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

No-Bill for Assault With a Deli Weapon

A D.C. grand jury declined to indict the fired DOJ paralegal Sean Dunn who hurled a sandwich at a federal officer during protests against President Trump’s hyper-federalization of the nation’s capital, the NYT reports.

The incident outside a Subway location (it was reportedly a salami sandwich) came to represent both the intense local opposition to being targeted by Trump on the bogus pretext of out-of-control crime and the overall absurdity of the situation.

Failing to secure an indictment is a relatively rare occurrence because prosecutors control the entire process in front of a grand jury. With few exceptions, prosecutors are not in the business of bringing loser cases to grand juries.

This is the second case in the last week arising out of the Trumpian occupation of the District of Columbia where grand juries have declined to indict felonies. Three different grand juries declined to return indictments against Sidney Lori Reid, accused by prosecutors of injuring an FBI agent near the D.C. jail during the transfer of alleged gang members. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office eventually dropped the charge to a misdemeanor, which doesn’t require an indictment.

Prosecutors were seeking to indict Dunn on a similar assault charge that they failed to secure against Reid.

Footnote of the Day

U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen of the Western District of Virginia, a Trump appointee sitting by assignment, in his order dismissing a Trump administration lawsuit against all the federal judges in Maryland:

Indeed, over the past several months, principal officers of the Executive (and their spokespersons) have described federal district judges across the country as “left-wing,” “liberal,” “activists,” “radical,” “politically minded,” “rogue,” “unhinged,” “outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional,” “[c]rooked,” and worse. Although some tension between the coordinate branches of government is a hallmark of our constitutional system, this concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate.

Hannah Dugan Loses Motion to Dismiss

Wisconsin state Judge Hannah Dugan lost her bid to dismiss the Trump administration’s criminal prosecution of her for allegedly interfering with immigration enforcement officers trying to detain an undocumented immigrant in her courthouse. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman of Wisconsin ratified an earlier similar decision by a federal magistrate.

A Possible Clue To A Trump U.S. Attorney’s Resignation?

Deep in a somewhat convoluted NYT report on yet another bogus Trump DOJ effort to re-litigate and seek retribution for the federal inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election is a potential clue as to why former state legislator Todd Gilbert abruptly resigned last week as acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, after only a month on the job, without offering any reason publicly:

The investigation is based in Charlottesville, Va., more than a hundred miles from where the events at issue took place, but officials have justified placing it with that office because of an F.B.I. document storage facility in Winchester, Va., according to people familiar with the matter who described the case on condition of anonymity to publicly discuss it.

The NYT story then goes on to note Gilbert’s resignation. While the NYT stops short of connecting the resignation to the investigation, the juxtaposition in the story is … glaring.

The Purges

• DOJ: Roughly 75% of career lawyers in the DOJ Civil Rights Division have left in recent months, Bloomberg Law reports, replaced by what Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon is calling “a new class of Civil Rights Warriors.” 
• FEMA: The Federal Emergency Management Agency suspended the 36 employees who used their names when signing a letter to Congress this week warning that President Trump has gutted the government’s disaster response capabilities. A total of 182 employees signed the letter, but most did so anonymously.

Fox in the Hen House Alert

Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Trump’s loss in the 2020 election and a protégé of Cleta Mitchell, has been appointed to a newly created senior position in the Department of Homeland Security, where she’ll help oversee the nation’s election infrastructure, ProPublica reports.

Corey Lewandowski Has Veto Power Over DHS Contracts

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is the last stop before six-figure contracts reach the desk of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for her approval, Politico reports. Noem has imposed an unworkable, micromanager requirement that she personally approve contracts and grants of more than $100,000, creating a persistent bottleneck in the third largest Cabinet department.

The Trials and Tribulations of Lisa Cook

For your perusal:

• Charlie Savage notes what’s different about this case from the other independent agency cases so far in Trump II: “His attempt to fire Ms. Cook presents a new twist. It raises the question of whether he alone can decide whether there is cause to fire an official at an independent agency whose leaders are protected by law from arbitrary removal — or whether courts will be willing and able to intervene if judges believe his justification is a pretext.”
• Politico reports that the courts may be reluctant to dig too deeply into whether Trump’s pretext for firing Cook is bogus.
• TPM’s Kate Riga makes the important point that Trump has used the purported “for cause” firing of Cook as a fallback position that may avoid a direct confrontation with the Roberts Court, which has already endorsed this year the independence of the Federal Reserve.
• TNR’s Greg Sargent is zeroing in on the origin of the bogus allegations against Cook from Federal Housing Finance Agency chief Bill Pulte: “People with experience in mortgage law and governance tell me that Cook’s lawyer, well-known D.C. attorney Abbe Lowell, has a major opening in the coming litigation. He can use the discovery process to shed light on why Pulte targeted these mortgages and on any White House involvement in that.”

Thread of the Day

Sorry to keep harping on this–I realize it's a bit deep in the weeds and legalistic, but this truly is a case of life or death for many (it involves USAID funding) and, unless I'm missing something, what the Solicitor General has just done is very alarming and difficult to defend. [1]

— Marty Lederman (@martylederman.bsky.social) 2025-08-27T01:17:13.937Z

Putting the D’oh! in DOGE

After the Roberts Court cleared the way in June for DOGE to have access to the sensitive Social Security information of all Americans, DOGE staffers that same month uploaded a crucial Social Security database to a vulnerable cloud server, according to new allegations by whistleblower Charles Borges that were made public Tuesday.

Denmark Summons U.S. Ambassador After Espionage Claim

The Danish foreign ministry summoned the U.S. ambassador today after Denmark’s main public broadcaster reported that three American men linked to President Donald Trump’s administration were carrying out an influence operation in Greenland. The U.S. men were not named in the Danish report.

A 3-Hour Presser Only A Dictator Could Love

In an orgy of “flattery inflation,” President Trump’s Cabinet members tried to outdo themselves with over-the-top cultist praise for their leader while he preened, strutted, and projected for TV cameras for more than three excruciating hours Tuesday.

“It bore similarities … to meetings of ministers in other countries where leaders have sought to exert strong, personal control over large stretches of national life,” the WaPo reported. 

For his part, Trump basked in the preposterous praise and further embraced the Roberts Court’s view of the unitary executive:

Trump on deploying the National Guard to Chicago: "I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-08-26T19:25:32.377Z

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

More The Exception Than The Rule

Examples of capitulation and surrender to Trump’s authoritarianism continue to outpace those of defiance and resistance. But over the last few days in the District of Columbia, which Trump is pretending to occupy, we’ve seen a few instances of holding the line against the worst of his transgressions. They’re relatively small and by themselves, they’re not enough. But two examples in particular stand out:

You Will Deny Me Three Times

Three different federal grand juries in D.C. refused to indict a woman on felony charges that she assaulted an FBI agent during an immigration protest in July. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office finally conceded Monday and knocked it down to a misdemeanor, which doesn’t require a grand jury to charge.

It is relatively unusual for a grand jury to return a no-true bill.

It is highly unusual for three grand juries to return no-true bills in the same case.

It is questionable, to say the least, for prosecutors to persist in pursuing a felony indictment with a third grand jury.

Sidney Lori Reid, a protestor, was accused by prosecutors of injuring an FBI agent near the D.C. jail during the transfer of alleged gang members.

The Trump DOJ does not seemed chastened by the debacle of this case, the NYT reports (emphasis mine):

Addressing the criticism that the U.S. attorney’s office has received for its crackdown in recent days, Akaash M. Singh, a high-ranking official at the Justice Department, met with federal prosecutors on Monday, telling them that they should not be cowed by news articles, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mr. Singh also told prosecutors that if sitting grand jurors rejected their efforts to bring serious charges, they should simply impanel new grand juries, the people said.

You may recall that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have also struggled to secure grand jury indictments of ICE protestors.

‘Absolutely Maddening’

In another case arising out of the Trumpian occupation of D.C., U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office moved to dismiss a firearms charge that was the product of an unlawful search — but not before U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui of Washington, D.C., savaged the government for its misconduct, HuffPost reports.

Torez Riley, a Black man on his way into a Trader Joe’s, was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm after he was searched by local law enforcement backed by federal agents.

Calling the case “absolutely maddening,” Faruqui said from the bench that there was no basis to search Riley other than the color of his skin.

“The Sixth Amendment doesn’t get thrown out the window because the government has decided to make a show of arresting people,” Faruqui said, in apparent reference to Trump’s federal operation in D.C.

As the HuffPost’s Dave Jamieson reports:

[Faruqui] said evidence from illegal searches has been suppressed in several of the cases he has overseen since Trump’s takeover. He described the mentality of the U.S. attorney’s office as “charge first, ask questions later.” And he noted that it all seemed to be for spectacle — “some big celebration” — that was “fundamentally damaging to our city.”

“Lawlessness cannot come from the government,” said Faruqui, who was himself a prosecutor for 12 years. “We’re pushing the boundaries here. We’re beyond the boundaries and something is going to have to break.”

The Riley case was among those highlighted by the NYT in a Sunday story on the weak and overcharged cases that have been charged in D.C. since Trump’s big show of force began.

Standing Up to the Dictator-in-Chief

Jonathan Bernstein assesses the current moment: “Trump’s buffoonery make[s] him very possible to defeat … but … if enough people surrender to him, he could wind up fully destroying the republic, incompetence and all. And the history of autocracy is full of those who regretted failing to stand up and fight when they still could.”

Federal Judge Threatens Kari Lake With Contempt

As a last step before a contempt trial, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Washington, D.C., ordered the deposition of Kari Lake. Lamberth is seeking to enforce his order restoring programming at Voice of America, whose dismantling Lake has presided over.

Trump Wants Black University President To Grovel

The Trump Department of Education is demanding a personal apology from George Mason University President Gregory Washington for his DEI policies as part of a settlement of its trumped-up claims that the Virginia public university violated civil rights law. Washington is refusing to apologize.

Trump Purports To Fire The Fed’s Lisa Cook

In a Constitution-shaking move that could have long-term adverse consequences for the rule of law and the U.S. economy, President Trump announced he was firing Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook for cause. Cook said she would fight her purported termination.

Judge Xinis Blocks Deportation of Abrego Garcia

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has blocked for now the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, including to Uganda. Her decision came after an emergency phone hearing Monday.

The Trump DHS continued to treat the case with a casual callousness that shocks the conscience:

They’re making fun of the media referring to Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a Maryland man as they threaten to send him to Uganda, a country where he’s never lived.They’re simply fucking vile.

— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) 2025-08-26T02:19:00.870Z

TPM Exclusive

The University of Michigan hospital system confirmed to TPM’s Josh Kovensky and Kate Riga that it’s discontinuing gender-affirming care for those under 19 after receiving a subpoena from the Trump administration.

Oopsie!

The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t kept text message data among top officials since early April, it told a watchdog group in response to a FOIA request. That would appear to be a violation of the Federal Records Act.

Quote of the Day

“I don’t want to be defense only. We want offense too.” –President Donald Trump, who wants to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War

Have We Already Crossed The Line Into Fascism?

Garrett Graff argues we’re already there:

The United States, just months before its 250^th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism. In the end, faster than I imagined possible, it did happen here. The precise moment when and where in recent weeks America crossed that invisible line from democracy into authoritarianism can and will be debated by future historians, but it’s clear that the line itself has been crossed.

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