The other Republican who sometimes counters President Trump — and then still votes for things that advance his agenda, like the sweeping Medicaid cuts in Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill this summer — is slamming the White House for lawlessly withholding federal spending that’s been authorized by Congress.
Continue reading “Another GOPer Calls Out Trump’s ‘Pocket Rescissions’ Gambit For What It Is”DHS Secretary Kristi Noem Seems To Have A Poorly Hidden Secret Facebook Page
As secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem has become one of the most visible leaders of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation and detention push. According to officials, the role has caused Noem and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who operate under her authority to face threats that have led them to adopt masks and necessitated an unusual living arrangement for the secretary. However, on Facebook, Noem appears to be far less secure.
Continue reading “DHS Secretary Kristi Noem Seems To Have A Poorly Hidden Secret Facebook Page”Gaming Out Trump Nuclear Option Electoral Scenarios
I’ve written a number of times about the central role of state sovereignty in resisting Trump’s growing tyranny and the critical fact that states control the administration of elections. With that in mind, I want to flag what I think is a key part of that equation. It’s not meant to be alarmist. It’s simply a matter of preparation.
As we’ve discussed, states control the administration of elections, subject to Congress setting standards for the administration of elections. This critical fact isn’t just a matter of law. It’s about the machinery of government. The states are there and the federal government isn’t. Trump can dash off a million executive orders but that doesn’t make them real or meaningful. More dangerous, he might try to use Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or federal troops to create a climate of intimidation at the ballot box. That threat is real. But because of the structure of our elections, the key danger point likely comes later. Let’s assume the 2026 election or more likely the 2028 election goes more or less unmolested. Now in January 2027 the new representatives and senators show up for the new Congress. Are they seated? Or do congressional Republicans somehow refuse to seat them, arguing that their elections were somehow illegitimate, that they didn’t follow one of Trump’s legally meaningless executive orders?
Continue reading “Gaming Out Trump Nuclear Option Electoral Scenarios”Trump Administration Caught Trying to Sneak One by the Courts Yet Again
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
A Replay of the Alien Enemies Act Debacle … With One Big Difference
The Trump administration was busted over the holiday weekend trying to whisk unaccompanied Guatemalan children out of the country.
It was a replay of the mid-March weekend when the Trump administration secretly launched its Alien Enemies Act deportations. But unlike the Constitution-shaking defiance it showed last time, administration officials appear so far to have abided by the emergency court orders to stop the flights, deplane the children, and return them to the U.S. government agency that originally had custody of them.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of Washington, D.C., put in a yeoman’s effort over the weekend to block the removals and to do so in a way that gave the administration no benefit of the doubt and little to no wiggle room.
Sooknanan first learned of the emergency lawsuit by the National Immigration Law Center after it was filed around 1 a.m. ET on Sunday morning. She issued a middle-of-the-night restraining order to block the removals of the 10 unaccompanied minors who filed the lawsuit and scheduled a Sunday mid-afternoon hearing to consider expanding her order to include some 600 similarly situated Guatemalan children in the United States.
But after receiving reports that the flights were underway, Sooknanan issued a second order barring the removal of the larger group of children and moved the hearing up to midday. Lawfare’s Anna Bower was all over it in real time and chronicled the emergency hearing.
“I have the government attempting to remove minor children from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, which is surprising, but here we are,” Sooknanan said when she convened the hearing.
The administration contended in court that the deportations weren’t removals but repatriations done in conjunction with the Guatemalan government and parents or families who wanted the children back. The plaintiffs contested those claims, and the dead-of-night operation suggested nefariousness was afoot.
At least one plane carrying children may have taken off before returning to the United States, a Trump DOJ lawyer told the court, an ironic callback to the AEA case in March when a federal judge ordered the planes to turn around but the administration ignored it.
Sooknanan ordered the Trump administration to file a series of status reports on their progress in deplaning the children and returning them to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Those status reports continued Sunday night into midday Monday of the Labor Day weekend, when the final status report from the administration confirmed that all of the children had been returned to ORR custody. At one point, as Bower noted, Sooknanan appeared to have been awake for 20 hours straight dealing with the emergency case.
In an additional twist, reporting from Politico suggests that “some of the facilities in which the children have been housed may be resisting instructions to turn them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” Politico obtained a memo — dated Sunday and signed after Sooknanan’s order — from the acting director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement that chastised its contractors:
Negligent or intentional failure to comply with lawful requests from ORR regarding the care of children in your care facility will result in prompt legal action, and may result in civil and criminal penalties and charges, as well as suspension and termination of contractual relations with your facility.
Stay tuned.
Judge Blocks Trump’s Fast-Track Deportations
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb of Washington, D.C., on Friday blocked a centerpiece of President Trump’s mass deportation strategy: fast-track deportations far from the southern border.
“When it comes to people living in the interior of the country, prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process,” Judge Cobb wrote in her ruling.
Keep an Eye on This
The ACLU is asking the entire D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a panel decision that ended U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s contempt of court proceedings in the original Alien Enemies Act case.
Can’t Let Go
Emil Bove continued to work at the Trump Justice Department after he was confirmed by the Senate to a federal appeals court seat, the NYT reports.
What’s the Point of Congress?
President Trump asserted the presidential power to use the “pocket rescission” to not spend nearly $5 billion in foreign aid this year, further complicating the politics of the government shutdown looming at the end of this month.
For Your Radar …
President Trump continues to reveal his rat-fucking plans for the 2026 mid-term elections in piecemeal fashion by posting threats on social media that wildly exaggerate the constitutional powers of the presidency. Trump’s latest effusion promises an executive order requiring voter ID in all elections even though the president has no power over or involvement with election administration.
2026 Ephemera
- IA-Sen: Two-term Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) will not seek re-election.
- NY-12: After more than 30 years in Congress, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) will not run in 2026.
- WI-Supreme Court: Uber-conservative and trolly Justice Rebecca Bradley won’t seek re-election next year, giving Democrats a chance to expand their majority on the court.
Good Read
The Cut: An Astrologer’s Messy Affair With a Trump Pentagon Official
Ooof …
On the same weekend that Rudy Giuliani was injured in a car accident in New Hampshire, President Trump announced that he’s awarding his former attorney the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Duke Cunningham, 1941-2025
Disgraced former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA), the former Navy aviator whose congressional career ended in a political corruption scandal that was epic by the now-quaint standards of the time, has died at age 83. Cunningham spent nearly a decade in prison after resigning from Congress and pleading guilty to federal corruption charges. He was later pardoned by Donald Trump, on the last day of his first term as president.
Cunningham, who lived rent-free aboard a yacht docked in DC called the “Duke-Stir” that was owned by a defense contractor, admitted to taking more than $2 million in bribes in return for steering government contracts to favored contractors via earmarks. Among the lowlights of his sordid case was selling his San Diego home to the same defense contractor for far above market value and keeping a handwritten list of bribe offerings.
Longtime TPM readers will remember Cunningham as a central figure in TPM’s coverage of the rampant political corruption in George W. Bush’s second term, especially in the Tom Delay-run House of Representatives. The Cunningham case, among many other scandals, contributed to the 2006 Democratic takeover of the House, ending a dozen years of GOP control.
TPM’s Golden Duke award, celebrating the best in political corruption and scandal, is named in dishonor of Cunningham.
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Lutnick Family Angling To Make Astronomical Sums Off Court Nixing Tariffs
This is not new. But I at least hadn’t heard any of these dots connected. I wasn’t even aware of the dots. A friend mentioned to me over the weekend that he’d heard about Wall Streeters buying up the rights to tariff refunds from big corporate importers. So the idea is that a Wall Street firm goes to an importer and says, you’ve now paid $10 million in tariffs. I’ll pay you $2 million right now for the right to collect the refund if courts ever end up deciding the tariffs were illegal. My friend had also heard that one of the most aggressive buyers was Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm until recently headed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and now run by Lutnick’s sons. Twenty-something Brandon Lutnick, pictured above on the left in a 2016 photo, is the current chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald. (He must be hella talented!)
Continue reading “Lutnick Family Angling To Make Astronomical Sums Off Court Nixing Tariffs”A Texas County Cuts Over 100 Polling Sites as Trump Attacks Mail-In Voting Nationally
This article was first published at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
Officials in a large North Texas county decided this week to cut more than 100 Election Day polling sites and reduce the number of early voting locations, amid growing concern about GOP efforts to limit voting access ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Continue reading “A Texas County Cuts Over 100 Polling Sites as Trump Attacks Mail-In Voting Nationally”The Trump Administration is Investigating Workers’ Rights in Mexico While Demolishing Them At Home
Just one minute before the White House distributed via email a new executive order further dismantling collective bargaining protections for U.S. federal workers, President Donald Trump’s Department of Labor made another, somewhat surprising announcement.
Continue reading “The Trump Administration is Investigating Workers’ Rights in Mexico While Demolishing Them At Home”‘Active Clubs’ Are White Supremacy’s New, Dangerous Frontier
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Small local organizations called Active Clubs have spread widely across the U.S. and internationally, using fitness as a cover for a much more alarming mission. These groups are a new and harder-to-detect form of white supremacist organizing that merges extremist ideology with fitness and combat sports culture.
Continue reading “‘Active Clubs’ Are White Supremacy’s New, Dangerous Frontier”A Labor Day Call for Action From the States
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Last week the White House staged a pre-Labor Day Cabinet meeting to celebrate the administration’s supposed victories for American workers. Cabinet members took turns offering fawning, sycophantic praise of their boss in a display of precisely the workplace dynamics the labor movement fights to eliminate. It was an apt symbol of this administration’s approach to workers.
Continue reading “A Labor Day Call for Action From the States”Texas Redistricting Fight Has Been Testing Ground for the Trump Admin’s Latest Legal Strategy
This article was originally published at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
On July 7, the Justice Department sent a harshly written letter threatening to sue the staunchly Republican state of Texas, notwithstanding its efforts to help elect Donald Trump and the fact that the president had singled out its leaders as key allies in his immigration crackdown.
Continue reading “Texas Redistricting Fight Has Been Testing Ground for the Trump Admin’s Latest Legal Strategy”