ICE Is In Airports. Dem Secs of State Are Worried About the Midterms

Posted on by Khaya Himmelman

Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise. 

Buckle up: there is a lot to unpack this week. 

We’re going to be looking at the rumors — stoked by Trump-aligned figures — surrounding the possibility that the president would order Immigration and Customs Enforcement to polling places this fall, updates in the DOGE voter sharing agreement saga (spoiler alert: we still don’t have a ton of answers on this one), Chip Roy admitting the SAVE Act actually will impact women voters, and, of course, updates in the never-ending redistricting battle that Trump started almost a year ago. 

Let’s dig in.  

Continue reading “ICE Is In Airports. Dem Secs of State Are Worried About the Midterms” →

VIDEO: TPM on the History of Far-Right Leaders and Combat Sports

Posted on by John Light

President Donald Trump is planning to bring the UFC into the White House later this year. But the brawl on the South Lawn is not the only way mixed martial arts has become a part of his administration.

Trump, like many other right-wing leaders before him, has a long history with combat sports.

Yesterday afternoon, John Light, Hunter Walker and Joe Ragazzo got on Substack Live to talk about how martial arts has become right coded. It’s a cultural phenomenon with troubling effects that stretch from D.C., to Saudi Arabia, and the white supremacist fringe.

Check out their full conversation below.

DOGE’s Impact on DC

Posted on by John Light

One of Layla A. Jones’ insights when she joined our team last year was that you could measure the destruction that DOGE wreaked on the federal workforce by looking at the D.C.-area economy, and, specifically, the housing market. Her first piece for us examined those indicators. Now, a year after Elon Musk and his youths began their slash-and-burn rampage through the executive branch, Layla finds the damage lingering — and, in some ways, worsening — with the middle class, once propped up by government workers and contractors, falling behind a growing wealthy elite. That story is here.

The Historic Self-Own of Trump’s Iran Misadventure

Posted on by David Kurtz

The Unforgiving Geopolitics of Oil and Gas

I wanted to use the occasion of the resignation of a prominent climate scientist from NASA, citing the Trump administration’s attacks on climate science, to note how Trump’s foreign misadventures are inextricably intertwined with his retrograde energy policy.

In the face of overwhelming evidence of catastrophic climate change fueled by manmade carbon emissions, Trump spent the first year of his second term decimating domestic wind and solar and doubling down on hydrocarbons, making the United State more — not less — dependent on global energy markets while exacerbating carbon emissions and delaying the inevitable energy transition.

It’s no coincidence that Trump’s two decapitation strikes — Venezuela and Iran — involve countries whose geopolitical significance results almost exclusively from their status as petro-states. Trump wanted to go back to the ways of the old economy, and he got exactly what he bargained for, whether he likes it or not. It’s a reminder — one we didn’t really need — that while the abundance of oil and gas has produced amazing riches and unprecedented global economic growth and development for more than a century, it has come at an enormous price.

From a long-term perspective, the ultimate price of our oil and gas dependence will be a centuries-long rise in global temperatures that is expected to threaten the pillars of civilization and imperil human survival. Nothing major. Alternative forms of energy promised not just to wean us from our dependency but to begin to unshackle us from the unforgiving geopolitics of oil and gas.

Trumpian Chaos in Energy Markets

  • WSJ: The liquid natural gas supply chain has been hit hardest by the Middle East conflict and will take much longer to recover than oil.
  • Bloomberg: As part of its regular modeling of the effect of energy prices on economic growth, Trump administration officials are examining what a potential spike in oil prices to as high as $200 a barrel would mean for the economy,
  • WSJ: Beginning on April 26, the U.S. Postal Service will impose an 8% surcharge on packages to cover the rising cost of fuel and transportation.

Nothing to See Here at All

Suspicious trading has been observed ahead of other big Trump policy announcements, but the anomaly was especially notable this week right before Trump backed off his threat to strike Iranian power plants:

The Latest From the Middle East …

  • WaPo: The Pentagon is considering diverting Ukraine military aid to the Middle East, although a final decision to redirect the equipment has not yet been made.
  • NYT: Under threat from Iranian counterattacks, many of the 40,000 American troops based in the Middle East have had to disperse to hotels and office spaces because the 13 U.S. bases in the region are “all but uninhabitable.”
  • WaPo: Iraq accused the United States of killing seven members of the Iraqi military and injuring 13 others in a strike Wednesday that hit a clinic on a military base in western Anbar province. The Pentagon issued a carefully worded denial that put a lot of weight on the word “target”: “U.S. forces did not target a medical clinic in Iraq.”

The Long Tail of the Alien Enemies Act

  • A Venezuelan national deported under the Alien Enemies Act has filed a new lawsuit against the United States allegeing that he was wrongly identified as a member of the Tren de Aragua gang on the basis of his tattoos and endured “physical and psychological torture, solitary confinement, inhumane living conditions, and deliberate indifference to medical care” while detained at CECOT.
  • U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of D.C. dismissed a lawsuit from immigrant advocacy groups that challenged the legality of the agreement under which the United States paid for El Salvador to detain the Alien Enemies Act deportees at CECOT. In a highly technical ruling, Boasberg concluded that the groups lacked standing because even giving them what they sought would not redress the harms they continue to face:

At bottom, Plaintiffs describe real injuries stemming from an unprecedented detention arrangement between the United States and El Salvador. They have thus directed their challenge at the nonbinding diplomatic instrument that preceded the agencies’ actions. But, legally, the Agreement is not what authorized the Government to render Plaintiffs’ clients to El Salvador and to pay the Salvadoran government to detain them. Instead, that power comes from statutes that predate the Agreement and that would stay in force no matter how the Court decides this case. Even if the Court vacated the Agreement, then, the Government could keep using those same statutes to inflict the same injury on Plaintiffs. And, as a practical matter, vacating this nonbinding exchange of notes would not change the Government’s willingness or ability to do so. Because the relief Plaintiffs seek would not likely redress their injuries, the Court must dismiss their claims for lack of standing.

Trump’s Mass Detention Policy Upheld

The uber-conservative 8th Circuit Court of Appeals — which covers Minnesota — became the second appeals court to uphold the Trump administration’s ahistorical and unprecedented policy of mandatory immigration detentions without bond in the interior of the country. The two appeals court rulings (the 5th Circuit is the other) stand in contrast to the hundreds of district courts that have found the policy to be unlawful.

The unilateral policy change by the Trump administration, which flew in the face of decades of practice and was contrary to past interpretations of federal statutes, has done more than anything else to flood the federal courts with immigrant habeas cases. Minnesota federal courts have been especially hard hit because of Operation Metro Surge.

Massive DOJ Fuckup

In an extraordinary admission this week, the Trump DOJ told a federal judge it had repeatedly misrepresented the substance of an ICE memo throughout months of litigation over the arrests of migrants at immigration courts.

“We deeply regret that this error has come to light at this late stage, after the parties have expended significant resources and time to litigate this case and this court has carefully considered plaintiffs’ challenge to the 2025 ICE guidance,” the DOJ attorneys told the judge as they formally withdrew their prior arguments about a core aspect of the case.

The DOJ lawyers blamed an unnamed ICE lawyer for the error: “Based on our discussions with ICE today, this regrettable error appears to have occurred because of agency attorney error.”

The Corruption: Mike Flynn Edition

Former Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election and was later pardoned by President Trump, will be paid $1.2 million in a corrupt bargain to settle his wrongful prosecution lawsuit.

The Trump I DOJ corruptly dropped the case against Flynn. Later, the DOJ under Biden successfully defended Flynn’s civil lawsuit. The Trump II DOJ — run out of the White House — is back to its old tricks. The president is looting the federal treasury to benefit his supporters, using DOJ to gussy it up with the language and procedural flourishes of a normal settlement of a legitimate legal dispute.

The Retribution: Letitia James Edition

Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte is at it again.

The Trump crony has sent two new criminal referrals against New York Attorney General Letitia James to U.S. Attorneys Jason Reding Quiñones of the Southern District of Florida and Andrew Boutros of the Northern District of Illinois.

The new bogus allegations are adjacent to his OG mortgage fraud allegations against James, which were dismissed and which two subsequent grand juries rejected. Pulte is now accusing James of homeowners insurance fraud for allegedly misrepresenting how properties in Florida and Illinois would be used.

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

Congress in the Dark on Iran

Posted on by John Light

We’re starting to see House Republicans complain that, even as the administration prepares to ask for huge sums to keep the war in Iran funded, it’s leaving lawmakers in the dark about what, exactly, the money is for. “We want to know more about what’s going on, what the options are, and why they’re being considered,” House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-AL) told reporters yesterday.  “And we’re just not getting enough answers on those questions.”

Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY), the vice ranking member on House Appropriations and a member of its Defense subcommittee, goes into great detail this morning with Hunter Walker and Josh Kovensky about how bad it really is. “I don’t think the American public appreciates it, and it’s certainly not a way to conduct your conversations with Congress,” he says. “Even in classified briefings where we don’t talk about what we learn, there’s literally no actionable intelligence that you get from him.” 

Read that here.

DOGE Damage Drags on in DC, Where Inequality is Widening as a Result

Posted on by Layla A. Jones

Harrison Beacher feels a little worried for some of his clients.

The DMV-area realtor and Washington D.C. native has worked in real estate for nearly two decades, but saw his worst two months ever in January and February of this year. Housing markets can be volatile from month to month, influenced by everything from changes in interest rates to bad weather. But in the case of Beacher’s recent slow period, the cause and effect was clear: Federal job loss and uncertainty is still upending the nation’s capital one year after the Trump administration took a sledgehammer to the federal workforce, as evidenced by growing instability for middle class would-be homeowners.

“I think it was at least six contracts that we had for potential buyers that had to cancel because of job loss, job uncertainty, or job change,” Beacher told TPM. “I have not experienced that in a two month time frame in my entire 18 years in business.”

About a year after the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by Elon Musk, began hacking away at hundreds of federal government jobs, the hollowed-out DMV-area middle class has yet to recover and is contributing to a sluggish city housing market.

On a webpage touting President Donald Trump’s first-year accomplishments, the White House praised DOGE cuts for creating a “leaner, more effective government.”

“President Trump shrunk the federal bureaucracy by 10% in 2025, providing a much-need (sic) reduction in force following massive federal workforce expansion under [former President Joe] Biden,” the page boasts. “Government employment has not accounted for any job growth under President Trump, down from 25% under Biden.”

Middle Class Slowly Locked Out of D.C.’s Housing Market

Fall-through rates, which measure the number of pending sales that didn’t ultimately happen, were up slightly in the first 10 months of 2025 compared to the previous year, according to data from Bright MLS, a real estate research firm. 

Real-estate agent Russell Brazil can almost guarantee those fall-throughs are because of federal reductions in force, he told TPM.

“We’ve heard all kinds of stories of people being under contract, then being part of a reduction-in-force and needing the back out of that contract,” said Brazil, who presides over the local Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors (GCAAR), which operates in D.C. and Montgomery County, Maryland.

Beacher works directly with clients who are now selling — not quite under duress, he said, but with an urgency marked by a sudden, unexpected need for liquidity.

“I’ve got a bunch of folks that are save-the-world, mission-driven type people that are hurting right now,” said Beacher, “because their entire vocation and livelihood was kind of put on the chopping block in the last year. We’re seeing that, feeling that, and selling some of the properties for these folks.”

One couple in Northeast D.C., with its more affordable neighborhoods, had long-term plans to lease their condo as they worked abroad for the U.S. government, Beacher recalled. Instead, they sold last year.

“They needed the cash in their hands because their future income while they were still working abroad is uncertain, directly because of the gutting of state department programs and funding that the U.S. is spending around the world,” said Beacher, who is also president of the D.C. Association of Realtors. 

Small-time property owners in the city who might own a small multi-family home, live in a unit, and lease out the rest, are being left behind more than ever, said Brazil, who owns a brokerage specializing in supporting investors. These people typically make high-five to low-six figures, can pay their bills, and craft long-term wealth-building plans on the back of moderate property ownership. And they’re hurting.

“Federal employees or state employees or public school employees, especially dual-income houses, those are exactly the kind of people I’m talking about as those small mom-and-pop investors,” Brazil said.

Housing sales data backs up the realtors’ anecdotal accounts. 

Average days a home stayed on the market in D.C. and Montgomery County increased by 161% year over year according to a February market report from GCAAR. Increased housing supply signaled “more inventory and less competition in the region,” the report found, and the median sold price in D.C. was down more than 6% in February 2026 compared to February 2025.

$3.6 Billion in Lost Pay. $1 Billion in Lost Revenue. 30,000 Lost Jobs.

Federal work powers much of the I-95 corridor, employing residents in Maryland’s Calvert, Charles, Anne Arundel, Prince George’s, Montgomery and Baltimore counties, and northern Virginia counties, including Fairfax and Stafford. But it’s in D.C. that job loss has been most acute. The District logged the highest unemployment rate in the nation in 2025, according to the Economic Policy Institute, likely because of the high concentration of federal jobs there.

More than 30,000 people lost their federal jobs in D.C. according to a review by the D.C. Office of Revenue Analysis (ORA) of data from the federal Office of Personnel Management. That net loss decreases to about 22,350 after accounting for modest federal government rehiring. Those job cuts cost D.C. workers $3.66 billion in annual pay, an average of about $148,000 per job, the report found. About 2,000 likely government contractor positions dried up between September and November 2025, the D.C. ORA found, and the District experienced its lowest level of employment since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The city expects to collect 11.1% less in real-estate related taxes this fiscal year compared to last according to its February 2026 revenue projections. Revenue estimates from last March projected the city would lose $1 billion in revenue over four years. Prior to the pandemic, D.C. hadn’t seen downward revenue revisions that large since the 2008 global financial crisis, Fitzroy Lee, deputy chief financial officer and chief economist for the D.C. Office of the Chief Financial Officer, told TPM over the summer. 

Projections have since been revised upward by more than $250 million over four years but still reflect lower revenues. D.C.’s GDP is expected to shrink by 2.9% this year, compared to 2.5% national GDP growth. 

“D.C.’s budget is taking a significant hit, largely because federal layoffs’ impact on D.C.’s revenue,” Shira Markoff, director of economic policy at the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, told TPM. “This turn has severely impacted the income supports and services that help low-income residents make ends meet.”

Maryland residents haven’t been spared. In 2025, Maryland had the widest unemployment gap between Black and white residents in the nation, likely reflective of the disproportionate rate of Black people who work for the government and have relied on federal employment for steady, middle-class jobs for generations. D.C. has the nation’s second highest Black-white unemployment ratio.

Collections estimates for taxes tied to real estate transactions are down throughout the state, too, including in Anne Arundel, Calvert, Baltimore and Howard counties, which are home to many federal workers, according to a county revenue report published by the state Office of Policy Analysis in January.

Luxury Real Estate Boom Highlights Increased Inequality

But not everyone is feeling the pain.

After what he called a dismal first two months of the year, Beacher’s brokerage is on track to have one of its best March’s on record, he said. To help explain this disparity, Beacher points to a tale of two properties targeting two different demographics with two very different outcomes.

On one side was a 2,400 square foot detached four-bedroom house in Northwest D.C. Initially listed at $950,000, the home sat on the market for two-and-a-half months before the seller dropped the price by $100,000 and eventually accepted an offer about $120,000 below the initial listing price with a ton of contingencies for the buyer, a growing family. 

On the other was a larger 4-bedroom in the nearby Alexandra, Virginia burbs. Listed at just over $935,000, the home netted offers within 48 hours and came under contract to a single cash buyer who purchased the property for more than $1.1 million. It’s set to close in 10 days.

For Beacher, the tale illustrates how D.C.’s persistent inequality, which has locked lower and working-class residents out of home ownership, has now swept up a class of median income-earners who’d previously been able to access the American Dream in the city. More than ever, D.C. has become a tale of two cities. Some realtors “are having their best years ever, because they only deal in the luxury space,” said Beacher.

“For some it is actually scary,” he said. “There’s some significant dynamic changes happening in a lot of different industries … that were benchmark assumptions that made D.C. a solid investment.”

That dichotomy could be why, despite a depressed job market and economy in D.C., the metro area real-estate market is largely on track with national trends. There’s been no sign of a “localized downturn,” Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, told TPM.

Yun acknowledged the impact federal job cuts has had on homeowners’ personal finances.

“COVID-era home-equity gains have allowed many sellers to exit via a normal sale, and early retirement payouts have helped some homeowners cover mortgage obligations while seeking new employment,” Yun said, referencing DOGE’s “early-out” retirement program. 

DOGE also offered buyouts via its notorious “fork in the road” deferred resignation program.

“It really does come down to the percentage of government workers concentrated in the District versus the suburbs,” said Brazil. “That’s not the only factor, but I think it’s one of the largest factors.”

A Member of a Key House Committee Explains How Iran War Funding Has Become an Almost $1 Trillion ‘Mess’

Posted on by Hunter Walker

As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) has had a front row seat to the process for funding President Donald Trump’s ongoing war in Iran. 

Continue reading “A Member of a Key House Committee Explains How Iran War Funding Has Become an Almost $1 Trillion ‘Mess’” →

Another Top Trump Official Won’t Directly Answer the ICE-At-Polling-Places Question

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

Concerned About Arrest Quotas

On Tuesday’s episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, co-hosts Andrew Kolvet and Blake Neff spoke with Trump administration border czar Tom Homan about their fears surrounding President Trump’s decision to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports, a move that is supposedly meant to support Transportation Security Administration staff while the Department of Homeland Security is shut down.

Continue reading “Another Top Trump Official Won’t Directly Answer the ICE-At-Polling-Places Question” →

Five Questions About Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s DHS-and-Reconciliation Nightmare

Posted on by Emine Yücel

Negotiations to try to end the ongoing Department of Homeland Security-specific shutdown — and, critically, fund the TSA — picked up earlier this week. After supposedly convincing President Donald Trump to jump onboard during a White House meeting, Senate Republicans said they were sending a proposal to Senate Democrats that would fund all parts of DHS except ICE’s removal operations. 

Republicans said they have convinced Trump to drop his demand that they pass the SAVE America Act before making any deal with Democrats on DHS. The senators present at the meeting, in part, did this, they said, by committing to passing the SAVE America Act — in addition to funding for ICE’s removal operations — later this year using the filibuster-proof reconciliation process. Reconciliation allows budget-related legislation to pass with only 51 votes, meaning Republicans would not need help from Democrats.

Continue reading “Five Questions About Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s DHS-and-Reconciliation Nightmare” →

Not So Fast

Posted on by John Light

Following up on the question we posed yesterday — will right-wingers actually buy an attempt to “pass” “the SAVE America Act” through budget reconciliation? — we are beginning to have some indications that, no, they will not.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has been on a tweeting spree, campaigning against the idea by, for example, comparing the voter suppression legislation to a fine cut of beef, urging his colleagues not to “settle for cheap imitations” of the sort necessitated by budget reconciliation. It is perhaps an imperfect metaphor.

Continue reading “Not So Fast” →