bank controls the monetary levers, is the backbone of the payment system,” said Columbia Law professor Lev Manand on Thursday. “And the monetary levers can be abused to lend money, to buy assets in ways that further the administration’s priorities and allow the administration to evade the legislature that is supposed to under our constitutional system have the power of the purse.
“A president that could control the Federal Reserve would be even more capable of evading Congress,” Manand said, “which is, I think, the reason why this is so high stakes.”
Hive Maintenance Scheduled for January 16, 2:15 pm ET
As part of a larger effort to find long-term solutions to make sure our members are having a good user experience in The Hive, the forums will be undergoing some much-needed maintenance today, January 16, at 2:15 p.m. ET. During this time, the Hive will be read-only with most features, including the ability to comment, unavailable for about an hour. The updates and maintenance will increase the speed and reliability of The Hive server going forward. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at siteissues@talkingpointsmemo.com.
Come Out and Say Hi
We’re under two weeks out from our first Morning Memo Live event featuring a really smart panel of people deeply knowledgeable on the story I care about most: the politicization and weaponization of the Justice Department.
It is the sine qua non of Trump’s drive toward a uniquely American form of authoritarianism. There can be no rule of law without the fair, consistent, and independent enforcement of the law for everyone. But over the past year, Trump has brought the Justice Department under the direct control of (and even into!) the White House and used it as a sword against his foes and shield for his allies.
To talk about this historic shift and the many permutations of it that are still unfolding, I’ll be moderating a discussion with Stacey Young from Justice Connection, which is providing support to current and recent DOJ employees; former assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Zelinsky, who served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and led the prosecution of Roger Stone; and Anna Bower, who covers these issues closely for Lawfare (while fielding occasional Signal messages from Lindsey Halligan).
In addition to the panel discussion, it’ll be a TPM community event with a Q&A and a light reception to follow. Come on out and help us make it a great evening. Details and tickets available here (TPM members should have a special discount code in their inboxes).