House Republicans passed their “clean” seven-week continuing resolution (CR) Friday morning on a largely party line 217-212 vote, setting up the Senate for a stalemate over government funding similar to what happened in March.
Continue reading “House Passes Funding Plan With No Concessions to Dems, Leaving Senate in Deadlock”Trump Poised to Fire US Attorney for Not Indicting Letitia James
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Peak Retribution Alert
It’s all coming together in President Trump’s push to find a way to bring criminal charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James: the retribution, the denigration of the rule of law, the evisceration of the Justice Department, and the ultimate unbridled unitary executive.
In another important story, ABC News reported overnight that Trump is poised to fire U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert of the Eastern District of Virginia for not seeking an indictment of James on the bogus mortgage fraud claims the administration has drummed up.
The latest news comes after a deeply reported ABC News piece earlier in the week that prosecutors had turned up considerable exculpatory evidence in the case. So even though the investigation had begun on a pretextual predicate, it had done more to exonerate James than to implicate her in the supposed mortgage fraud. For that reason, Siebert wasn’t going to seek a grand jury indictment in the Virginia mortgage fraud case.
The refusal to bring a case against James apparently enraged Bill Pulte, the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who pushed Trump to fire Siebert, ABC News previously reported. It appears now that Trump is expected to follow through on Pulte’s demand.
Siebert, a career prosecutor, became interim U.S. attorney earlier this year, and his tenure was extended by the judges of the Eastern District. He is Trump’s own nominee for the permanent position, with approval from both of Virginia’s Democratic senators.
If Trump cans Siebert as expected, it sets up a situation where Trump is likely to name someone to the role who has indicated, directly or indirectly, that they will proceed with a criminal prosecution against James. That would be an intolerable position for any fair-minded, ethical legal professional, so it all but guarantees that a political hack will take over the office.
The Eastern District of Virginia is one of the most politically and legally significant districts in the country. The case involving James originates in Hampton Roads, but the district sprawls from the southeastern Virginia metro area through Richmond into the northern Virginia suburbs, which include the Pentagon and CIA headquarters. Significant national security cases are often handled by this U.S. attorney’s office.
This U.S. attorney’s office in particular is not one you want run by a political hack eager to do the bidding of the Trump White House.
Trump Judge Lambastes Admin in Guatemala Kids Case
U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly of Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from deporting unaccompanied minor Guatemalan children, an operation that began in the dead of night over the Labor Day weekend.
In a surprisingly direct opinion, Kelly, a Trump appointee, was deeply skeptical of the administration’s claims about the removal operation and in particular of the representations made by Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign during an emergency hearing Labor Day weekend in front of a different judge:
Lawyers got wind of this hasty operation while it was unfolding and filed this lawsuit seeking emergency relief that Sunday at 1:00 a.m. The judge on emergency duty entered a temporary restraining order barring the agencies and their officials from removing or otherwise transporting the children from the United States. At a hearing later that day, counsel for Defendants explained why it was “fairly outrageous” for Plaintiffs to have sued: all Defendants wanted to do was reunify children with parents who had requested their return. But that explanation crumbled like a house of cards about a week later. There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return.
The case has echoes of the rushed weekend deportation under the Alien Enemies Act in March, which put federal judges on alert that the Trump administration is not acting in good faith and the Justice Department can no longer be given the benefit of the doubt.
Kirk Killing Fallout: No Criticism of Trump Allowed
- President Trump directly threatened to revoke the licenses of broadcasters who air criticisms of him.
- Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic commissioner on the FCC, tells Greg Sargent: “What the administration is doing violates the First Amendment and the Communications Act.”
- “Pentagon leaders are considering a new recruiting campaign that would encourage young people to honor the legacy of assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk by joining the military,” NBC News reported.
How the Late Night Shows Responded to Kimmel’s Suspension
Quote of the Day
If you were writing a hackneyed novel or film about an authoritarian America, it would go exactly like this: a figure close to the regime is assassinated, a massive shrill and sanctimonious hue and cry rises over the martyred dead, hysteria is whipped up about terrorism and public disorder, leaders in the regime and movement promise vengeance, private citizens are mobbed and lose their jobs for expressing anti-regime sentiments at the encouragement of regime officials and regime-aligned demagogues, and, then, the power of the state is brought to bear against public figures who oppose and criticize the regime.
Can Trump Actually Designate Antifa a Terrorist Group?
No.
RFK Jr. Reaps Anti-Vax Results He Sowed
The CDC vaccine panel that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stacked with anti-vaxxers began revising the immunization schedule for kids in a meeting that continues today and is expected to yield even bigger rollbacks in childhood shots.
Trump’s Burgeoning Latin American Intervention
Draft legislation is circulating at the White House and on Capitol Hill that would give President Trump sweeping powers to wage war against drug cartels he deems to be “terrorists” and any nation he claims has harbored or aided them, the NYT is reporting.
The substance of the NYT report is significant in its own right — a dramatic expansion of presidential powers and previous U.S. law on the use of the force — but it also suggests that there is a realization within some corners of the administration that Trump’s unilateral attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats in recent days has insufficient legal authorization under current law.
In related news: The DEA went too far even for the Trump White House when earlier this year it urged military strikes in Mexico, the WaPo exclusively reports.
WTF?
Trump wants Bagram Air Base back and to re-establish a U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
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Republicans Kill Attempt to Subpoena FCC Chair After Jimmy Kimmel Suspension
The House Oversight Committee voted Thursday to table a motion to subpoena Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr to testify about ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel due to the host’s comments on Charlie Kirk’s killing.
The vote came down on party lines.
Ranking member Robert Garcia (D-CA), though, said that he and committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) had been talking during the hearing and are “gonna try to work together on an effort to bring in Mr. Carr in front of the Oversight Committee.”
Continue reading “Republicans Kill Attempt to Subpoena FCC Chair After Jimmy Kimmel Suspension”‘Not Life or Death for Us’: DC Officials Push for Budget Fix in CR or Out of It
Despite their reluctance to fix a $1.1 billion hole they blew in Washington D.C.’s budget last March, House Republicans are now proposing filling the gap in their new continuing resolution.
Continue reading “‘Not Life or Death for Us’: DC Officials Push for Budget Fix in CR or Out of It”Listen To This: Kirk Aftermath
Kate and Josh discuss the Charlie Kirk killing and its fallout, the Republicans’ stopgap bill and leadership’s refusal to endorse Zohran Mamdami.
Continue reading “Listen To This: Kirk Aftermath”A Few Thoughts on KimmelGeddon
Let me start by noting the obvious: What we saw yesterday with Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension by ABC News was a brazen and unabashed attack on free speech in the United States in a way that was unimaginable until a few months ago. It manages to be both shameful in its audacity and criminality while also absurd. It’s not a newspaper being shuttered or a political party being proscribed. It’s a comedian’s show being taken off the air. But dictators and authoritarians never like comedians. They are jesters, not warriors. So their lance strikes and ripostes are oblique in their approach and more difficult to react to.
I don’t want to participate in the, “How bad is this?” discourse. It’s bad. We know that. An apolitical person told me yesterday this whole development was “frightening.” I agreed. So why don’t you seem more upset about it? this person asked. Because I already knew we were here.
All I have time for is what one does in response. So a few thoughts on that front.
Continue reading “A Few Thoughts on KimmelGeddon”Republicans Could Stop Trump’s Tariffs, But Keep Voting to Make Themselves Powerless
If Congress wanted to push back against President Donald Trump’s tariffs, it could have done so at any time by voting to end the White House’s declaration of a national emergency, which, Trump claims, grants him sweeping trade powers. But Republicans have repeatedly ceded their authority over trade to the executive branch using sneaky and sometimes bizarre legislative maneuvers to avoid voting on one of the administration’s most controversial policies.
Earlier this week, House Republicans passed the latest measure to effectively prevent members from challenging Trump’s unpopular global tariff regime, suspending until March 31, 2026 a section of the law that dictates how Congress can terminate a president’s declaration of a national emergency. In recent months, House Republicans have accomplished something similar through an even more creative means: redefining the term “calendar day,” so far as it applies to Congress’ ability to vote on national emergencies, to last many months. (Any resolution to terminate a national emergency must be brought to the floor within 15 days of being introduced; the maneuver effectively lets Congress avoid any such a vote indefinitely.) A House Democratic aide speculated to TPM that, for procedural reasons, House Republicans could not use their “calendar day” trick again.
Voiding their constitutional ability to regulate trade through such creative means is yet another way congressional Republicans are further empowering Trump specifically and the executive branch in general, while giving away their own authority. As tariffs push inflation up month after month and economists sound the alarm about the economic calamity they expect from the U.S. effective tariff rate reaching nearly 19% — its highest since the Great Depression — Republican leaders in the House are rendering themselves powerless.
“The only bulwark left is for Congress itself to stand up and assert its authority — but for political reasons, those that are in power in Congress either are unwilling or unable to do so,” Daniel Schuman, executive director at the American Governance Institute, a good government group, told TPM. “And so when the president asserts that he can use authorities in unprecedented ways — which is another way of saying he can do things that are illegal because no one can force him to stop doing those things — that is simply what’s happening at all fronts.”
Since President Trump first telegraphed he would invoke emergency powers to issue his sweeping global tariffs, lawmakers have repeatedly suspended their ability to terminate the emergency until a given date. The House passed such measures in March and again in April; the April measure froze the calendar until Sept. 30, 2025. The latest suspension was a response to a measure introduced by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) on Tuesday, which sought to address tariffs the White House recently imposed on Brazil.
After voting down Meeks’ proposal, Republicans moved to block any further challenges to Trump’s tariffs until March 2026. By that point, the Supreme Court will likely have ruled on whether the president can continue using emergency powers in this way. If the Court says no, congressional Republicans will be off the hook for blocking the president themselves.
“Democrats came to the floor ready to end these cost-raising tariffs,” Rep. John B. Larson (D-CT) said of Meeks’ proposal, “but Republicans stood with Donald Trump against their constituents.”
Tuesday’s bill passed 213-211 largely along party lines, with three Republicans — Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) — voting with Democrats to oppose the measure. More Republicans balked at the measure, but were reportedly whipped into yes votes thanks to two promises from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), including the creation of a tariffs working group, The New York Times reported. Politico reported some members switched their no votes after GOP leaders pledged to allow the House to take up the issue in January, rather than the end of March.
The lion’s share of Trump’s tariffs have been levied under authority that he has asserted himself to have under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. The act allows the president to “investigate, regulate, or prohibit” foreign transactions, bank credits and payments involving foreign entities, and certain imports and exports. Those provisions have historically been used as a sanctioning mechanism, and have never been used for tariff powers.
Trump’s IEEPA tariffs could be overturned after two lower courts ruled the act doesn’t extend tariff powers, which are constitutionally granted to Congress, to the executive branch. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the administration’s appeal.
The case was brought by a coalition of small businesses arguing that Congress is the only body with tariff powers. Yet as it winds through the courts, Republican members of Congress are voluntarily ceding those powers to the executive branch.
Congress has also watered down its own power of the purse, staying almost entirely silent on various tactics the executive branch has used to impound funds. One such maneuver saw $4.9 billion Congress had already appropriated for foreign aid snatched back. The Government Accountability Office, a legislative branch watchdog agency, has repeatedly found the White House’s refusal to spend appropriated funds to be illegal.
“It’s an accelerating of existing trends in a way that is inimical to our democracy,” said Schuman. “It’s incredibly dangerous and it undermines the role of our system of separation of powers.”
Lawmakers in the Senate in April passed a measure to end Trump’s emergency declaration which levied tariffs on Canada. A bipartisan companion measure co-sponsored by Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), however, stalled in the House.
In addition to California Republican Kiley, two other California Republicans representatives, Jay Obernolte and Tom McClintock, initially voted no on the latest measure but later flipped. According to the most recent Consumer Price Index released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, West Coast states in general, and California metropolitan areas specifically, have higher rates of inflation than the 2.9% national urban average.
“If we’re saying that Congress is not going to be able to assert itself on this issue,” Kiley reportedly said after his “no” vote, “that in my view is a problem.”
In an April press release about his proposal “to return Congress’ constitutionally authorized” tariffs powers, Bacon highlighted the checks and balances Congress is meant to have on the president.
“This is less about the actual tariffs laid by the Trump Administration, some of which I support because they are reciprocal, but more a commitment to uphold the Constitution,” Bacon said at the time. On Tuesday, he voted to block his own ability to challenge Trump’s tariffs.
Convinced Yet That No One Is Safe From Trump’s Depredations?
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Into the Abyss
Last evening reminded me of the night in early March 2020 when Tom Hanks and his wife Rita, abroad in Australia, were diagnosed with COVID. For those of us paying close attention to the progress of the virus and already shutting down business operations and schools, the news that even a vaunted global citizen like Hanks had contracted it was confirmation that things were going to get very bad. But for many more casual observers, it was the first wake-up call that COVID was a threat to everyone.
Sitting here the next morning, I wish I could say with some confidence that ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show — under pressure from President Trump’s minion at the Federal Communications Commission, ostensibly for comments made on his Monday show in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination — will have the catalyzing effect that the Hanks’ diagnosis did. I’m not so sure.
We are falling, at an increasingly rapid clip, into the abyss. And make no mistake, everyone is at risk.
The writing was on the wall when CBS cancelled Stephen Colbert’s show. But there was some plausible deniability there. Not so with Disney/ABC and Kimmel. Major ABC affiliate owners Sinclair and Nexstar (which has a planned $6.2 billion acquisition subject to FCC approval at stake) had balked at Kimmel’s comments and were taking the show off the air on their stations. FCC chairman Brendan Carr said jump, and Disney CEO Bob Iger asked how high. Carr was unabashed about doing a victory dance.
Nothing about Disney/ABC’s capitulation in taking Kimmel off the air can be reasonably minimized. It doesn’t matter that he’s merely a comedian or that TV talk shows are schlocky compared to higher forms of art and culture. It doesn’t matter that Kimmel can probably find another lucrative platform for his talents that is less vulnerable to FCC pressures. It doesn’t matter that Kimmel wasn’t even talking about Kirk directly but about the manufactured backlash on the MAGA right to Kirk’s killing — the same self-serving backlash which has now consumed Kimmel.
What matters is we are are all now subject to the whims of a coercive government that runs roughshod over the Constitution and its protections. It matters that corporate America is not holding the line against Trump, instead capitulating in what it perceives as its own business interests. It matters that the broadcast airwaves — a public commodity that belongs to all of us — have been co-opted like so many other public goods in service of Donald Trump and his personal and political interests. It matters that the rich, the powerful, and the well-connected are vulnerable to Trump because that means we all are.
Some say it’s short-term thinking by businesses. I hope we’re that lucky and that it’s not a reflection of long-term strategy based on a cold-eyed view of the world. Regardless, the capitulation only gets you so much, fleeting protection from Trump’s racket — and now he knows you’ll pay to play. He’ll come back later, asking for more to secure further protection. The price will go higher as your leverage diminishes.
In the week since Kirk was killed, we seen an astonishing restriction of free expression. We usually refer to it as a chilling effect. It is that, but so much more. The rules of the new game are being written. How far you can go, who gets to decide, who gets to enforce it, and who is exempt from enforcement entirely.
Trump Tags His Foes As Domestic Terrorists
As important as the Kimmel gagging last evening was President Trump’s pretend declaration that Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization. Pretend because there is no such designation under U.S. law and because Antifa, such as it is (not the conspiratorial behemoth in the fevered imaginings of the right), is a loose affiliation at best.
But those pretensions aren’t weaknesses or defects in Trump’s move. They merely expose it for what it is: An open-ended threat to label any perceived foe or adversary as a terrorist. With that label, all bets are off. You have been consigned to a status outside of the law.
The U.S. attacks — three that we’ve been told of — on alleged drug-running boats off Venezuela are a product of Trump having unilaterally stretched language beyond all meaning by declaring drug cartels terrorist organizations. As numerous experts have warned, that doesn’t give legal cover to summary executions on the high seas. But it does give a rhetorical and psychological justification for all manner of extreme conduct in defense of the homeland.
Branding Antifa a domestic terrorist organization is Trump taking the gloves off. It creates an opening to brand anyone a member of Antifa, subject to whatever punitive measures the Stephen Millers of the world dream up in defense of law and order.
Again, new rules are being written as we speak. Donald Trump is making those rules and deciding who must abide by them (and just as importantly who is exempt) and what the consequences are for failing to do so.
Retribution: Jim Comey Edition
Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, a longtime friend and adviser to former FBI Director Jim Comey, was subpoenaed last week as part of the Trump DOJ’s bogus investigation into the Trump nemesis, ABC News reports.
“The subpoena to Richman, according to sources, stems from an investigation into testimony Comey made before Congress in September 2020 about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election,” according to ABC.
Richman met with prosecutors on Tuesday.
The Purge: CDC Edition
Fired CDC director Susan Monarez was a compelling Senate witness Wednesday as she recounted the series of unethical anti-science demands from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that culminated with her termination:
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Sen Markwayne Mullin Is Confused 🫥
Fired Centers for Disease Control Director Susan Monarez endured a lot of weird questioning from Republicans during a hearing before the Senate Heath, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Wednesday. But none were as bizarre as the line of questioning Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) tossed her way, accusing the former official of lying about her final conversations with Health and Human Service Secretary RFK Jr. before the White House fired her.
Continue reading “Sen Markwayne Mullin Is Confused 🫥”Texas Congressman Says Trans People Need To Be Taken ‘Off The Streets’ After Charlie Kirk Shooting
The killing of right wing activist and influencer Charlie Kirk has prompted disturbing and questionably legal calls for a crackdown on the left from President Trump and his allies. In an appearance on the cable network Newsmax on Tuesday evening, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) took things further — way further.
After latching on to the fact the man being charged with the shooting allegedly had a transgender romantic partner, Jackson called gender non-conforming people a “virus” as he argued they need to be placed in institutions and barred from the internet.
“We have to do something about this,” Jackson said after railing against doctors who aid with “gender transition. “We have to treat these people. We have to get them off the streets and we have to get them off the internet. We can’t let them communicate with each other. I’m all about free speech, but this is a virus, this is a cancer that’s spreading across this country that’s going to do great damage to normal, hard working, law abiding people.”
Jackson’s comments came during an episode of the show “Finnerty” where Kirk’s killing was characterized as “trans violence.” The idea that trans people are linked to mass shootings has been a recent fixation on the right after a couple of cases with perpetrators that were reportedly transgender. Those incidents accounted for a very small number of the overall phenomenon. In a 2023 fact check, Reuters highlighted an analysis that found trans suspects were involved in 0.11% of mass shootings recorded over the past decade, a figure far lower than the proportion of trans people in the total U.S. population. Efforts to tie transgender people to violence have coincided with a wave of anti-trans policy and rhetoric from Trump and other Republicans.
Right-wing attacks on the transgender community have been fueled by false claims that trans people are mentally ill. Kirk was a prominent proponent of this rhetoric, which is rejected by medical institutions including the American Psychiatric Association.
Kirk was killed on Sept. 10 on the campus of Utah Valley University while engaging in one of his signature events where he debated college students about their views. Moments before the fatal shot rang out, Kirk was involved in an exchange where a questioner asked him if he was aware of the actual number of transgender “mass shooters.” In some of his final words, Kirk said there had been “too many” without indicating he was aware of the specifics.
Tyler Robinson was charged on Tuesday for killing Kirk. According to charging documents filed by prosecutors, Robinson’s mother has said he was involved in a romantic relationship with a person who was undergoing a gender transition. In alleged text message exchanges with that person included in the documents, Robinson said he killed Kirk because, “I had enough of his hatred.”
On Newsmax, host Rob Finnerty asked Jackson, who was first elected to Congress in 2020 after serving as White House physician to President Barack Obama and Trump, to offer “perspective on this from a medical point of view.”
“This kid, the assassin, he went from what seemed like a fairly normal 20-year-old to a totally radicalized 22-year-old left wing assassin with a trans boyfriend,” Finnerty said. “How does something like that happen?”
Jackson, who did not respond to TPM’s request for comment, went on to make baseless claims that transgender people are prone to violence.
“They already have an underlying psychiatric issue where you know they don’t know what their gender is and they’re — they’re transitioning and, let’s just be honest, most of them are men that are transgendering to women right? And so, they have an underlying level of aggressiveness,” Jackson said.
Jackson also suggested that transgender people have been “seized upon” by the left as part of some vague, violent conspiracy.
“This is not a problem that exists on the right. It’s not. This is a group of domestic terrorists that have been bred, they have been bred by the left, by the progressives.”
Analyses — at least one of which, issued by the Justice Department, was recently actively suppressed by the Trump administration — show right-wing extremists are responsible for the majority of U.S. domestic terrorism. There is no data indicating transgender people have an increased propensity for violence. According to GLAAD, “despite being less than 2% of the U.S. adult population, transgender people are four times as likely to be victims of crime.”
After Jackson made the wild claim the left has “bred” and “facilitated” transgender violence, Finnerty played clips of Democrats calling Trump a “fascist.” The host said he was eager to make “the connection between how this young man became radicalized with a trans boyfriend” and “rhetoric like this.” Jackson responded by suggesting Democrats’ criticism of Trump was directly to blame for Kirk’s death.
“Every single one of those people, Rob, are directly responsible for the murder of Charlie Kirk,” Jackson said of the politicians highlighted by Finnerty. “They have created this narrative. They have planted this seed in the heads of these people and, as elected officials in high ranking positions, they have legitimized their anger, their concerns, and their actions. They are responsible for what happened and you know we have to stop this.”
Jackson also claimed Congress has to do “everything we can” to crack down on what he referred to as leftist “domestic terrorists.”
“They’ve propped up antifa and antifa has embraced these transgenders and it’s just become one big mess,” he said.
Jackson’s remarks are particularly disturbing since unconventional and questionably legal detention has been a feature of this second Trump administration. In addition to the controversial new migrant detention infrastructure, Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has previously suggested people with mental health issues should be taken to “wellness farms.” Kirk’s death is also provoking a widespread suppression of political speech and critics of the late influencer.
The inflammatory segment concluded with Finnerty playing a trip of Trump speaking to reporters in 2019 and suggesting mass shootings could be addressed by opening more “mental institutions.” The host asked Jackson if House Republicans might do “something to bring back mental institutions … so this doesn’t happen again.”
That suggestion is what prompted Jackson to describe transgender people as a “cancer” and to call for them to be taken “off the streets” and “off the internet.” The Newsmax host seemed to appreciate the congressman’s call to round up and censor members of the LGBTQ community.
“It’s getting worse, and worse, and worse,” Finnerty said. “Congressman, good to see you again.”