This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes.
On January 20, 2025 — his first day back in the White House — President Donald Trump issued an executive order purporting to override the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Trump v. Barbara, a direct challenge to the constitutionality of that order.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C. — a George W. Bush appointee — ordered the Trump administration to halt construction on the $400 million ballroom that President Trump’s trying to build over the East Wing of the White House, which he demolished. In order to continue, Leon said, Trump must seek approval from Congress.
Over the weekend I noticed an example of one of the most significant features of the last decade-plus in American politics, though it’s one that still remains too little remarked upon. Lauren Egan writes a newsletter covering the Democratic Party for The Bulwark. Sunday night’s edition was about pundit and political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, “He Was a Legendary Independent Pundit. Then Trump Arrived.” Basically, How did Stuart Rothenberg come down with, as MAGA puts it, Trump Derangement Syndrome? Toward the end of the piece, Egan gets at what I think is the underlying issue here and some of the commonality I’m about to note.
Let’s start this story in the late ’80s and early ’90s. At the time, there were a handful of men — pretty much all men, as I recall — who played a very specific role in the political-journalistic ecosystem. They were rigorously, perhaps obsessively, non-partisan and were go-to people on basic questions of politics. They’d appear on shows, be on call for quotes for journalists at the big papers. Rothenberg and Charlie Cook played that role in the electoral analysis and predictions space. Larry Sabato also occupied that space, though he also played in the political analysis one. In the latter space were Norm Ornstein (AEI) and Thomas Mann (Brookings). I think they were on PBS Newshour for a long time as a pair. Their analysis was on the mechanics of governing, less the explicitly political stuff and generally not electoral stuff.
The Supreme Court ruled against Colorado’s conversion therapy ban for minors Tuesday in an 8-1 decision, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joining the conservatives.
New reporting out this morning from the WSJ adds to the emerging picture of how the revisionist history of Trump’s 2020 election loss is merging with the effort to exert more federal control over the midterm elections.
Let me dive right into what is new and then unpack this a bit:
That effort is now unfolding on multiple fronts. Attorney General Pam Bondi last week quietly authorized Dan Bishop, a U.S. attorney in North Carolina, to pursue election-related probes across the country, according to a copy of the order reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Bishop, a former congressman who voted against certifying Biden’s 2020 win, will also examine voter-roll data the Justice Department has been collecting from states in an effort to determine whether noncitizens have illegally registered or cast ballots, a department official said.
The WSJ story situates the news on Bishop, the former congressman tapped as interim U.S attorney, next to the FBI seizure of 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s seizure of voting machines in Puerto Rico, and the subpoena of 2020 Maricopa county voting materials from the Arizona Senate. (All of this is by way of introducing the story’s main characters: the “unlikely duo” of former CIA agent Gary Berntsen and Venezuelan fixer Martín Rodil who beat the drum early and often on the cockamamie conspiracy theory that Venezuela altered the U.S. vote count in 2020.)
At first I was a little perplexed by how the WSJ piece blurs the story of ongoing 2020 election revisionism with the newer Trump DOJ scheme to obtain voting rolls nationwide in what can only be interpreted as an effort to monkey with the 2026 midterms. But that seems to be the point: They are connected, both in spirit and intent.
As we set here at the end of Q1, the two most likely paths for this scheme are:
(1) It continues at a low burn for the rest of Trump term, serving all sorts of useful functions without really ever leading to anything: It provides anti-immigrant and voter fraud rhetorical fodder for campaign season; it’s a MAGA currency that administration officials and GOP electeds can traffic in; it’s an opportunity for up-and-comers to show their Trump loyalty ostentatiously; and it keeps election administrators on their heels.
(2) It quickly metastasizes into a deeper, darker threat to the midterm elections and democracy itself, ginning up unjust prosecutions, serving as a justification for throwing monkeywrenches into the gears of 2026 election machinery, and laying the conceptual foundation for why the 2026 election was stolen just like in 2020.
We’re only seven months from Election Day, so we’re going to know in fairly short order whether the Trump administration is going to take the second path. The clock is ticking.
For More Background on the Scheme…
Eric Columbus in Lawfare: The Trump Administration Comes for State Voter Rolls
Another MAGA Raid on the Treasury?
Politico’s Kyle Cheney has more details on the new class action lawsuit by members of the Jan. 6 mob, which is clearly seeking to take advantage of a friendly Justice Department, which just settled Mike Flynn’s bogus wrongful prosecution claims for a cool $1.2 million.
Speaking of Mike Flynn …
Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman rolls out the first installment of his two-part series onDOJ’s settlement with Flynn, examining the history of the Flynn prosecution and why it was 100% legit.
DOJ IG Goes AWOL
Fired DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni, who turned into a major whistleblower when he pulled back the curtain on the Alien Enemies Act and Kilmar Abrego Garcia cases that he was involved in, is now turning his considerable fire against the DOJ inspector general for not doing its job.
In a new letter, Reuveni’s attorneys allege that they provided 20 instances of possible wrongdoing by the Trump administration that were ignored by the inspector general. The IG’s office twice rejected Reuveni’s own complaints, first on the day after he submitted a complaint last summer and then in January after he had asked the IG to take another look at his complaint.
Swalwell to Patel: Cease-and-Desist
Sean Hecker and Norman L. Eisen, attorneys for Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), sent FBI Director Kash Patel a cease-and-desist letter not to release a decade-old investigative file involving the congressman and a suspected Chinese agent. The letter threatening legal action came after the WaPo reported over the weekend that Patel was pressing for the release of the file and that FBI agents in San Francisco had been tasked with making redactions in preparation for the file’s release.
John Eastman and Birthright Citizenship
With the Supreme Court scheduled to hear arguments Wednesday on President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, Politico revisits the prominent role of 2020 coup plotter John Eastman in advancing the radical theory that the Constitution doesn’t automatically confer citizenship on those born in the U.S.
Ironically, there are some indications that the California Supreme Court will consider Eastman’s appeal of his disbarment on Wednesday, too.
Mass Deportation Watch
An unlawfully deported DACA recipient was returned to the United States from Mexico on Monday after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” her return.
ICE agents will be stationed outside basic training graduation events for new Marines at Parris Island to identify whether any of their family members are undocumented, but the Marine Corps denies that ICE will be making any arrests.
Parker Molloy offers a case study in how anti-immigrant right-wing propaganda is developed and weaponized against Democrats.
The Latest on the Middle East …
WSJ: Trump Tells Aides He’s Willing to End War Without Reopening Hormuz
New York Mag: All of the Iran Attack Plans Are Bad. This One Is the Worst.
WSJ: UAE Suffers One of Its Most Intense Barrages in Weeks
WaPo: Gas hits $4 a gallon for first time since 2022.
Hmmm …
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is demanding “an immediate retraction” of a Financial Times report that his broker “attempted to make a big investment in major defence companies in the weeks leading up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran.”
FT reported:
Hegseth’s broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF, the people said, shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran.
The inquiry on behalf of the high-profile potential client was flagged internally at BlackRock, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell called the allegation “entirely false and fabricated” while demanding a retraction: “Neither Secretary Hegseth nor any of his representatives approached BlackRock about any such investment.”
Notable
Washington state, which doesn’t have a traditional personal income tax, has enacted a new 9.9% tax on income over $1 million to fund child care programs, free school meals, tax credits for working families, and tax breaks for small businesses.
Behold the 1980s Tackiness
A video partially generated by AI shows the predictably ostentatious plan for a Trump Presidential Library tower in downtown Miami, replete with two gold statues of himself:
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Three years ago, Hunter Walker heard that Mark Robinson, then the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, was about to enter that state’s governors race. He also heard that Robinson had a penchant for extreme statements. And so, Hunter dug into his Facebook page, where Robinson had for years been an inveterate poster. In March 2023, TPM offered one of the first comprehensive looks at the public proclamations of this bizarre governor candidate-to-be — a man who would later be reported to have offered on porn forums such memorable self-descriptions as “I’m a black NAZI.” (Robinson denied at the time that the account was his, and even sued CNN, which had published the story.)
After losing in November 2024, Robinson got quieter. But, now, he’s back, with a sort-of apology. Hunter has that story here.
Epically scandal-plagued former North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has shown us a blueprint for an apology tour in the MAGA influencer era. It apparently involves visiting a very friendly podcast, admitting you lied, not really apologizing for it, and monetizing the whole thing.
In Morning Memo and Where Things Stand today, we noted some news that broke as the weekend was beginning and, I think, got less attention than it should have. Here’s FCC Chair Brendan Carr playing the hits for a CPAC crowd that was, on other issues, divided:
“President Trump took on the fake news media. And President Trump is winning. Look at the results so far. PBS defunded. NPR, defunded. Joy Reid, gone from MSNBC. Sleepy-eyes Chuck Todd, gone. Jim Acosta, gone. John Dickerson, gone. Stephen Colbert is leaving, CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough, CNN is gonna have new ownership as well.”
To some extent this is pandering to the audience. Not all of this is the result of his work atop the FCC. On the other hand, he has found ways to exercise his power that go beyond what he can actually do in that job, such as through his gradual trickle of social media threats — some believable, some baseless. It’s hard to argue with his assessment of the results.
Federal Communication Commission Chair Brendan Carr celebrated multiple attacks on the media as political victories for President Trump during a forum at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.
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At the Department of Agriculture’s research division, everyone knows there’s one word they should never say, according to Ethan Roberts. “The forbidden C-word” — climate.
Roberts, union president at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Illinois, has worked for the federal government for nearly a decade. In that time, the physical science technician has weathered several political administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first term. None compare to what’s happening now.
The sweeping transformation became apparent last March, after a memo from upper management at the USDA Agricultural Research Service instructed staffers to avoid submitting agreements and other contracts that used any of 100-plus newly banned words and phrases. Roughly a third directly related to climate change, including “global warming,” “climate science,” and “carbon sequestration.”
Roberts met with his union to figure out how to respond to the memo. They concluded that the best course of action was just to avoid the terms and try to get their research published by working around them. Throughout the federal agency, “climate change” was swapped for softer synonyms: “elevated temperatures,” “soil health,” and “extreme weather.”
