As we’ve discussed, the Trump administration has been flip-flopping for months on the matter of whether the Department of Homeland Security will target farm laborers, as well as workers in the hotel and restaurant industries, with ICE raids.
Continue reading “Noem Settles It: Trump Admin Will Sacrifice Agriculture at Altar of Mass Deportations”Dems Rip DeSantis For ‘Raiding Hurricane Response Resources’ At ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
Top Florida Democrats issued blistering responses on Wednesday following a TPM report that detailed how Sunshine State Gov. Ron DeSantis diverted “disaster preparedness” resources in the rush to build the “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention camp.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who toured the site earlier this month and subsequently decried the conditions there, sentd a statement to TPM blasting every aspect of the project.
“DeSantis already operates under a cloud of corruption when it comes to stealing taxpayer dollars. So, it’s no surprise he’d siphon off and create shortfalls in our hurricane preparedness funds for this boondoggle, then hide it from the public, or that he’d hand out sweetheart contracts to donors to build this monument to cruelty and denied due process,” Wasserman Schultz said. “This internment camp is an outrageously wasteful publicity stunt, designed to hurt immigrants and distract from reckless Republican policies that will double the ranks of Florida’s uninsured.”
Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried similarly questioned the purpose of the facility and the fact emergency equipment was pulled to the site.
“Ron DeSantis is gambling with Floridians’ lives. Diverting critical emergency communications equipment during hurricane season is not just irresponsible—it’s dangerous,” Fried said in a statement to TPM. “First responders need every tool at their disposal to save lives. Instead, the Governor is raiding hurricane response resources for political games.”
TPM’s report was based on an in-depth analysis of contracts related to the construction and operation of the controversial detention camp. We identified $19,983,785.03 in contracts and invoices that were earmarked for nine different firms. Eight of those companies were not previously known to have been involved with the project. One of the contracts was created on July 1 and provided for $499,869.60 to be paid to Baker’s Electronics & Communications Inc. for an “Atlas trunked radio system.” That platform is often used by public safety agencies for critical and emergency communications.
The contract specified that the Atlas systems “deployed” at the detention camp had been “pulled from disaster preparedness platform” [sic]. The document further indicated that, as a result of that diversion, the system needed to “be back-filled to prevent a response gap during hurricane season given the unknown duration of detention center operation.” In Florida, Hurricane season runs from June 1 until November 30. DeSantis’ office, which was listed as the agency responsible for the contract, did not respond to a request for comment.
“Alligator Alcatraz” is part of DeSantis’ efforts to support President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” agenda. Florida is footing the initial spending on the hastily-built project, which reportedly will cost $450 million a year. Previous reporting from the Miami Herald has exposed how DeSantis donors are among the vendors who have been awarded contracts to work on the effort. The contracts uncovered by TPM show how there was a flurry of spending including some “rush” fees and how work is ongoing even as detainees have already been brought to the site.
Wasserman Schultz and Fried have both been among the more outspoken critics of the facility. In interviews, Wasserman Schultz has described horrific conditions she saw at the camp including people packed “wall to wall.” She has called for the site to be shut down. On Monday, the state party announced it filed a formal public records request “seeking all documents related to the state contracts behind the internment camp known as ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’” In a statement accompanying that announcement, Fried suggested the facility was a potential source of corruption, an “environmental disaster,” and “a human rights crisis.”
What Is He Doing?
I must admit to being a bit perplexed at what Donald Trump is doing with the Epstein story. He went on Truth Social, the family’s vanity social network and corruption vehicle, today and again went off about how his own supporters are fools for not moving on from the Epstein story and how they should just — goshdarnit! — forget about it and move the F on! Trump seems to be demanding, for any of us who thought there was no there there in the Epstein material, that we realize there must be — that we believe there must be. He’s not asking my consent or yours. He’s just doing it. And this is what I mean: When Donald Trump is guilty as sin on something he insists that whatever is out there that you might have thought was incriminating is actually the work of Obama, Hillary and James Comey. And that is literally what he is doing. Here’s today update from Truth Social.
Continue reading “What Is He Doing?”Thank You, Friends
Thanks so much for getting us off to a very solid start with these year’s annual TPM Journalism Fund drive. If you haven’t had a chance to yet, please take a moment to join us this year. As I said yesterday, this is a critical part of our system to keep TPM thriving, resilient and expanding. Any amount is deeply appreciated. We have an outside chance of getting to 40% of the way to our goal on the second day of the drive. That’s $200,000 and we’re currently at $174,737. Thank you so much and as I said, if you haven’t already, please join us in this year’s drive. Just click right here.
WH Is Ignoring Senate GOP’s Requests for Details on DOGE Cuts It Wants Congress to Swallow
Senate Republicans barely advanced President Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescissions package into debate time late Tuesday night, following two tight procedural votes that required Vice President JD Vance’s presence to tie-break.
Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) broke with the Senate Republican caucus and opposed both of the procedural votes, citing concerns about the bill — and, apparently, a lack of clarity from the White House on where exactly the cuts will come from.
Continue reading “WH Is Ignoring Senate GOP’s Requests for Details on DOGE Cuts It Wants Congress to Swallow”Contracts Show Millions of Dollars and Diverted Disaster Resources Were Used to Build DeSantis’ ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
TPM has obtained and analyzed over a dozen contracts and invoices related to the construction and operation of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention camp in the Everglades. The documents identify eight previously undisclosed companies — including two firms with a Fortune 500 pedigree — involved with the controversial facility. They also show that, in at least one instance, resources allocated for the state’s “disaster preparedness” apparatus were diverted to the site as DeSantis’ office used emergency powers to quickly establish the camp, causing a shortfall that needs to be addressed during the ongoing hurricane season.
Continue reading “Contracts Show Millions of Dollars and Diverted Disaster Resources Were Used to Build DeSantis’ ‘Alligator Alcatraz’”Fire, Brimstone, and Hegseth: Idaho Christian Nationalists Establish a DC Beachhead
WASHINGTON DC—This past Sunday, Pastor Jared Longshore looked out at his congregants, gathered to hear him deliver the first sermon of a new church within sight of the U.S. Capitol. The group included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as well as a prominent conservative think tanker and assorted Republican political operatives.
Longshore began with a choice. “The option before you is quite plain,” he said. “It is Christ or chaos, Christ or destruction.”
Continue reading “Fire, Brimstone, and Hegseth: Idaho Christian Nationalists Establish a DC Beachhead”Trump Corruptly Targets Schiff With Criminal Investigation
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
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Have a question? Submit it in the comments section of the Substack version of today’s Morning Memo. (The comments section at TPM proper is too robustly active for me to easily find your questions.)
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Trump Retribution: As Corrupt as It Gets
The Trump administration is corruptly targeting Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) with criminal investigation using the same tactic it has used against New York Attorney General Letitia James: allegations of mortgage fraud.
Fannie Mae has reportedly made a criminal referral against Schiff to the Trump Justice Department. President Trump happily touted the news about his former impeacher on social media.
In any other era, this would be the defining story of the day. The President of the United States running the DOJ out of his White House and using it to launch politically motivated criminal investigations of his Democratic foes.
Trump’s not targeting just any Democrats. He’s targeting precisely who he has promised to target: Democrats who came after him. James, among other things, won that massive $300+ million fraud case against the Trump Org. Schiff, then in the House, was the lead prosecutor in the first Trump impeachment and has continued to be a chief Trump antagonist.
We don’t have to peel back the layers of the underlying mortgage fraud allegations. Why was the the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae, looking at James and Schiff in the first place? Just out of the blue, we’re supposed to believe?
The WaPo obtained from an anonymous administration official a confidential Fannie Mae memo address to Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte: “The memo said that on May 12, Fannie’s financial crimes investigations unit received a document demand from FHFA’s inspector general concerning Schiff’s home, including requests for loan files and other documents.”
We all know what’s going on here.
In Other Trump DOJ News …
- Criminal defense lawyers have been lobbying the Trump DOJ’s “Weaponization Working Group” to try to get their clients off the hook, Bloomberg reports. In an ironic twist, the attorney for the Utah plastic surgeon accused of selling false Covid vaccination cards said the group turned her down when she asked it to intervene. It was only later, when pressure was building over the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theory, that Attorney General Pam Bondi abruptly dismissed the case against the doctor.
- After the federal judges in the Northern District of New York declined to extend the interim term of U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III, the Trump administration has orchestrated things (legally, I think) so that Sarcone may continue in the role for a limited period.
‘Legalistic Noncompliance’
University of Michigan law professors Daniel Deacon and Leah Litman have a new legal research paper out (I promise to only rarely inflict legal research papers on you) that tries to give some shape and form to the Trump administration’s defiance of court orders. They dub the practice “legalistic noncompliance” and observe how it has manifested itself on the ground in the three ways:
In the first, the executive deploys specious arguments—arguments that seem facially plausible but in fact lack support—in order to evade enforcement of judicial orders. The second involves employing tactics, including legal-sounding claims that certain information cannot be shared, as a way to impede investigation into whether the administration is in fact complying. The third consists of occasions where the administration has, in the face of a judicial order, used different legal means in order to effect a policy substantially similar to the one enjoined.
Texas Walkout Redux?
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and DNC Chair Ken Martin held a conference call Monday night with 40 Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives, and while they stopped short of asking them to walk out of the special session later this month to block a Republican redistricting scheme, “they left the impression that it should be considered,” the NYT reports. Texas Democrats famously fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum during the mid-decade redistricting fiasco of 2003.
It’s not just Texas, where Republicans hope a newly drawn map will help them pick up five additional seats. “There could be some other states we’re going to get another three, or four or five in addition. Texas would be the biggest one,” President Trump said yesterday.
Anything to hold on to the House and not lose the GOP’s trifecta of White House, Senate, and House control.
Census Citizenship Question Is Baaack
The census citizenship issue is raising its head again. House Republicans have introduced three bills this year that would exclude noncitizens for the purposes of apportioning House seats and Electoral College votes, NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang reports. The census citizenship push during President Trump’s first term was foiled by legal challenges.
W. Virginia Abortion Pill Ban Upheld
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld West Virginia’s near-total ban on the abortion pill mifepristone. “The decision marks the first time a federal appeals court has allowed a state to strictly limit the drug, teeing up a key test of states’ powers to ban medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration,” the WaPo reports.
Medicaid Cuts Already Start to Bite
Hospitals are closing or actively considering doing so, cutting programs, and laying off staff. Planned Parenthood is warning patients it can no longer accept Medicaid insurance and in one region says it can’t provide services to Medicaid recipients at all, even if the patient doesn’t use Medicaid to pay. And lawmakers in at least five states are planning special sessions to revamp their already-enacted budgets and determine how to handle the cuts, including what cuts they should enact and how to administer the new Medicaid work requirement.
Trump Attack on Higher Ed: Wolverines Edition
- University of Michigan: In its trumped up “investigation” of foreign donations, the Trump administration has made an extensive and invasive demand for records, including “personnel files on university students and employees, records on research projects, tax records and records on other partnerships with foreign universities, governments and other entities,” the NYT reports.
- Columbia University: The university could settle with the Trump administration as soon as next week, paying hundred of millions of dollars in fines and implement various “reforms” to re-start cut off federal funding, the NYT reports.
- George Mason University: The Trump administration has opened two anti-DEI investigations into the public university in Virginia, after it helped force the resignation of the president of the University of Virginia.
A Report From the Academic Trenches
Those of us not in academia and far removed from student life may not fully appreciate how grim things have become on campus. President Trump’s attack on higher education is a big part of the story, but it’s just one of the dramatic changes that have swept universities. Political scientist Paul Musgrave wrote a thoughtful essay to try to convey to non-academics the scale and scope of the changes:
I find it hard to explain to people who are unfamiliar with academia or how scholarship actually works how devastating these changes are. These disruptions, cumulatively, seem—from my perspective—to be more dramatic in their effects in a far shorter time than the impact of computerization and the Internet on higher education. Moreover, there does not seem to be any reason to think that U.S. policymakers are concerned with, or even sad about, any of these changes. To the contrary: they are pouring gasoline on the flames. Warnings about the risks and long-term effects fall on ears deafened by an ideology that says that those consequences are desirable or by an incapacity to imagine that actions have consequences.
Meanwhile, in the Fox News Alt-Universe …
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This Is Super Important
Today’s the day we kick off our big ask for the year, the TPM Journalism Fund annual drive. I just called it our “big ask.” But I want to be clear that if you’re a member, you shouldn’t feel any obligation. You’ve done your part to support our work. More than 35,000 of you make TPM possible. But the TPM Journalism Fund plays a critical role in keeping TPM vital, prepared for the unexpected and able to expand our capacity to meet the public crisis of the moment. We truly need your support. What we’re doing today at TPM, responding as we are to public crisis of the second Trump Presidency would not be possible without it. If you’ve heard enough and are able to contribute in any amount, please click right here.
Continue reading “This Is Super Important”NIH COO Canned and Escorted out of the Building
A bit of professional disappointment since we were also tipped about this and were hoping to get on it tomorrow. (D’oh!) But the Washington Post beat us to it. The gist is what’s important. Eric Schnabel, the chief operating office of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — ground-zero of the Trump war on science research -— was fired and literally escorted off the premises yesterday apparently directing a hefty sole-source contract to a company which employs his wife. It seems Trish Duffy Schnabel often goes by her maiden name and he may have thought that was strong enough OpSec to get away with it.
Schnabel, a 25 year Army vet, had always raised concern and harrumphs within the non-toady echelon at NIH because he apparently had no scientific or biomedical background, despite science and biomedicine playing a rather large role in the NIH brief.