A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Criminalizing Political Opposition in America

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is “playing a central role” in the Trump administration’s lawless investigation of liberal groups and their finances, White House officials told Reuters:

Miller is taking a “hands-on” role in investigating the funding of nonprofits and educational institutions and is sharing recommendations from Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with Trump and other top advisers, the first White House official said.

The official said Miller is Trump’s chief adviser on the issue and is receiving regular updates from the joint terrorism task force – a coalition of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies tasked with investigating terrorism.

As TPM’s Josh Kovensky reported earlier this week, the threat of baseless federal investigations under the spurious umbrella of “domestic terrorism” is already having an effect on advocacy groups exercising their First Amendment rights.

Stephen Miller’s Hit List

The White House provided Reuters with a list of “liberal groups, donors or fundraising organizations that it said helped finance or plan protests where the violent incidents occurred”:

• George Soros’ Open Society Foundations
• ActBlue
• Indivisible
• Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights
• IfNotNow
• Jewish Voice for Peace

One White House official “stressed that the organizations were not necessarily potential targets,” Reuters reported.

President Trump has previously targeted Soros and Reid Hoffman by name.

Bonkers Antifa Meeting at the White House

As part of targeting political opposition groups for investigation, the Trump White House held an anti-antifa themed meeting this week that really was bonkers, as the Independent captures well: “Trump just hosted an ‘Antifa roundtable’ at the White House. It was so much worse than you’re imagining”

Trump Gets His Letitia James Indictment

The lawless indictment of Letitia James was so highly anticipated that the event itself seemed anticlimactic, which is one of the challenges of our time.

After the president threatens the target for years, campaigns for re-election on exacting retribution against the target, orders an indictment of the target, ousts a prosecutor for not following orders, and installs his supine personal lawyer as prosecutor, then there’s an air of inevitability about the subsequent indictment.

But as Garrett Graff noted this week before the James indictment, that is the problem: “The fact that it’s possible to predict the next target — presidential rantings indicate that it could be John Bolton, Letitia James or Adam Schiff — shows how corrupted this usually independent process has become.”

Magistrate Judge Rejects End-Run Indictment

A remarkable ruling by Magistrate Zia Faruqui in D.C. rejected a Trump DOJ effort to do an end-run around a federal grand jury that had already declined to issue an indictment in an assault and weapons case.

Faruqui had called out DOJ attorneys immediately when they went to a D.C. Superior Court grand jury, secured an indictment there, and then tried to present it in federal court, but he ordered briefing before issuing a ruling. In the meantime, DOJ ran to Chief Judge James Boasberg and asked him to overrule Faruqui, but Boasberg declined to intervene prior to the briefing and an actual ruling from Faruqui.

Faruqui ruled Thursday, and it was a doozy:

Between the year 2005 and today, over 5,000 indictments were returned in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Last week, the government attempted—for the first time ever—to return an indictment from a D.C. Superior Court grand jury after a federal grand jury previously refused to indict. This unprecedented workaround to the normal federal grand jury process immediately raised serious questions about the legality of the government’s conduct.

From there, Faruqui conducted his legal analysis, but not without dropping a few pointed barbs at the Trump DOJ:

The unprecedented number of recent federal grand jury rejections—a trend that appears to be spreading as most recently seen in Chicago—reflects that federal grand juries want more than the government is offering.

Faruqui — who has been at the leading edge of scrutinizing Trump DOJ conduct, including overcharging criminal cases in D.C. federal court — wasn’t done yet:

Under their view, the government could take all federal indictments to D.C. Superior Court without any limitations. That outcome is something to be especially vigilant against given the recent struggles of the government to bend federal grand juries to the government’s will.

Faruqui’s conclusion was withering (emphasis his):

This litigation and the delay caused by it could have been avoided if the government had simply gone to one of the other federal grand juries. That escape hatch remains open today. At any time, the government can short circuit this dispute by taking their federal charge before a federal grand jury. The question then is why are they now afraid to do so?

DOJ is likely to appeal to Boasberg again. Stay tuned.

A Mixed Bag From Courts on National Guard Deployments

Federal courts offered conflicting signals Thursday over whether they will rein in Trump’s National Guard deployments to blue states:

• Oregon: 9th Circuit judges reviewing Trump’s Portland deployment “enthusiastically support his ability to deploy military anywhere at any time,” TPM’s Kate Riga reports.
• Illinois: U.S. District Judge April M. Perry issued a temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in the Chicago area.

Quote of the Day

“Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.” –Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, the chairman of the National Governors Association

Only The Best People

Not skeevy at all, via Politico:

In late July, Paul Ingrassia, the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, arrived at a Ritz-Carlton in Orlando with a lower-ranking female colleague and others from their department. When the group reached the front desk, the woman learned she didn’t have a hotel room.

Ingrassia then informed her that she would be staying with him, according to five administration officials familiar with the episode. Eventually the woman discovered that Ingrassia had arranged ahead of time to have her hotel room canceled so she would have to stay with him, three of those officials said.

Ingrassia’s attorney confirmed the two shared a room but denied that any last-minute change was made to the hotel reservation or that any “inappropriate behavior” took place.

Making Sense of the Israel-Gaza Deal

Aaron David Miller is as astute and reliable a Middle East observer as we have, and his interview this week in the New Yorker on how and why a ceasefire deal finally came together is the best expert analysis I’ve seen.

‘Starving Children Screaming for Food’

I feel some measure of remorse for not mentioning every damn day the unfolding disaster of Trump’s lawless foreign aid cuts. Just a couple of examples from this week:

• AP: Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanma
• WaPo: U.S. aid cuts are being felt across Africa. Here’s where.

Help Us Celebrate TPM’s 25th Anniversary!

Unbelievably, TPM turns 25 next month.

Born as a blog in the cauldron of the 2000 Florida recount, reinvented in the aughts as a digital news site, reimagined in the teens as a membership-based business model, and chugging through the ’20s in the best financial shape it’s ever been in, TPM has evolved together with you through an incredibly tumultuous time in U.S. politics and publishing.

It’s a lot for us to celebrate as a company, as a team, and as a community. To mark the occasion, we have a two-day extravaganza planned in NYC for Nov. 6-7. Tickets for both nights are on sale now.

I sincerely hope Morning Memo readers can join us for the big celebration. Some of you have been along for the entire 25-year ride, but a significant share of Morning Memo readers have come aboard more recently during the crucible of the Trump II presidency. To make newcomers feel more welcome and open the doors to the TPM community as widely as possible, I’m offering Morning Memo readers a special rate for tickets to the live show on Thursday, Nov. 6. Use the code “MorningMemo” at checkout and get 33% off. Click here now to get your live show tickets.

I hope to see you at either the live show or the big party the next night — or BOTH! Please say hi and let me know you’re a Morning Memo reader.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

The Comic Horror of the Trump DOJ

Before we get into the substantive coverage of developments related to the Trump Justice Department, a quick foray into the absurdism that is never far from the surface.

Thanks to a notebook dump by WSJ reporters in a story ostensibly about the politicization of the Justice Department under the thumb of the Trump White House, we have a bunch of new nuggets that are equal parts cringey and preposterous.

There was the time earlier this year, for instance, when President Trump cut his hand on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s gaudy wedding ring. I can’t even with this story. That and the other lowlights of the WSJ story:

• Say what you want about disgraced Attorney General John Mitchell, but he never made Richard Nixon’s hand bleed with his wedding ring (so far as we know):

Trump occasionally reminds aides about an incident last year in which Trump cut his hand on Bondi’s large wedding ring, causing him to bleed.

• Officials confirmed that Trump’s social media post demanding that Bondi hurry up and indict former FBI Director Jim Comey already was meant to be a direct message to her and not intended to put her on public blast:

Trump believed he had sent Bondi the message directly, addressing it to “Pam,” and was surprised to learn it was public, the officials said. Bondi grew upset and called White House aides and Trump, who then agreed to send a second post praising Bondi as doing a “GREAT job.” 

• No story on the absurdist Trump DOJ is complete without a cameo from Ed Martin:

He works from an office dubbed the “Freedom Suite” on one end of a hallway on the deputy attorney general’s fourth floor, which visitors have described as being decorated with oversize photos of Trump and a small cup of holy water on the wall. 

As with all things in the Trump era, the absurdism is an inextricable part of the corruption, retribution, and destruction. As historically significant as the ruination of the Justice Department is and as seriously as we must take it, it’s important to remember it’s been gutted by clowns and imbeciles. Absurdly.

Now on to the Substance of the WSJ Report …

More substantive nuggets from the WSJ story on the politically motivated retribution prosecutions:

• Federal prosecutors in Maryland are “expected in coming days” to charge former Trump national security adviser turned Trump critic John Bolton with mishandling classified information, the paper reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
• Former FBI Director Christopher Wray, a relatively recent target of Trump’s ire, is now under full-blown investigation, though for exactly what is not clear: “Former officials have received subpoenas in recent days in the Wray inquiry, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.”
• Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who has ginned up the mortgage fraud allegations against New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), went farther than previously reported in getting the bogus allegations in front of Trump: “This summer, Pulte visited the White House and gave Trump an elaborate presentation with visuals that included why the New York attorney general should be charged.”

Comey Pleads Not Guilty

During the arraignment of former FBI Director Jim Comey on politicized charges of lying to Congress, his attorney previewed the main pre-trial challenges he will raise to the indictment.

As expected, former Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, a longtime Comey friend and now his attorney, will zero in on the unusual circumstances surrounding the indictment and on President Trump’s questionable appointment of Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The four areas of attack Fitzgerald outlined:

• the validity of Halligan’s appointment;
• abuse of the grand jury process;
• outrageous conduct by the government; and
• vindictive/selective prosecution.

With Fitzgerald complaining that the bare-bones indictment left him guessing about the identities of key figures in the government’s case, I’d expect him to eventually file a motion for a bill of particulars, a more fact-specific rendering of the indictment.

The two line prosecutors brought in from North Carolina to help Halligan with the case — because prosecutors in her own office have largely washed their hands of it — are still getting up to speed on discovery, an unusual position to be in post-indictment. “We feel that, in this case, the cart has been placed before the horse,” Fitzgerald said during the arraignment. “My client doesn’t want to wait around while they look for things.”

Fitzgerald told U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, a Biden appointee, that he had not had substantive contact with prosecutors about the case until Tuesday afternoon.

Nachmanoff set an aggressive but not crazy initial schedule for pre-trial motions. It’s almost inevitable that those deadlines will get pushed back, but this district is notorious for its rocket docket, so the case is not likely to linger.

Still, Comey’s challenge to Halligan’s appointment will have to be heard by a judge from outside the district because she displaced the prior interim U.S. attorney who had been appointed by the judges of the district, creating a conflict of interest. So that may slow things down a bit.

Kash Patel Fires 2 FBI Agents From Jack Smith’s Probe

The fallout has already begun from Republicans screaming bloody murder because Special Counsel Jack Smith investigated whether they were involved in subverting the 2020 election. To get ahead of the outrage machine, FBI Director Kash Patel took action against three FBI agents, including firing two of them, NBC News reports.

‘Come and Get Me’

Just another day in Trump’s America as he uses social media to threaten to jail Illinois’ governor and Chicago’s mayor:

Pritzker: “This is a convicted felon…who is threatening to jail me. This guy is unhinged. He's insecure. He's a wannabe dictator. And there's one thing I really want to say to Donald Trump: If you come for my people, you come through me. So come and get me.”

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2025-10-08T17:48:47.449Z

Good Read

Greg Sargent: Inside Stephen Miller’s Secret Plan to Normalize Trump’s Dictator Rule

‘We Can’t Rule That Out’

After a crazy meeting at the White House in which Attorney General Pam Bondi said the administration was going to treat antifa the way it’s treated drug cartels, a sobering warning from Sen. Schiff (D-CA) on President Trump’s threat to domestic opposition groups:

Schiff: "You begin to wonder — do they believe they have the authority by putting some groups on a list, even domestic groups, to use lethal force against them, with no trial, no due process, no nothing? The reality is we can't rule that out."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-09T01:04:18.501Z

Quote of the Day

“Despotism doesn’t impose itself on everyone all at once. It creeps inward from the margins of society.”–Brian Beutler

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!