Programming note: Our first Morning Memo Live event is coming up on Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C. Find details and tickets here.

A Fork in the Road of American History

TPM has never much indulged the lazy-editor trope of anniversary coverage of major events, but in the midst of a fierce rewriting of the history of Jan. 6, it feels fitting to mark its fifth anniversary, if only to preserve clarity amongst ourselves about what that day represents: the starkest fork in the road that this country had faced since its civil war.

Jan. 6 felt that momentous then, not just as a culmination of the conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election, but a clear and present choice about what path the country would take from there. Not an end point, as I argued at the time, but a dangerous new starting point that threatened us with a dark and uncertain future in which democracy and the rule of law would succumb to lawlessness, tyranny, and a uniquely American brand of authoritarianism.

The results of the 2024 election made clear which fork we took, and so we now remember the attack on the Capitol not as a mere warning sign or as a glorious moment when democracy bent but did not break but rather as a last chance to avoid a calamitous path that has taken us over a cliff. We haven’t hit bottom yet.

I offer this brief reflection not as a jolt of doomerism but because, even in my own mind, the relentlessness of American exceptionalism in which we’ve been drenched all our lives continues to be the default setting. On good days, that manifests as a certain kind of optimism and can-do spirit that we’ll get through this. On bad days, it’s a deep denial of how far we’ve already fallen. Either way, our national penchant for self-congratulation is a bad prism through which to view our present circumstances.

Looking Back Five Years on …

• TPM’s Hunter Walker, who was outside the Capitol that day: “The stunning realization of just how out of control things had become stalled me out for a second. My mind raced to process what was playing out in front of me. I don’t think I have ever fully returned to the state of reality I had prior to those insane scenes. I don’t think any of us have.”
• Former TPMer Igor Bobic, who captured historic video footage of the attack from inside the Capitol, is among those featured in a new oral history of Jan. 6: “I remember opening my iPhone camera and debating for the briefest second, as I’m sprinting down these marble stairs, whether I should put it in video or photo. Because I knew that we’re not allowed to take videos in the halls. In that split second, I kept it on the video camera.”
• Former TPMer Ryan Reilly, who has become the leading journalist on the Jan. 6 attack: “Five years after he and his allies tried and failed to overturn the results of the 2020 election, President Donald Trump is using his time back in the White House to take a series of actions aimed at erasing or rewriting the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol, with more likely to come.”
• Politico’s Kyle Cheney: “Jan. 6 remains crucial to understanding Trump’s second presidency, as much as it helped define his first. The ethos of Trump’s second term was forged in the final days of his first.”
• AP: The ongoing struggles of police officers who defended the Capitol are compounded by the revisionist history of Jan. 6.
• AP: “Approaching the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the official plaque honoring the police who defended democracy that day is nowhere to be found.”

Trump May Have Pardoned the Jan. 6 Pipe Bomber

President Trump’s sweeping pardon of Jan. 6 offenders may have included the pipe bomber, and prosecutors have gone out of their way to avoid using phrases that connect the accused to the other events of that day.

Meanwhile, the case against Brian Cole Jr. is caught up in another dispute over whether federal prosecutors can use D.C. superior court grand juries to bring indictments in D.C. federal district court. Cole has appealed to a district judge the decision by a magistrate judge conditionally “accepting” the indictment.

You’ll recall that in a separate case last year U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ultimately ruled that the law allows such a move, but he stayed his order while the defendant appealed. That appeal is still pending. The earlier case was especially suspect because federal prosecutors got no-billed by a federal court grand jury before going to the superior court grand jury, an end-run around a bad outcome.

In Cole’s case, there hasn’t been a no-true bill, and prosecutors argue that they used a superior court grand jury simply because no federal court grand juries were available over the holidays.

Quote of the Day

“We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”–deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller

The Destruction: Vaccines Edition

The sweeping new changes to the childhood vaccine schedule — reducing the number of recommended shots from 17 to 11 — represent the most radical of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vax orthodoxy, as the NYT reports in unsparing style:

• “The new schedule circumvents the detailed and methodical evidence-based process that has underpinned vaccine recommendations in the nation for decades.”
• “Public health experts expressed outrage at the sweeping revisions, saying federal officials did not present evidence to support the changes or incorporate input from vaccine experts.”

In some tangentially related good news, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld a lower court ruling blocking the Trump administration from unilaterally cutting cornerstone funding for much of the country’s scientific and medical research.

The Destruction: CPB Shuts Down

After a decades’ long quest, Republicans have succeeded in shutting down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose board voted yesterday to close up shop after the GOP Congress zeroed out its funding last year.

2026 Ephemera

Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) reversed course and will not seek a record third term.

An Inauspicious Start

New CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil’s first broadcast ushered in the Bari Weiss era — and was bumpy in more glaring ways, too:

Tony Dokoupil's CBS Evening News debut got off to a tough start …

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-06T04:24:50.303Z

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Get Your Tickets Now!

We’re kicking off the new year with our first Morning Memo Live event on Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C.

I’ll be moderating a panel discussion on the politicization of the Justice Department, featuring:

• Stacey Young, a former 18-year DOJ veteran who is the founder and executive director of Justice Connection, a network of DOJ alumni providing support to current and recent DOJ employees;
• Aaron Zelinsky, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland who served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, where he prosecuted Roger Stone, and who is now a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder in Baltimore; and
• Anna Bower, a senior editor at Lawfare who covers rule of law issues and fields wacky Signal messages from Lindsey Halligan.

We’ll be taking your questions, with a reception to follow.

See you there!

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Trump’s Venezuela Misadventure

As ghastly as the lawless U.S. attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats had been, it was clear all along that they were merely a prelude to an equally lawless but more robust military action against Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela. The weekend’s surprise decapitation strike — in violation of international law, U.S. law, and Venezuela’s national sovereignty — sets the United States on a familiar course of both historical Latin American interventionism and 21st century regime change with no plan or exit strategy.

What is unfamiliar about it and makes it more alarming than previous foreign escapades by the United States is that President Trump is claiming and exercising an unbridled form of executive power not heretofore seen in the United States, unconstrained by a pliable GOP-controlled Congress that has abdicated its constitutional powers.

Trump’s comments last night on Air Force One suggest that no country is safe from his impulsivity, especially as his domestic political fortunes darken amid his lame duck status:

• In addition to a second strike against Venezuela, Trump threatened Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Iran, and Greenland.
• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “You just wait for Cuba.”
• “We’re in charge” of Venezuela, Trump said again.
• Maduro and his wife are scheduled to appear in federal court in Manhattan at noon for arraignment on a newly unsealed four-count superseding indictment alleging (1) a narco-terrorism conspiracy, (2) a cocaine importation conspiracy; (3-4) possession of and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. 

As of last evening, the Trump administration still had not briefed the Gang of Eight, according to Hill Democrats.

The Lawlessness

While U.S. presidents have increasingly bypassed Congress and engaged in hostilities abroad on a largely unilateral basis, no prior president has simultaneously asserted such wide-ranging executive authority while aggressively sidelining the legislative branch not just in foreign affairs but in matters of the purse. It sets up a uniquely dangerous threat to the constitutional order:

• Just Security: “[S]triking Venezuela and abducting its president, is clearly a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. That prohibition is the bedrock rule of the international system that separates the rule of law from anarchy, safeguards small States from their more powerful neighbors, and protects civilians from the devastation of war. The consequences of flouting this rule so brazenly are likely to extend well beyond the case of Maduro’s forcible ouster.”
• Steve Vladeck: “[A] blatantly unlawful use of military force overseas will go un-remedied—because there’s no viable legal pathway to challenge it; and because the one branch of government historically in a position to hold the executive accountable in these cases (you might remember it—Congress) has become completely feckless not just in general, but in pushing back against unlawful unilateral uses of military force, specifically.”
• NYT’s Charlie Savage: Can the U.S. Legally ‘Run’ Venezuela After Maduro’s Capture? 

In another egregious move, the Trump White House posted video of a perp walk of Maduro.

How We Got Here

By nearly all accounts, the U.S. attack on Venezuela was not an inevitability at the start of Trump II, nor the result of a clear ideological through-line or grand strategic bargain. It was, like so many Trump II initiatives, the result of an easily manipulated, feckless president who has no clear sense of the U.S. national interest. Was it the oil? Sure. The rare earth elements? Perhaps. But are those reasons any more plausible than Trump’s fetish for violence and Stephen Miller’s thrill in taking punitive measures against brown people?

As TPM’s Josh Marshall put it: “[I]’s a mistake to think there’s a ‘real’ reason mixed in with other subterfuges and rationales, or that it’s important to find out which one the ‘real’ reason is. It’s not that linear or logical.”

The real answer is “all of the above” and whatever other rationales the Trump White House seizes on in the comings days, weeks, and months to bolster its position.

The Never-Ending Nobel Madness

The WaPo reports on why Trump isn’t elevating Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado:

Two people close to the White House said the president’s lack of interest in boosting Machado, despite her recent efforts to flatter Trump, stemmed from her decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award the president has openly coveted.

Although Machado ultimately said she was dedicating the award to Trump, her acceptance of the prize was an “ultimate sin,” said one of the people.

“If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” this person said.

The Alien Enemies Act Was the First Salvo at Venezuela

As a reminder that the first attack on Venezuela under Trump II was the lawless invocation of the Alien Enemies Act in March, the Trump DOJ last night cited the ouster of Maduro in asking U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of D.C. for an extension of today’s deadline to submit a proposal for how to provide the original AEA detainees with due process:

Given substantial changes on the ground in Venezuela and the fluid nature of the unfolding situation, Defendants respectfully move for an extension to respond to this Court’s Order … directing them to propose a remedy by Monday, January 5. Over the weekend, the United States apprehended Nicolas Maduro. As a result, the situation on the ground in Venezuela has changed dramatically. Defendants thus need additional time to determine the feasibility of various proposals. Defendants therefore request a 7-day extension to evaluate and determine what remedies are possible.

Here’s the backstory on what Boasberg had demanded from the administration.

The Biggest News Over the Holiday

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw of Nashville unsealed his Dec. 3 order that found high-level Trump DOJ officials were involved in pushing the prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, bolstering his case for vindictive prosecution.

The finding that acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire may not have been the sole decision-maker contradicts repeated assertions made in court by the Trump DOJ to try to avoid scrutiny into the roles of top officials, including Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

From Crenshaw’s much-anticipated order:

Specifically, some of the documents suggest not only that McGuire was not a solitary decision-maker, but he in fact reported to others in DOJ and the decision to prosecute Abrego may have been a joint decision, with others who may or may not have acted with an improper motivation. …

These documents show that McGuire did not act alone and to the extent McGuire had input on the decision to prosecute, he shared it with Singh and others. … Specifically, the government’s documents may contradict its prior representations that the decision to prosecute was made locally and that there were no outside influences.

An evidentiary hearing is scheduled for Jan. 28 on Abrego Garcia’s vindictive prosecution claims.

Hannah Dugan Resigns

Convicted of interfering with the arrest of an undocumented immigrant in her courthouse, Wisconsin state Judge Hannah Dugan has tendered her resignation from the bench, under threat of impeachment for statehouse Republicans.

ICYMI: Jack Smith Testimony

In a New Year’s Eve news dump, the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee released the transcript and video of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s deposition testimony. Your regular reminder that Smith is being targeted by Republicans as political retribution for his investigations of Trump:

The Corruption: White Collar Crime Edition

“President Trump’s first year back in office turned the world of white-collar enforcement upside down,” the WSJ reports.

There Is Always More Epstein

WSJ: The Incident That Prompted Trump to Ban Epstein From Mar-a-Lago’s Spa

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.