For at least the next 30 days, the Trump administration will control local law enforcement in D.C.
Continue reading “Trump Grabs Control of DC Police, Promises National Guard Deployment”How Judges Held One of Their Own Out to Dry in Historic AEA Case
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
A Capitulation for the Ages
It’s hard to overstate the significance of Friday’s appeals court ruling by two Trump appointees short-circuiting the criminal contempt of court proceeding in the Alien Enemies Act case.
For everyone closely monitoring the federal courts for signs they would cave to the Trump II onslaught, the ruling by Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao (Obama appointee Cornelia Pillard dissented) was the manifestation of a worst-case fear: Namely, that higher courts will not backstop trial judges when they are faced with utter defiance from the Trump administration.
The Alien Enemies Act case was a prime test case for how far the judiciary would let Trump go. It pitted Chief Judge James Boasberg of D.C., a skilled and respected jurist, against some of the most egregious conduct by the administration thus far, including its blatant refusal to comply with his court orders and its extraordinary obfuscation and gamesmanship to try to obscure what it was actually doing.
The case ripened even further into a historic constitutional clash when a fired DOJ attorney turned into a whistleblower and started releasing internal DOJ communications that provided astounding new evidence of the department’s contemptuous conduct, implicating the very highest levels of government.
The two Trump judges’ craven effort to make Boasberg’s contempt inquiry go away doesn’t just eliminate accountability for the misconduct in this case, but risks undermining any check to the Trump administration in other major anti-immigration cases and all of the other cases where the White House is seeking to run roughshod over the judicial branch.
For these reasons, the case is primed for review by the entire D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, whose 11 active members are split 7-4 in favor of Democratic appointees. From there, the Supreme Court will be asked to weigh in. Confidence that the Roberts Court will defend Boasberg and trial judges is already low, which makes the capitulation by appeals court judges even more alarming.
But in some ways it’s even worse than all that. Had the Trump administration complied with Boasberg’s order, the 200+ Alien Enemies Act detainees would have never ended up imprisoned at El Salvador’s CECOT facility, and the course of history would have been changed. A whole series of subsequent legal battles fought on the heels because the AEA removals were already a fait accompli would have been waged from a different posture. The administration would have been denied the opportunity to defy courts in new and inventive ways in those subsequent cases, avoiding a whole round of challenges to the judiciary’s constitutional powers.
That’s a long way of saying that this was the ultimate contempt of court. If it goes unpunished — and the appeals court ruling means it’s likely to go not just unpunished but uninvestigated — then it will be open season on the judicial branch by the White House.
No other case right now carries the historical weight of this one. Stay tuned.
Don’t Soft Sell It
Oddly neutral language from major news outlets to describe the Trump Justice Department abusing the powers of its office to exact retaliation and retribution against the president’s perceived political enemies Letitia James and Adam Schiff (emphasis mine):
- NYT: Justice Dept. Abruptly Escalates Pressure Campaign on a Trump Adversary
- AP: Justice Department escalates scrutiny of Trump foes with probes of Letitia James and Adam Schiff
Good Read
Asha Rangappa: The FBI As We Knew It is Gone
Why Was Billy Long Ousted From IRS?
WaPo:
The Internal Revenue Service clashed with the White House over using tax data to help locate suspected undocumented immigrants hours before Trump administration officials forced IRS Commissioner Billy Long from his post Friday, according to two people familiar with the situation.
The Department of Homeland Security sent the IRS a list Thursday of 40,000 names of people DHS officials thought were in the country illegally and asked the IRS to use confidential taxpayer data to verify their addresses, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Paxton Asks Texas Supreme Court to Expel Dems
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is asking the state Supreme Court to expel 13 Democrats from the state House after they fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum in the mid-decade redistricting scheme.
Appeals Court Defends Congress From Trump Rampage
Led by Bush I appointee Karen Henderson, the D.C. Court of Appeals defended Congress’ prerogatives by ordering the Trump administration to restore an Office of Management and Budget website that tracks the apportionment of federal funds.
Trump Attack on Higher Ed: UCLA Edition
The Trump administration is seeking to extort more than $1 billion from UCLA — under the guise of enforcing civil rights law — to restore its federal research funding.
The Long Reach of the Roberts Court
A very accessible overview from Adam Liptak of the myriad ways the Roberts Court has and continues to undermine democracy through election law cases:
Taken together, the court’s actions in election cases in recent years have shown great tolerance for partisan gamesmanship and great skepticism about federal laws on campaign spending and minority rights. The court’s rulings have been of a piece with its conservative wing’s jurisprudential commitments: giving states leeway in many realms, insisting on an expansive interpretation of the First Amendment and casting a skeptical eye on government racial classifications.
So Dangerous
At the start of Trump II, Morning Memo noted that a crucial question was whether corporate America would hold the line against Trump or capitulate to a MAGA-branded crony capitalism that substitutes toadyism and favor-seeking for free markets. It’s not going well.
Quote of the Day
“This is the sort of thing only the worst populists do in the worst emerging economies.”– economist Phil Suttle, on President Trump’s Aug. 1 dismissal of Erika McEntarfer as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
5 Points On the Court Cases That Could Undo Trump’s Tariffs
After months of rigamarole beginning with the April 2 threat of widespread “Liberation Day” tariffs, President Donald Trump’s administration finally levied import taxes against more than 70 countries on Thursday. Now it’s up to the courts to decide whether those tariffs will stay in place.
Trump launched his assault on global trade using a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, because he claimed America’s trade deficits constituted a national emergency. U.S. tariffs on other countries now range from a high of 41% levied against Syria to 10% for nations including the United Kingdom. Including the hazy handshake trade deals announced by the administration, about 90 countries now face import tariffs from the U.S. with the new 18.6% average tariff rate at its highest since the Great Depression.
And for what?
The Trump administration claims the decades-long retrenchment of the U.S. manufacturing sector, so-called counterfeit goods imports laced with fentanyl, and the nation’s reliance on foreign supply chains constitute a threat to national security. Experts told TPM the president is completely off base — “You can’t make sense out of it because it does not make sense,” said economist C. Fred Bergsten. Already, Trump’s tariffs are having devastating international effects.
In Lesotho, a country in south Africa of more than 2.3 million people, Trump’s threat of 50% tariffs and the 15% tariffs ultimately levied by the Trump administration decimated the nation’s garment industry, which had long been buoyed by a free trade agreement with the U.S. Trump called the country a nation “nobody has heard of,” and Lesotho’s Deputy Prime Minister Nthomeng Majara declared a state of economic emergency, citing massive unemployment and job loss.
Closer to home, shoppers are feeling the strain of rising inflation as companies begin to do what economists warned they would: pass tariff expenses down to U.S. consumers. The most recent Consumer Price Index found inflation up 2.7% year over year.
It’s against this backdrop that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington D.C. heard arguments on July 31 from plaintiffs suing the Trump administration for an end to the tariffs, and from lawyers for the government arguing to keep them in place.
What’s at stake is whether Trump has managed to successfully wrest control of foreign trade policy powers from Congress and reposition that authority squarely at the feet of the executive.
Who’s suing the Trump administration?
Companies, states and private citizens launched lawsuits against the Trump administration after the president declared a trade deficit-based national emergency under IEEPA to launch his oppressive tariff regime.
At least five cases were filed in April and May, and two are being heard before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit now.
One is an April 14 case filed by V.O.S. Selections, a small, New York-based wine and spirits importer, and four other import companies to the U.S. Court of International Trade. Plaintiffs argued the administration exceeded his authority under IEEPA, and that Congress is the entity that sets tariff rates. The second case filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade was brought by the attorneys general of 12 states: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Vermont. Notably, while Trump won Arizona and Nevada in the 2024 presidential election, the AGs in both states are elected Democrats.
The International Trade Court consolidated the cases, ruled the president overstepped his authority by imposing blanket tariffs, and issued a permanent injunction against future tariffs. As expected, the administration appealed the decision, and the federal appeals court has stayed — or paused enforcement of — the injunction while it considers the appeal.
The Trump admin claims the trade deficit is a national emergency
In its fact sheet about Trump’s national emergency declaration and IEEPA trade powers, the White House made its case that tariffs would make the U.S. more competitive, protect the country’s “sovereignty” and strengthen national and economic security.
The deficits Trump hates so “have led to the hollowing out of our manufacturing base,” the fact sheet said. Further, it claims, COVID and an attack by Houthi forces, which impacted shipping in the Middle East, exposed the U.S. to supply chain disruption, while drugs being smuggled into the country pose additional dangers. Finally, the administration said the U.S. doesn’t have enough stockpiled military equipment.
The question before the court is whether the issues the White House lays out rise to the level of a national emergency and give the president unilateral authority to authorize and impose foreign trade policy at will.
The courts don’t seem to be buying it
Politico called it a “frosty reception.” ABC news said judges “voiced skepticism.” Those unflattering summaries describe the tone of questions and answers given by the panel of 11 federal appeals court judges during the July 31 hearing.
“One of the major concerns that I have is that IEEPA doesn’t even mention the word tariffs anywhere,” said Obama appointee Judge Jimmie Reyna.
Another, Clinton appointee Judge Timothy Dyk, noted the intended role of Congress in setting tariffs.
“It’s just hard for me to see that Congress intended to give the president in IEEPA the wholesale authority to throw out the tariff schedule that Congress has adopted after years of careful work,” Dyk said, “and revise every one of these tariff rates.”
Watching live, Inu Manak, a trade fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations told TPM she felt good hearing judges ask “very pointed, direct questions, trying to establish whether there are guardrails or limits to the president.”
Trump is stretching IEEPA emergency declarations in an unprecedented way, said economist Bergsten, who said he helped negotiate IEEPA during his time at the U.S. Treasury Department in 1977.
“To implement policies like this under IEEPA, you have to rely on the existence of a national emergency that’s a threat to national security,” Bergsten said, “and it’s very hard to argue that any of this trade stuff falls in that category.”
How has the IEEPA been used historically?
Trump tried during his first administration to use IEEPA to levy tariffs against Mexico when he declared a national emergency for illegal immigration in 2019. But before that, the statute had been used more for sanctions than as a foreign economic policy tool, Georgetown law professor Kathleen Claussen said during an episode of NPR’s Planet Money podcast.
After Congress passed the law, President Jimmy Carter first used it in 1979 in response to the Iran hostage crisis, according to a Library of Congress publication detailing the history of the act and how presidents have used it. Carter used his IEEPA powers to lock Iran out of the U.S. finance market and to freeze Iranian government assets here. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan used the act to punish South Africa for its violent racial apartheid regime, revoking and prohibiting loans, military-related technology exports, and nuclear-related exports to the nation’s government.
Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama declared a national emergency and blocked property and transactions in North Korea, in response to North Korea’s nuclear program.
“I think it’s pretty clear that president Trump has overstepped his powers as articulated in IEEPA,” said Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist and economic adviser during the Obama administration.
A Trump-stacked SCOTUS means ‘it’s a 50-50 bet’ what’ll happen
Experts expect the case is heading for the Supreme Court. The conservative court, which features three Trump-appointed justices, has issued a number of rulings exponentially expanding executive powers. But, Bergsten noted, SCOTUS hasn’t always gone with the administration.
“It’s a 50-50 bet,” said Bergsten. “Under an objective look at the law, [IEEPA] should not extend to this activity.”
If the court strikes down Trump’s tariffs, there are other, less flexible and more time consuming methods Trump could use to enact his isolationist economic agenda. But in the meantime, the U.S. government would have to pay foreign exporters back, and it seems like that process would be a mess, according to an article from the Peterson Institute of International Economics, where Bergsten serves as director emeritus.
Bernstein, currently a policy fellow at the Center for American Progress, says he has little faith in the nation’s highest court not to simply bend to Trump’s will.
“The Supreme Court majority has time and again just rolled over and allowed the president — and has allowed the executive branch — to go way beyond historical precedence,” he said. “So my hope is that the International Trade Court’s decision will be ratified, but my fear is that the Supreme Court will ultimately overturn it.”
We’re Going to Get There
No big push from me today. But I am really happy to see and really happy to report that we’re now highly likely to reach our goal in this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive. We needed/need to raise $500,000 this year. And we’re currently at $458,443 after three and a half weeks. It looks like we’re probably get there early next week. I thank you; our whole team thanks you. We really appreciate it.
One of the things about running or being involved in TPM is one gets used to or accustomed to things that are pretty amazing and a pretty big deal. That’s a delicate balance. I never want to take them for granted. But we rely on them. And our reliance is mainly vindicated. The annual drive is high on those list of things. It’s a lot of money. I mean, it’s a half million dollars. That’s a lot of money. I always go into them with a measure of trepidation. Are our people going to be there for us? I try to get my head into it in a certain kind of way, thinking about my arguments, getting my thinking coherent and clear about what we’re trying accomplish in the current environment and so forth. I work on getting my game face on.
Like anything in life you need to be clear about what you want to say and what you’re trying to say to be able to say it.
As I’ve said before the whole endeavor is like a big organizational trust fall and we’ve been able to rely on you to catch us each time. We really, really appreciate that, even as it has become an annual thing and in some ways “routine,” though really never routine.
Finally, the vast majority of you who contribute are members. But I want to remind everyone that while the Journalism Fund is a critical part of our operation these days, the site exists because of membership fees. No paying members, no site. There’d still be a TPM without the Journalism Fund (probably?) but it would be smaller and much more crimped and threadbare, less leaning into deeper investigative pieces, more quick-hitty, etc. Certainly no expansion and quite possibly the opposite. Our members are our true and most important trust fall. Occasionally I’ll hear from members who say, I wish I could contribute but can’t this year. I really encourage anyone for whom it is an easy lift to contribute. But I always tell those people, if you are a member that is all we ask. You are 100% in good standing with us. Your membership is the thing. You are 150% carrying your weight.
At the moment we are closing in on another potential milestone: 36,000 paying members. We have 35,749 paying members and 38,438 total members, the delta between the two being free student memberships and community (financial hardship/fixed income) memberships. Those “free” memberships are in turn made possible by $70 increments of contributions to the Journalism Fund.
Let me conclude by again thanking you. This is a joint enterprise of the TPM community. Thank you for having our backs.
War on Terror, Cartel Edition
Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
Trump ordered the military to fight Latin American drug cartels that it labeled as terrorist organizations in a secret directive, multiple news organizations reported on Friday.
Let’s take a moment here to reflect on how far this marks the erosion of congressional power. In theory, presidents can only use military force after Congress declares war; failing that, Congress can issue an Authorization for the Use of Military Force – an AUMF. The 2001 AUMF following 9/11 was incredibly broad, empowering the president to use the military against anyone responsible for the attacks.
That breadth set the stage for the War on Terror, the seemingly endless series of military actions that defined and drained the following decades. We still don’t have a full list of what conflicts and engagements were authorized under the 2001 AUMF. It’s definitional, though, of the expansion of executive power that has allowed the president to use the military overseas with very thin Congressional approval.
Before the election last year, I reported on how the War on Terror fractured the country, helping set the stage for President Trump to apply some of the same methods used during that period, at home. In some ways, the years after 9/11 were a classically authoritarian moment: those who opposed federal policy faced often extreme backlash; only one representative opposed the 2001 AUMF, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA).
One person I spoke with last year was Karen Greenberg, an attorney who directed Fordham Law’s National Security Center. Greenberg had written a book called “Subtle Tools,” in which she argued that the War on Terror’s extralegal methods had crippled American democracy and paved the way for Trump’s assault on the rule of law. One example she held up was the vagueness of the 2001 AUMF: “It was like, no, we’re just going to say there’s a threat. We have the powers, we can do what we want. That was unheard of,” Greenberg told me.
The 2001 AUMF was dangerously vague, but it at least paid minimal service to the idea that the president should be accountable to Congress when using military force. As reported, the cartel declaration appears to ignore that, while also continuing on the administration’s tack of using the military for law enforcement purposes.
On the latter point, some reporting suggests that this will be relatively limited: using Navy ships to intercept drug-smuggling boats, for example. On the former, it’s striking how little grounds the administration has to do this. There is a national self-defense claim Trump can make to avoid Congress; the New York Times suggested that they may rely on fentanyl overdoses to make that claim.
The lack of meaningful congressional oversight isn’t only a box to check, Greenberg told me last year. It can help prevent other abuses, or stop military operations from dragging on indefinitely. As Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer and current senior adviser at International Crisis Group, suggested on Bluesky, what this portends is another War on Terror, this time against the cartels.
— Josh Kovensky
Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:
- While Democrats try to decide what exactly their role will be in the upcoming appropriations process and the looming government shutdown, they’re not receiving much good will from Republican leadership.
- A bit more on the shoddiness of the NIH program that RFK Jr. is trying to use to carry out his signature autism research plan.
- A look at why Vice President JD Vance is facing allegations of corrupt canoeing practices.
Let’s dig in.
GOP Leadership Stalls on Dem Meeting Request to Avoid Shutdown
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) sent a letter to Republican leaders on Monday demanding a meeting with their counterparts.
The Democratic leaders told Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) that they have “the responsibility to govern for all Americans and work on a bipartisan basis to avert a painful, unnecessary shutdown at the end of September.”
“Yet it is clear that the Trump Administration and many within your party are preparing to ‘go it alone’ and continue to legislate on a solely Republican basis,” they added.
During an interview with ABC News on Thursday, Jeffries said he has not heard back from Republicans since sending the letter.
Government funding is set to expire after Sept. 30. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill will only have a few weeks to work something out when they come back from the lengthy August recess. Democrats also have some choices to make about how they intend to work with Republicans — if at all. It’s a phenomenon that I unpack here.
Meanwhile the vice chair of House Appropriations Committee Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL) told Politico that despite the GOP’s track record he’s confident that all 12 spending bills will get floor votes. But he added, negotiations in both chambers will come down to congressional leaders and the White House.
“That’s really not in the hands of the appropriators,” Díaz-Balart said of shutdown talks. “That’s above our pay grade.”
— Emine Yücel
Love The Weekender?
Would you consider contributing to our TPM Journalism Fund this weekend if you are able to? We’re currently doing a drive to raise $500,000 and are very close to our goal.
The Weekender community is one of my favorite spaces here at TPM. Many of you have been reading since I (Nicole) first took over writing and editing this weekend newsletter. That was during COVID lockdown, a very different era, but one not unlike our current complex and ominous political moment.
It’s really nice to work at an independent news outlet like TPM, which offers me and everyone else on staff ample opportunities to write about how our personal experiences interact with the work we do. We’re political news junkies, just like you, trying to keep up and process what’s happening around us as we do our jobs. That’s the kind of outlet that I hope The Weekender is, both for TPM staff and for loyal readers like you: a unique space to take a breath at the end of a long, heavy news week and digest what’s transpired, as humans. We try to keep it light, too.
If The Weekender has been a helpful service for you over the years, we’d love if you’d consider contributing to our TPM Journalism Fund drive. No pressure, you can finish your coffee first.
— Nicole Lafond
You Had One Job
I wrote this week about RFK Jr.’s signature autism research plan, as executed by the National Institutes of Health. In theory, this is his big chance to prove the medical establishment wrong. For years, he’s claimed, researchers have refused to acknowledge a link between autism and vaccines, as well as other environmental factors. Now, having made it to what was only a few years ago an unimaginable perch within the federal government, he has unbelievable resources to find out the “truth.”
Looking at the track record of Trump officials like RFK Jr., it can be hard to take them at their word. But allow me to be naive here for a moment. This should be Kennedy’s big break: he can finally redirect federal medical research towards what, let’s say, is neither a pet cause nor a great storytelling device, but rather something that he sincerely believes has caused untold harm across the country.
So, what’s actually happening?
Per my reporting, RFK Jr.’s marquee autism research initiative focuses on collecting huge amounts of data on Americans from various sources — wearable device companies, medical records firms, insurers, other federal agencies — and collating them to provide a complete picture of where autism is occurring. Researchers in the area will say that this is a deeply flawed approach, but let’s set that aside for a moment. It’s an ambitious project.
The problem? The Senate is already upset about it, largely because it seems to be a copy of an Alzheimer’s research initiative that was shelved last year after Congress complained that it lacked basic budget constraints and did little to account for privacy issues. One NIH source told me that the autism study seemed to be a copy of the Alzheimer’s one, with a different focus.
What’s revealing to me here is partly the disregard for federal spending, but mostly it’s the shoddiness. Even on the issue that is supposedly at the core of the MAHA agenda, there’s a stunning lack of interest in pursuing what they’ve said was the point of this all along. Read the story here.
— Josh Kovensky
DELIVERVANCE: The Vice President’s Questionable River Ride
Vice President JD Vance is facing allegations of corrupt canoeing practices.
The accusations come from a report published in The Guardian on August 6 that alleged Vance’s team had the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers divert the flow of an Ohio lake to create “ideal kayaking conditions” as he paddled through the area to celebrate his birthday.
In a statement to the newspaper, the USACE confirmed the Secret Service requested to change the outflow of the lake. However, the agency said that request was made to accommodate Vance’s security detail and not to make it easier for him to go with the flow. The newspaper attributed the allegation — that Vance’s team had officials change levels in the lake for his boating needs — to a “source with knowledge of the matter who communicated with the Guardian anonymously” while also noting they “could not independently confirm this specific claim.”
Vance was spotted canoeing on the Little Miami River, which is fed by Caesar Creek Lake, on August 2, his 41st birthday. The Guardian also claimed U.S. Geological Survey data showed a drop in the lake level and corresponding surge on the river during the time Vance was vacationing in the area.
The vice president did not respond to the paper’s request for comment about the kayak kerfuffle. Perhaps, he is hoping the silence can help him float on past this scandal.
— Hunter Walker
Abbott Threatens to Add Even More GOP Seats in Texas If Dems Don’t Return
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is threatening to expand Republicans’ power grab over the state’s congressional maps even further. If Democrats who fled the state to deny the GOP a quorum don’t return, Abbott said, he may increase the number of Democratic districts he’s dismantling ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“We may make it six or seven or eight new seats we’re going to be adding on the Republican side,” Abbott told the conservative podcast “Ruthless,” according to CNN.
Democratic lawmakers left Texas for blue states in an attempt to run out the clock on the current special legislative session, which ends on Aug. 19, and prevent Republicans from enacting the new hyper-partisan maps called for by President Trump. But Abbott told NBC News that he plans to just keep calling new special sessions “with the same agenda items” until he gets his way.
Abbott and other Texas officials have gone full scorched-earth in their pressure campaign against Democratic lawmakers. Those efforts include issuing civil warrants for their arrests, trying to remove the House Democratic leader from office, opening investigations into groups providing financial support to the lawmakers, and even asking the FBI for assistance in rounding them up. (There’s no actual legal basis for the FBI to get involved, since the legislators have broken neither state nor federal criminal laws).
For now, Texas Dems are holding the line against returning to their home state and strategizing with blue state leaders like Govs. JB Pritzker (IL) and Kathy Hochul (NY) about what to do next. As Lawfare noted, prior “quorum-breaking” efforts have mostly failed for the minority party. Democratic lawmakers would need to stay out of the state until Texas’ Dec. 8 filing deadline in order to prevent the new maps from being adopted in time for the midterms — a hard sell, since each Democrat is currently subject to a $500 daily fine, and they only serve in the legislature part-time.
In the meantime, the redistricting wars have gone national. Republican leaders in Missouri, Florida and other GOP-controlled states are pushing to redraw their own maps to bolster their party’s narrow margins in the U.S. House, while Democrats in California and Maryland are countering with their own proposals.
Follow along below for updates:
The Fires Next Time
I’ve told you a few times of my difficulty launching the DOJ-in-exile project. Such is life. But there’s another set of actions, much easier to do, not requiring any organization or concerted action, which is just as important. We hear a lot of Trump administration actions decried, denounced and so forth, as they should be. What I would like to hear more clearly is that with this or that criminal or unconstitutional action, the next time Democrats control the government the actions will be reversed and those who acted criminally will be prosecuted. This also applies to bad policy. So, for instance, with the absurd expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Democrats should be saying clearly that once they are back in power, that whole expansion is going to be reversed. People signing up for all those new jobs should know that now. Democrats couldn’t reverse those things as long as Trump’s in power and has a veto pen. But they might be able to deny more funding as soon as 2027.
Continue reading “The Fires Next Time”Brutal Day On The Investigate The Investigators Front
An onslaught of bad news for the rule of law over the past few hours:
Continue reading “Brutal Day On The Investigate The Investigators Front”Appeals Court Clears Trump Admin of Contempt of Court in Alien Enemies Act Case
After sitting on the case for months, a federal appeals court Friday shut down the contempt of court proceeding against the Trump administration in the original Alien Enemies Act case.
Continue reading “Appeals Court Clears Trump Admin of Contempt of Court in Alien Enemies Act Case”A New Round of Unlawful Purges Hits FBI
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
The Retribution: FBI Edition
President Trump continues to decimate the senior ranks of the FBI with the unlawful firings of career agents, all of whom hold non-political career positions with civil service protections.
The ongoing purge of FBI personnel follows Trump’s repeated promises, made over years, to retaliate against the investigators who pursued criminal charges against him for his first-term misconduct. But the purges have expanded beyond those investigators to include officials who have refused to do the White House’s bidding in conducting the purges.
Among the latest casualties is former acting FBI director Brian Driscoll, who stood up to the Justice Department early in Trump’s second term as it tried, among other thing, to obtain the names of agents who had investigated Trump. To put a finer point on it, the Trump administration is forcing out the man it plucked from relative obscurity to serve as acting director until Kash Patel could be confirmed by the Senate (although it should be noted that the White House had originally intended to name Driscoll acting deputy director but mistakenly swapped his name with Robert Kissane’s and never corrected the error).
“I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for which I have no answers,” Driscoll said in a message to colleagues reported by the AP. “No cause has been articulated at this time.”
Other officials reportedly fired, effective as soon as today, included:
- Steven Jensen, an assistant director whom Patel put in charge of the Washington field office in April;
- Spencer Evans, who had already been demoted from his position running the Las Vegas field office;
- Walter Giardina, a former Marine who worked on Trump-related investigations, including the contempt of Congress case against Peter Navarro; and
- Christopher Meyer, who had worked on Trump investigations.
“None of the men appeared eligible to retire,” according to the NYT, which reported that Giardina’s wife died of cancer last month.
Using and Abusing the FBI
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said the FBI had agreed to his request to help track down Democratic state legislators who fled Texas to deny Republican lawmakers a quorum in their mid-decade redistricting scheme. The FBI has no obvious legal authority to track down state legislators who have committed no crimes, let alone force them to return from Illinois to Texas.
Florida Joins GOP Redistricting-palooza
Florida Republicans have begun the process of a mid-decade redistricting of their own as President Trump and the GOP go all out to preserve their narrow House majority.
Trump’s Sows Confusion With Census Post
President Trump’s social media post yesterday morning declaring that he was ordering a new census with a citizenship question included set off a day of confusion. Was Trump ordering a new unprecedented mid-decade census or was he re-upping his past failed bid to add a citizenship question, this time for the next census in 2030?
A day later, it’s still not clear.
The best reporting, like NPR’s, explicitly noted the confusion and that the administration was not responsive to efforts to clear it up:
The press office for the White House did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment.
In a statement, the Commerce Department said: “The Census Bureau will immediately adopt modern technology tools for use in the Census to better understand our robust Census data. We will accurately analyze the data to reflect the number of legal residents in the United States.”
The worst reporting danced around the uncertainty posed by an erratic president with itchy thumbs and his own social media platform.
Trump’s Birthright Citizenship EO Blocked Again
Since the Roberts Court used the birthright citizenship case to rewrite the law on universal injunctions, three different federal courts have used the class action workaround to block President Trump’s executive order nationwide, the WaPo notes:
The upshot is that the president is facing injunctions from more lower courts than he was before the Supreme Court’s ruling, and federal judges have demonstrated, at least for now, that they maintain significant authority to slow down the implementation of the administration’s most consequential policies.
The big test, of course, is still to come: Will appeals courts and ultimately the Supreme Court uphold the nationwide class action certifications? Stay tuned.
Only at TPM
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: HHS Has Revived a Failed Program to Scrape Americans’ Data and Track Autism, Senate Suggests
Good Read
Wired: “A string of previously undisclosed break-ins at Tennessee National Guard armories last fall marks the latest in a growing series of security breaches at military facilities across the United States, raising fresh concerns about the vulnerability of US armories to theft and intrusion. … At least some of the break-ins seem to point to potential insider help.”
Neo-Nazi Gets 20 Years for Power Grid Plot
Brandon Russell, a founding member of the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division, was sentenced Thursday to the maximum possible of 20 years for his conviction plotting to attack Baltimore’s electrical grid, part of a rise in accelerationist extremism.
Sign of the Times
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