NEW YORK – One year in, and the club of young Republicans that touts itself as the most MAGA of them all isn’t happy. They’ve gotten what they’ve wanted, and it still isn’t enough. If last year’s iteration of their annual gala was a preview for what life under a second Trump administration would be — ubiquitous authoritarian gestures, Christian nationalism ascendant, and a growing global far-right front with Washington at the center — then this year’s event showed how even some of the president’s most die-hard supporters are pushing for even more.
Continue reading “New York’s Young Republicans Beg for More, But Fret About a ‘MAGA Civil War’”The Dog That Hasn’t Barked in the D.C. Pipe Bomber Case
Alleged Pipe Bomber Reportedly a Trump Supporter
It’s been a reasonable inference for more than five years now that whoever planted the pipe bombs at both national party headquarters on the eve of Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election was probably not someone who was excited that Joe Biden had won.
As the case languished, however, it bizarrely became the subject of a host of right-wing cover-up conspiracies — some touted by people who became top FBI officials in the Trump II presidency. So it was more than a little awkward when the Trump Justice Department finally announced an arrest in the case.
That may explain in part why after initially hailing the arrest, things have been rather muted from the White House and Justice Department. But it’s becoming increasingly hard not to think that the alleged pipe bomber’s affinities — for Trump and the 2020 Big Lie — may be playing a part in the Trump administration acting very much out of character by being … subdued about the case.
After the arrest of Brian Cole Jr. in connection with the pipe bombs, initial reports said he subscribed to the Big Lie that the election was stolen. Now the WSJ reports, citing unnamed sources, that Cole told investigators he supported Trump:
In a four-hour interview with investigators, Cole acknowledged placing the bombs, people familiar with the probe said. He expressed support for Trump and said he had embraced conspiracy theories regarding Trump’s 2020 election loss, the people said. … Cole hasn’t entered a plea, and his lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The other significant scoop in the WSJ story is about how the FBI finally broke the case open and ultimately arrested Cole — which indirectly offers another tell:
For four years, a tranche of cellphone data provided to the FBI by T-Mobile US sat on a digital shelf because investigators couldn’t figure out how to read it, people familiar with the matter said. The data turned out to be essential to cracking the case, the people said, a breakthrough that happened only recently when a tech-savvy law-enforcement officer wrote a new computer program that finally deciphered the information. That move led to the arrest of 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr. at his home in Northern Virginia, where he had been quietly living with his mother and other relatives.
The tell is that this is the kind of thing you’d expect any administration to tout loudly and proudly — unless, say, the alleged pipe bomber was a gung-ho supporter trying to do your bidding to halt the certification of your opponent’s victory over you.
Normally in the early stages of the prosecution of a major case like this, most of the characterizations of the accused and his alleged crimes and the purported evidence come from leaks from the government, directly or indirectly.
But in this case, even the original charging documents were pretty thin given the significance of the case. They offered nothing on Cole’s motive, and the steady flow of damaging-to-the-defendant leaks you would expect — especially from this administration – has been virtually nonexistent. It’s the dog that hasn’t really barked.
Colorado Scoffs at Tina Peters Pardon
While Colorado swatted away President Trump’s purported pardon of former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters for her conviction on state charges, her attorney is taking an astonishingly broad view of the presidential pardon power.
Peter Ticktin, a former classmate of Trump’s at New York Military Academy, is pushing Trump toward a similiarly expansive view, the NYT reports:
Mr. Ticktin argued that Mr. Trump has the power to free Ms. Peters under an untested legal theory that the Constitution’s language allowing the president to pardon people for offenses “against the United States” applied not just to federal crimes but also to state-level charges.
“The President of the United States has the power to grant a pardon in any of the states of the United States,” Mr. Ticktin wrote in a letter to Mr. Trump last week that portrayed Ms. Peters as a political prisoner who could be a witness to investigations into the false claims that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump.
Never forget that this is really about Trump writing a revisionist history of Jan. 6 and his broader effort to subvert the 2020 election.
Jan. 6 Lives On and On and On …
Two other ongoing developments related to 2020 Big Lie revisionism:
- The DOJ Civil Rights Division sued Fulton County, Georgia, to obtain “all used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election.” The county has so far resisted entreaties from the Trump DOJ for the 2020 ballots.
- The DOJ Civil Rights Division sued four Democratic-controlled states — Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Nevada — for not turning over their statewide voter registration lists.
Delaware USA Concedes Defeat
Julianne Murray, the purported interim U.S. attorney in Delaware, relinquished her claims to office in the wake of a Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision that Alina Habba was invalidly appointed as the U.S. attorney for New Jersey.
Murray, who was the chair of the Delaware Republican Party and had no prosecutorial experience when she was appointed U.S. attorney, had continued in the office past the November expiration of her 120-day term as interim U.S. attorney.
The federal judges in Delaware declined to extend her in the office but had not named a replacement. When they solicited applicants for her successor in September, it prompted an unusual public rebuke from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
9 DOJers Quit Over Trump Attack on UC System
A total of nine career DOJ attorneys resigned while under pressure from higher-ups to investigate alleged anti-semitism on the campuses of the University of California System, the LA Times reports. The newspapers findings echo a deeply reported piece by ProPublica and the Chronicle of Higher Education that zeros in on the Trump DOJ’s purported case against UCLA.
The Retribution: Jim Comey Edition
In an ancillary case to the effort to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly took the Trump DOJ to task for how it handled materials seized years ago from Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman. She ordered the seized materials returned to Richman.
The seized materials were key to the recently dismissed indictment of Comey and would be critical any effort to re-indict him. With that in mind, Kollar-Kotelly ordered the Justice Department to file one copy of the materials with the district court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which would potentially allow prosecutors to seek a new search warrant to access the materials.
Appeals Court Blocks Boasberg Contempt Inquiry
Ahead of live witness testimony set for today and tomorrow, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals late Friday issued an administrative stay that for the second time this year blocks the contempt of court inquiry by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in the original Alien Enemies Act case. The stay was granted by two Trump appointees, one of which was involved in the earlier decision to stymie Boasberg’s inquiry into who decided to defy his emergency orders blocking the AEA deportations in March.
The Undocumented Underground
TPM’s Hunter Walker: Underground Legal Clinics Offer a Lifeline to Migrants Facing Mass Deportation
Good Read
Greg Sargent: Inside Stephen Miller’s Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State
TSA Sharing Info With ICE
The NYT unearths how people like Babson College freshman Any Lucía López Belloza have ended up ensnared at airports before their flights:
Under the previously undisclosed program, the Transportation Security Administration provides a list multiple times a week to Immigration and Customs Enforcement of travelers who will be coming through airports. ICE can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people.
TSA has not previously gotten involved in domestic criminal or immigration matters.
For Your Radar …
The federal trial of Wisconsin state Judge Hannah Dugan on charges of impeding an ICE arrest in her Milwaukee courthouse is set to begin today.
Trump Sued Over Vanity Ballroom Project
The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a federal lawsuit in D.C. to block the construction of President Trump’s mammoth ballroom project until it goes through the proper approval process. The lawsuit comes too late to preserve the East Wing of the White House East Wing, which was demolished without public notice to make room for the gaudy event space that keeps mushrooming in size.
Worlds Apart
- Brown University: The initial person of interest in the Saturday night shooting that left two Brown students dead and nine others wounded was released last evening and the manhunt continues for the shooter.
- Bondi Beach: The father-son attackers who shot and killed 15 people at an open-air Hanukkah celebration were motivated by an ideology that is an “extreme perversion of Islam,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
Rob Reiner, 1947-2025
The reported stabbing deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer at their Brentwood home was a shocking end to an unspeakably violent weekend. The circumstances of their deaths will for a time (only for a short time, I hope) overshadow their civic and political work and his astonishing creative output:
Despite his remarkable body of work as a movie director, it was way into the 1990s before I could stop thinking of him solely for his TV acting. My first TPM post had an All in the Family reference, so it runs deep for me. He will always be Meathead.
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Two Months on the Front Lines of Mass Deportation
TPM has spent the past two months documenting the front lines of mass deportation in New York City. In courthouses, in churches, outside community gatherings and through an extensive digital network, we started to get a feel for and gain access to what we’re calling the “Undocumented Underground“: a volunteer army helping immigrants to stay in the country, even in the face of the Trump administration’s onslaught and some of its uniquely New York features, such as violent arrests in the halls of immigration court.
We published our first two installments in the series last week. The third — on legal clinics for immigrants facing deportation — is up this morning. Lou, a self-described “ex-finance guy” who is now “deeply involved” with one of these organizations says he started volunteering because of the hardships faced by migrants he’s met.
“They literally have nothing,” Lou tells reporter Hunter Walker. “All they have is their character and their story.”
Read Hunter’s latest here, and keep an eye out for several more installments this week.
Underground Legal Clinics Offer a Lifeline to Migrants Facing Mass Deportation
At his clinic, John Sirabella is a hard man to talk to.
On a recent evening, in the back of a cavernous church basement, he led a training for over two dozen people gathered on folding chairs. Translators and volunteers sat at rows of tables. The session was dedicated to helping immigrants navigate the intense scenes in the Manhattan courthouses where masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have taken to snatching people who show up for scheduled hearings and routine appointments.
After Sirabella ran through his presentation and encouraged people to sign up to help with multiple programs, one volunteer asked, “Where is your need greatest?”
Sirabella explained that his top priority is assembling a team of multilingual volunteers who can reach out to immigrants they have encountered on their days acting as observers and escorts in court.
“My goal, my vision is that everyone we’ve met in court since March is notified; they know we’re here, we’re open, and we’re ready to support them,” Sirabella explained. “Whether they choose to go to us is up to them.”
Continue reading “Underground Legal Clinics Offer a Lifeline to Migrants Facing Mass Deportation “Trump Finds Out Bullying Doesn’t Work in Indiana
Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
Despite weeks of threats and mounting pressure from President Trump, Indiana Republican senators defied Donald Trump’s redistricting pressure campaign in Indiana this week. It was a stunning loss for Trump’s ongoing gerrymandering blitz as he pressures red states across the nation to redraw their maps to try to ensure Republicans hold the U.S. House in the midterms.
In a 31-19 vote on Thursday, Indiana state senators rejected a gerrymandered map proposal that would have redrawn district lines to favor Republicans, and one that would have effectively kicked Indiana Democrats out of representation in the U.S. House.
Several Indiana lawmakers have been outspoken about the reasons for why they did not cave to Trump’s bully tactics. The decision to buck Trump comes at a time when utter capitulation to the Trump administration has become mainstream. Several said they defied the Trump administration because they didn’t like the pressure Trump was placing on state level lawmakers. Others said it was a personal choice, rooted in disagreements and dislike for the president’s character.
During an Indiana state Senate Elections Committee hearing on the proposed maps this week, Republican state Sen. Greg Walker, announced that he refused “to be intimidated” by the Trump administration.
“I made a choice. I will not let Indiana or any state become subject to the threat of political violence in order to influence legislative product,” he added.
GOP Indiana state Sen. Michael Bohacek said, ahead of Thursday’s vote, that he would vote against redistricting after the president used a slur to describe Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.
“This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references and his choices of words have consequences,” Bohacek wrote on Facebook in a post explaining that his daughter has Down Syndrome.
And Republican state Sen. Greg Goode similarly spoke out against redistricting shortly before Thursday’s vote.
“Indiana did this just four years ago, the map produced was celebrated by legislative leadership, and Indiana served as a national model for getting things right through Hoosier common sense,” he said.
— Khaya Himmelman
‘You Only Have One Tool’: A Divided, Dataless Fed Cuts Rates As the Economy Moves in Two Different Directions
Ahead of the first meeting of the Federal Reserve Board following an unprecedented federal economic data blackout, Fed watchers predicted a potentially historic outcome. Axios mulled the idea that, if the Fed opted not to cut rates, three of the seven-member governors board could dissent, a split not seen since 1963. Markets waffled over a period of mere weeks, from a low 20% expectation of a quarter-percent rate cut before surging to 87% likelihood.
On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced the board’s expected decision to cut rates by a quarter of a percent. Only one of the seven board members dissented. It was, you guessed it, Trump’s most recent appointee, Stephan Miran who always seems to want the higher rate cut the president is asking for. Among the larger voting members — 12 in all — three dissented, with two wanting no cut at all. This marked the fourth consecutive split Fed vote, the longest stretch of divided decisions since 2019, CNN reported. The 9-3 split was also the first since 2019, but hardly as notable as what could’ve gone down.
Fueling the uncertainty was leftover anxiety about major data gaps caused by the six-week government shutdown. Governors didn’t get information about October inflation, there was no October jobs report, and the November inflation report that should’ve been published Wednesday morning had been pushed to late next week. Here’s what members could see: the jobs market is at best stagnant and at worst in decline, while inflation chugs ahead buoyed by Trump’s tariff policy, indicators moving in opposite directions. “You have one tool,” Powell said Wednesday, addressing the dueling economic narratives. “You can’t do two things at once.”
— Layla A. Jones
It’s Not Just Dems: GOPers Pressure Leadership to Do Something About Looming Rise in Health Care Costs
Up on Capitol Hill, GOP leadership is under pressure to address the looming health care cost crisis from their respective caucuses.
The Senate GOP voted Thursday — largely for show — on two competing plans to address the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies. Both failed to meet the 60 vote threshold, making it even more likely that millions will be hit with skyrocketing health care costs at the end of the year. But, it’s worth noting, the Democratic plan to extend the subsidies for three years had a handful of Republican senators cross the aisle and break with their own caucus to send a clear message to leadership.
“I hope the message is, ‘We need to do something here,’” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), one of the GOP senators who voted for the Democratic bill, on Thursday. “We’re all under pressure.”
On the House side, seemingly fed up with House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) inaction, Republican members have filed and are supporting discharge petitions to vote on extending the enhanced subsidies.
Under pressure from their caucus, House GOP leadership is working on a health care overhaul ahead of a planned vote next week to address the Obamacare subsidies. The plan is not expected to extend the ACA subsidies, though.
— Emine Yücel
One Week Away from Even More Epstein
House Democrats trickled out more Epstein info on Friday in the form of a cache of photos showing the hobnobbing convicted sex offender’s relationship with powerful figures that include President Trump, former President Bill Clinton, and other luminaries like Larry Summers, Steve Bannon, Bill Gates, and Woody Allen.
The photos further document what we already knew: Epstein and these guys really got along! If photos of Epstein yukking it up with Woody Allen, Bannon, Trump, and others aren’t enough to make you gag, the cache includes more: Dems on the House Oversight Committee also included photos of various sex toys, as well as an eerie ribbed black glove.
And it’s not the end of the Epstein revelations. A Manhattan federal judge ordered a bevy of grand jury records from the Manhattan federal criminal investigation released next Friday, Dec. 19. That’s expected to pale in comparison to what the DOJ is now required by law to release, though with notable exceptions: the government can withhold information subject to ongoing criminal investigations, like the ones that Trump ordered the DOJ to open last month.
— Josh Kovensky
Towards a Deeper Understanding of Our Age of Monsters and Predators
I got a fascinating array of responses to my Tuesday post about the 21st century nabobs, striding over politics and society with their unheard of wealth and indifference to the rules we once imagined bound us. One of the big questions was, What happened to the original nabobs? Were they brought to heel? And several of you asked, Okay, so what are we going to do about this? I wanted to discuss these and other topics.
Continue reading “Towards a Deeper Understanding of Our Age of Monsters and Predators”Trump DOJ Desperate to Keep Its Lawyers From Testifying In Contempt Inquiry
A lot has been flying around today in some of the key mass deportation/rule of law cases, but I want to tee up for you another major clash that is brewing:
Continue reading “Trump DOJ Desperate to Keep Its Lawyers From Testifying In Contempt Inquiry”BREAKING: Judge Blocks ICE From Re-Detaining Abrego Garcia
Sua Sponte and Nunc Pro Tunc
In a dramatic series of overnight developments, the Trump administration took extraordinary steps to try to re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia within hours of his court-ordered release, but a federal judge stepped in and blocked the move.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland issued a temporary restraining order at 7 a.m. ET today barring the Trump administration from taking Abrego Garcia back into custody after she ordered his release yesterday. Her emergency order came after ICE directed Abrego Garcia to report to its Baltimore field office at 8 a.m. ET today. Fearing that Abrego Garcia would be re-detained when he showed up at ICE offices, his lawyers filed an emergency motion overnight imploring Xinis to intervene.
All of this unfolded only hours after Abrego Garcia was released from ICE custody on order from Xinis.
The highly unusual series of late-breaking events was punctuated by a remarkably cynical move by a Baltimore immigration judge, an executive branch official.
But first some context: The basis of Xinis’ order to release Abrego Garcia was that ICE had never issued an order of removal against him — itself an extraordinary development because his wrongful deportation in March to El Salvador and his subsequent detention since he was returned to the United States were entirely predicated on the supposed issuance of an order of removal in 2019.
After Xinis ruled Thursday morning that no such order of removal existed, Philip P. Taylor, the acting regional deputy chief immigration judge in Baltimore, rushed out a new order around 7 p.m. ET that purported to fix the “scrivener’s error” in ICE’s records on Abrego Garcia and retroactively create an order of removal. Taylor’s order was comically subtitled: “Immigration Court’s Sua Sponte Order Correcting Scrivener’s Error.”
Taylor’s sudden intervention is procedurally flawed in myriad ways, but that didn’t stop him from purporting to make a number of “corrections” to the record in Abrego Garcia’s 2019 case, waving it all away with a breezy: “These corrections are hereby issued nunc pro tunc to the Immigration Court’s written decision and order of October 10, 2019.”
In her emergency order this morning, Judge Xinis gave all of this such an aggressively arched eyebrow that she might have pulled a muscle:
The ICE Order of Supervision also states that Abrego Garcia was “ordered removed” on October 10, 2019, despite no such order having issued on that date. Instead, the ICE Order of Supervision seems to rely on an “order” issued last night from Immigration Judge Phillip Taylor. The Court does not opine on this newest “order” here. But the Court does note that this “order” was issued nunc pro tunc, effective October 10, 2019.
It was clear months ago that Abrego Garcia is being punished by the Trump administration for having the temerity to challenge his wrongful deportation to El Salvador in violation of a separate immigration judge’s order. Abrego Garcia’s unlawful incarceration in El Salvador, his return to the United States under a ginned-up criminal indictment, and his subsequent ICE detention have been among the most egregious rule-of-law violations of the Trump II presidency.
On top of that, the Trump administration has repeatedly defied Xinis’ orders in the Abrego Garcia cases, a fact not lost on Xinis herself, who writes in her emergency order:
[T]he public retains keen interest in ensuring that government agencies comply with court orders, especially those necessary to protect individual liberties. … For the public to have any faith in the orderly administration of justice, the Court’s narrowly crafted remedy cannot be so quickly and easily upended without further briefing and consideration.
The matrix of orders that Xinis now has in place should in theory protect Abrego Garcia from immediate detention and deportation — but so far the Trump administration has exhibited a sadistic willingness to do anything to torment him, including violating Xinis’ orders.
The Retribution: Letitia James Edition
Last Thursday, the Trump DOJ failed to re-indict New York Attorney General Letitia James on bogus mortgage fraud charges when a federal grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia returned a no-true bill. So yesterday, they brought the case to a new grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia — and got the same result. With each effort, the vindictive prosecution claim James has grows stronger.
Fake Pardon Alert
President Trump purported to pardon former Mesa County (Colorado) clerk Tina Peters, who is currently jailed for her state conviction for tampering with voting machines to try to prove the 2020 Big Lie. Peters has never been charged federally, and her state conviction is beyond the reach of a presidential pardon. I could pardon Peters on the state charges and have the same effect.
2026 Ephemera
MyPillow Founder Mike Lindell — a Big Lie devotee — launches a 2026 bid for governor of Minnesota.
Indiana Rebuffs Trump Redistricting Scheme
Enough GOP state senators in Indiana resisted White House entreaties to block the GOP-friendly mid-decade redistricting plan that would have added a couple of more House seats to the Republican column.
Great Read
The WSJ has a riveting account of opposition leader María Corina Machado’s escape from Venezuela this week to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. At one point, she was lost and adrift at night in the Gulf of Venezuela before being found by an extraction team in a mission dubbed Operation Golden Dynamite. If you know, you know.
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The Undocumented Underground Is Fighting Back Inside New York’s Notorious Immigration Court
One day last month, a Peruvian mother and her daughter went into Manhattan. They were both dressed in their best. The girl, who could not have been more than 10 years old, had a pink backpack shaped like a cat and matching bows in her hair. It was an important day: they were due at the immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza for a hearing related to their effort to obtain lawful residency.
But while these courthouses are theoretically the gateway to American justice and citizenship, in recent months they have played host to horrifying scenes where many of those who hope to experience the best of this nation are instead forcefully rounded up in the halls by federal agents.
Since President Donald Trump retook the White House in January, he has sought to bring his vision for “mass deportation” to life by expanding the budget for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, instituting drastic removal quotas, expanding detention facilities with little concern for alleged human rights abuses, and staging dramatic raids with heavily armed officers from multiple federal agencies. In New York City, the masked footsoldiers of Trump’s deportation machine have set up shop in three immigration courts where they regularly detain people who show up for hearings and mandatory check-ins.
When these agents pull immigrants from the halls of these Manhattan courthouses, they are also ripping them from their shot at citizenship. Often those who are being dragged away have further court dates and appeals. Traditional due process is being snatched from them. Even for those who are not taken, the daily spectacle has left them with a profound fear. Each person who comes to these courts knows they could be next.
Continue reading “The Undocumented Underground Is Fighting Back Inside New York’s Notorious Immigration Court”Indiana Guv Vows to Help Trump Challenge His Own State’s GOPers Who Rejected Gerrymander
Just moments after 21 Republican members of Indiana’s state Senate voted with Democrats to reject President Trump’s aggressive attempt to force the state to draw a new congressional map, one that would have dramatically reduced Indiana Democrats’ chances of holding seats in the U.S. House next year, Gov. Mike Braun went on Twitter to demonstrate his support for … Trump.
Continue reading “Indiana Guv Vows to Help Trump Challenge His Own State’s GOPers Who Rejected Gerrymander”