Supreme Court Abets Trump’s Defiance of Court Orders 

Posted on by Sarah Posner

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

As Josh Kovensky reported yesterday, the Supreme Court’s order pausing a preliminary injunction against Trump’s policy of third-country removals without due process will undoubtedly fire up his brutal deportation machine, and embolden administration officials to continue to flout court orders restraining it. 

The case, Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., involves a challenge to the Trump administration policy directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to round up noncitizens the government previously was unable to deport to their home country, and then remove them to a third country without warning, due process, or consideration of the conditions they might face there. The preliminary injunction in the case, which the administration evaded and defied on several occasions, required the government to provide plaintiffs with notice and time to challenge their removal. 

Shockingly, the Supreme Court stayed that injunction pending final resolution of the case, offering the administration carte blanche to continue third-country removals in the meantime. Worse, it gave the administration a very big cookie by pausing a court order that the administration already had defied. 

Lawfare’s Quinta Jurecic has a detailed, maddening account of each step of the government’s “legalistic noncompliance” with court orders in this and similar immigration cases, which involves “delaying implementation of court orders, adopting hyper-technical interpretations of judicial rulings in order to engineer loopholes, and asserting ignorance and confusion whenever something goes wrong.” D.V.D., she notes, “stands out as a chronicle of noncompliance from the very beginning—a cascade of sloppiness and calculated misunderstandings on the government’s part that has resulted in potentially serious danger for a gay Guatemalan man removed from the United States, along with the continued detention of eight men at a U.S. military base in Djibouti.”

The ruling is “disastrous,” according to legal scholar Steve Vladek. “For the Court to not only grant emergency relief in this case, but to offer nary a word of explanation either in criticism of the government’s behavior, or in defense of why it granted relief notwithstanding that behavior, is to invite—if not affirmatively enable—comparable defiance of future district court orders by the government.”

Contempt Watch: Judge in VOA Case Holds Show Case Hearing

After the Trump administration attempted to fire remaining Voice of America (VOA) staffers en masse on Friday, the judge in the pending case challenging the evisceration of the agency, Royce Lamberth, ordered the parties to appear in court yesterday. Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, had issued a preliminary injunction against the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and VOA’s parent agency, in April, finding “defendants are likely in violation of numerous federal laws” in their quest to slash the news service, mostly by terminating virtually all of its journalists.

When Lamberth asked the government’s counsel, Brenda Gonzalez Horowitz, why he had not been notified of Friday’s layoff letters, she protested that they had been complying “in good faith” with his April order. “I don’t think so,” was his reply, before ordering the government to file an update on how it is complying with the injunction by Friday.

On Dobbs Anniversary, Christian Right Takes Aim at Mifepristone

To commemorate today’s anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, the Christian right is pressing the Trump administration to restrict use of the abortion pill mifepristone. As part of a “day of fasting and prayer for life” hosted by the Family Research Council, the organization urges followers to “Pray for the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] to revoke the dangerous policy of the Biden administration regarding mifepristone and chemical abortion regulations, and to reinstate safety standards that prioritize the health and safety of mothers and their unborn children.” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has asked the FDA to review mifepristone’s safety, following the unscientific claims of Christian right organizations opposed to abortion.

“A Whiff of Fascism” in the Washington Post

Yesterday the Washington Post published an op-ed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, giving her space to expound on her ongoing commitment to barring foreign students from Harvard. Her opening paragraph baselessly charged that “school leadership has not complied with the Department of Homeland Security’s lawful oversight duties, has fostered antisemitic extremism and used taxpayer money to collaborate with an American adversary.” Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky, co-author of “How Democracies Die,” called the piece “extraordinarily authoritarian” and a “whiff of fascism.” Noem’s concluding sentence proves Levitsky’s point. “Harvard must decide whether it wishes to be a partner to the United States,” Noem wrote, “or an adversary to American values.”

Last night, a federal judge in Boston, Allison Burroughs, blocked Trump administration efforts to bar foreign students from Harvard for the second time in a week.

Smashmouth Judge?

Tomorrow the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold confirmation hearings on Trump’s nomination of his former personal attorney, Emil Bove, to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. As Trump’s acting Deputy Attorney General, Bove was notoriously at the center of the corrupt withdrawal of the federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Justice Connection, a group of Department of Justice alumni, has also released a scathing video explaining why Bove is wildly unqualified for the bench.

An account by a DOJ attorney fired by the Trump administration, Erez Reuveni, provides even more damning details. According to Reuveni’s account, Bove openly pressed for the government to violate court orders in immigration cases. “Bove stated that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order,” Reuveni revealed in a document submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the DOJ Inspector General yesterday, the New York Times reports.

Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board questions Bove’s fitness for a lifetime appointment, writing that “his reputation lately is as a smashmouth partisan who wields the law as a weapon.”

DOGE Actually Has Cost Us Money

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has tallied just some of the cost of the assault on our federal government by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It found DOGE cuts to medical research “could amount to an estimated $10 billion loss in economic activity, and a loss of approximately 44,000 jobs a year;” that U.S.-based organizations contracting with the U.S. Agency for International Development lost $28.9 billion in funding; and that $500 billion will be lost to the Internal Revenue Service owing to DOGE’s elimination of staff and programs there. These figures are just the tip of the iceberg, and do not include DOGE’s assaults on other agencies. Nor can we compute other kinds of losses, including America’s international soft power, the public’s trust in government, and countless non-monetary societal benefits accruing from a functional government staffed by nonpartisan experts in their fields.

What’s Next for DOGE? 

The New Yorker’s Charles Bethea offers a look at Joe Gebbia, thought to be a possible successor to Elon Musk as head of DOGE. Bethea’s doozy of a lede contains most of what you probably need to know:

Who will help lead the Department of Government Efficiency now that Elon Musk has left the scene? News reports have mentioned Joe Gebbia, a Tesla board member and a co-founder of Airbnb, as a possible replacement. Gebbia is forty-three. Like Musk—his close friend—he is a billionaire, a resident of Austin, Texas, and the rumored recipient of a hair transplant. Gebbia formally announced his political conversion on X in January, posting that, after years of supporting Democrats, he finally “did [his] own research” and concluded that Donald Trump “deeply cares about our nation.” His feed has a MAHA flavor: Big Food exposés (“The truth about Ketchup”) alternate with digs at liberals suffering from “TDS,” or Trump Derangement Syndrome.

With or without Gebbia at the helm, DOGE continues to be a danger to democracy, health and safety, privacy, the civil service system, checks and balances–you know, everything.

Speaker Johnson Dismisses Invoking War Powers Act

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who has never met a Trump action he didn’t like, brushed off questions from reporters about whether he would bring a bipartisan resolution, co-sponsored by California Democrat Ro Khanna and Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie, to require Trump to seek Congressional approval for further military intervention in Iran. (Trump purported to expel Massie from the MAGA movement over his co-sponsorship of the measure, calling him a “pathetic LOSER.”) “It’s all politics,” Johnson said, his characteristic diversionary tactic. “This is not a time for politics.” Or, apparently, as ever, congressional oversight.

Good Advice

Media critic Mark Jacob offers eight suggestions for the media to avoid turning war with Iran into the sort of entertainment loop Trump craves. 

The Misadventures of Kash Patel

Mother Jones reporter Anna Merlan digs into all the bogus investigations FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino have promised, but never delivered on. The piece is filled with eye-rolling details of all the ridiculous conspiracies that Trumpland chases, hoping to feed the base’s voracious appetite for new diabolical content about their perceived enemies, from Joe Biden to James Comey to the Chinese Communist Party. But for Patel and Bongino, who have their positions precisely because of their proximity to that world, there’s a serious catch:

Today, with the conspiracy world full of ever more competing storylines, theories, and hoped-for outcomes, the idea of disclosure remains a singular focal point of longing; that someone high up, somewhere, will finally tell us what we are desperate to know. Against that backdrop, Bongino, Patel, and other Trump figures are still awkwardly trying to transition from demanding to know the truth to being the people in a position to provide it. 

In the meantime, Bongino and other Trump figures are continuing to create content by churning out endless tweets, sending performatively verbose press releases, and making appearances on partisan news channels, all aimed at heightening their own profile and shifting blame from anything they have not yet achieved. Where before they cast themselves as independent investigators calling on a shadowy government to reveal its secrets, now they’re forced to play new roles, as dedicated and diligent public servants. This is, of course, boring: “I gave up everything for this,” Bongino lamented recently on Fox & Friends.

Of course, as with all things Trump, the absurdity is part of the point. And, as always, that does not at all diminish how radically dangerous it is for this to be the conduct of the director of the FBI.

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3 Years After The Supreme Court Restricted Abortion Access, Contraception Is Also At Risk

Posted on by John Light

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated a nearly 50-year constitutional right to abortion and returned the authority to regulate abortion to the states.

The Dobbs ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has vastly reshaped the national abortion landscape. Three years on, many states have severely restricted access to abortion care. But the decision has also had a less well-recognized outcome: It is increasingly jeopardizing access to contraception.

We are a physician scientist and a sociologist and health services researcher studying women’s health care and policy, including access to contraception. We see a worrisome situation emerging.

Even while the growing limits on abortion in the U.S. heighten the need for effective contraception, family planning providers are less available in many states, and health insurance coverage of some of the most effective types of contraception is at risk.

A growing demand for contraception

Abortion restrictions have proliferated around the country since the Dobbs decision. As of June 2025, 12 states have near-total abortion bans and 10 states ban abortion before 23 or 24 weeks of gestation, which is when a fetus is generally deemed viable. Of the remaining states, 19 restrict abortion after viability and nine states and Washington have no gestational limits.

It’s no surprise that women living in states that ban or severely restrict abortion may be especially motivated to avoid unintended pregnancy. Even planned pregnancies have grown riskier, with health care providers fearing legal repercussions for treating pregnancy-related medical emergencies such as miscarriages. Such concerns may in part explain emerging research that suggests the use of long-acting contraception such as intrauterine devices, or IUDs, and permanent contraception – namely, sterilization – are on the rise.

A national survey conducted in 2024 asked women ages 18 to 49 if they have changed their contraception practices “as a result of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.” It found that close to 1 in 5 women began using contraception for the first time, switched to a more effective contraceptive method, received a sterilization procedure or purchased emergency contraception to keep on hand.

A study in Ohio hospitals found a nearly 16% increase in women choosing long-acting contraception methods or sterilization in the six months after the Dobbs decision, and a 33% jump in men receiving vasectomies. Another study, which looked at both female and male sterilization in academic medical centers across the country, also reported an uptick in sterilization procedures for young adults ages 18 to 30 after the Dobbs decision, through 2023.

A loss of contraception providers

Ironically, banning or severely restricting abortion statewide may also diminish capacity to provide contraception.

To date, there is no compelling evidence that OB-GYN doctors are leaving states with strict abortion laws in significant numbers. One study found that states with severe abortion restrictions saw a 4.2% decrease in such practitioners compared with states without abortion restrictions.

However, the Association of American Medical Colleges reports declining applications to residency training programs located in states that have abortion bans – not just for OB-GYN training programs, but for residency training of all specialties. This drop suggests that doctors may be overall less likely to train in states that restrict medical practice. And given that physicians often stay on to practice in the states where they do their training, it may point to a long-term decline in physicians in those states.

But the most significant drop in contraceptive services likely comes from the closure of abortion clinics in states with the most restrictive abortion policies. That’s because such clinics generally provide a wide range of reproductive services, including contraception. The 12 states with near-total abortion bans had 57 abortion clinics in 2020, all of which were closed as of March 2024. One study reported a 4.1% decline in oral contraceptives dispensed in those states.

Contraception under threat

The Dobbs decision has also encouraged ongoing efforts to incorrectly redefine some of the most effective contraceptives as medications that cause abortion. These efforts target emergency contraceptive pills, known as Plan B over-the-counter and Ella by prescription, as well as certain IUDs. Emergency contraceptive pills are up to 98% effective at preventing pregnancy after unprotected sex, and IUDs are 99% effective.

Neither method terminates a pregnancy, which by definition begins when a fertilized egg implants in the uterus. Instead, emergency contraceptive pills prevent an egg from being released from the ovaries, while IUDs, depending on the type, prevent sperm from fertilizing an egg or prevent an egg from implanting in the uterus.

Conflating contraception and abortion spreads misinformation and causes confusion. People who believe that certain types of contraception cause abortions may be dissuaded from using those methods and rely on less effective methods. What’s more, it may affect health insurance coverage.

Medicaid, which provides health insurance for low-income children and adults, has been required to cover family planning services at no cost to patients since 1972. Since 2012, the Affordable Care Act has required private health insurers to cover certain women’s health preventive services at no cost to patients, including the full-range of contraceptives approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

According to our research, the insurance coverage required by the Affordable Care Act has increased use of IUDs, which can be prohibitively expensive when paid out of pocket. But if IUDs and emergency contraceptive pills were reclassified as interventions that induce abortion, they likely would not be covered by Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act, since neither type of health insurance requires coverage for abortion care. Thus, access to some of the most effective contraceptive methods could be jeopardized at a time when the right to terminate an unintended or nonviable pregnancy has been rolled back in much of the country.

Indeed, Project 2025, the conservative policy agenda that the Trump administration appears to be following, specifically calls for removing Ella from the Affordable Care Act contraception coverage mandate because it is a “potential abortifacient.” And politicians in multiple states have expressed support for the idea of restricting these contraceptive methods, as well as contraception more broadly.

On the third anniversary of the Dobbs decision, it is clear that its ripple effects include threats to contraception. Considering that contraception use is almost universal among women in their reproductive years, in our view these threats should be taken seriously.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Senate Parliamentarian Won’t Let Republicans Carry Water For Trump Judiciary Defiance

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

Republicans in Congress have been looking for ways to codify some of the Trump administration’s various efforts to take a sledgehammer to the separation of powers and defy the judiciary since courts first began blocking some of his most legally dubious executive actions and DOGE cuts.

Continue reading “Senate Parliamentarian Won’t Let Republicans Carry Water For Trump Judiciary Defiance” →

SCOTUS Removes Due Process Requirement On Deportations to Third Countries

Posted on by Josh Kovensky

The Supreme Court’s conservative wing on Monday allowed the Trump administration to conduct “third country removals,” deporting detainees to nations with which they may have no connection, and without a due process requirement put in place by a lower court. The court’s three liberals dissented.

The ruling suspends a lower court order which mandated a three-week period in which non-citizens would have to receive notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal to a third country before deportation.

Continue reading “SCOTUS Removes Due Process Requirement On Deportations to Third Countries” →

Marjorie Taylor Greene Blasts Fox News And Iran War Hawks: ‘The Entire World Is Going To Erupt’

Posted on by Hunter Walker

President Trump’s decision to bring the U.S. into Israel’s war with Iran has exploded rifts on the right. On Monday, those conflicts spilled into view as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) ripped Fox News host Mark Levin, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and other “neocon suckups” who she blamed for advocating for military action that is a clear break with Trump’s campaign promises. 

“We are entering a nuclear war, World War III, because the entire world is going to erupt,” Greene said, adding, “The people that are cheering it on right now, their tune is going to drastically change the minute we start seeing flag-draped coffins on the nightly news — on Fox News that brainwashes all the baby boomers, and on CNN that brainwashes all the Democrat baby boomers. And that is exactly how this is going to go down.”

Greene offered her searing assessment of the situation on a broadcast of the “War Room” podcast hosted by Trump’s former strategist and perpetual ally-slash-adviser Steve Bannon. 

During his campaigns, Trump consistently critiqued the country’s past involvement in foreign wars and argued he would focus on avoiding overseas entanglements to put “America First.” Along with Greene, Bannon and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson are among the prominent figures associated with Trump’s MAGA movement who have consistently advocated against attacking Iran. Bannon, who met with Trump last week ahead of Saturday night’s strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, seemed to tease the possibility of military action on a broadcast that morning where he described it as the “Third World War.” 

As he introduced Greene on Monday, Bannon referred to Mediaite’s coverage of social media sparring between her and Levin, who had called her a “shameless nitwit” for criticizing the Iran strikes even as she stressed her continued support for Trump. Bannon also played a clip of Levin cheering on the military action on Fox News. 

“The military has to be used. If it’s used by a smart commander in chief, if it’s used wisely, if it’s used for a specific purpose, it gives us peace,” Levin said in the clip, adding, “America, don’t you feel relief? Of course you feel relief because … these Islamo-Nazis were building nuclear weapons to attack us, too.”

Bannon then invited Greene to respond — after they addressed some technical difficulties.

“Unmute,” Bannon said. “You’ve got to unmute yourself, MTG.” 

Once her microphone was on, Bannon mockingly paraphrased Levin and asked Greene, “Did you sleep better last night as a nitwit? Did you sleep better … because of Mark Levin?”

Fully unmuted and unbound, Greene proceeded to go off on Levin.

“That’s quite some name calling from one of Fox News’ hosts. It was hard to listen to … what he was saying with all the screeching, which is why most people I know don’t watch his show,” she said. “But no, you know, I didn’t sleep better after neocons and warmongers talked this administration into entering a hot war that Israel started.”

Greene went on to suggest that Israel’s initial attacks on Iran, which she pointed out were “unprovoked,” were part of an effort by that country’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, to “stay in power” after his coalition government had “barely won a vote.” 

“Now, I’m not making apologies for Iran. I have no investment in the terrorist regime of Iran. But the reality is, no Americans slept better after America bombed Iran, because all of a sudden we now have threats on our homeland,” Greene said, later adding, “Americans in Israel are terrified for their lives as well as Israeli people are terrified for their lives because bombs have been falling in Israel. … Americans all over the world are seriously questioning, is this going to be World War III?”

Greene specifically addressed warnings to Americans in Qatar. Shortly after she was on air with Bannon, those concerns proved prescient as a U.S. base in Qatar was targeted by retaliatory missile strikes from Iran. Qatar and the U.S. said there were no casualties from that attack.

Bannon then asked Greene if “other voices” are “going to get in to start advising the president.” She didn’t directly address the question but expressed frustration Trump is evidently listening to people like Levin and Graham, casting them as less loyal Trump supporters than she is.

“Mark Levin was one of the biggest Never Trumpers when President Trump was running for president. So it absolutely makes me sick, it makes me want to throw up in my mouth that he’s one of the voices that is constantly texting, and calling President Trump’s phone, and showing up at the White House demanding for America to go to every single foreign war on behalf of Israel,” Greene said. “I’m really sick and disgusted at that — and it’s people like him and Lindsey Graham and all these other people that never really supported Trump in the beginning.”

Greene then touted her own “MAGA” bonafides as she argued Trump’s movement is deadset against this latest action. 

“I represent MAGA far more than Mark Levin or any of these other neocon suckups ever will and ever do because MAGA is not for foreign wars,” she said. “We are not for regime change and we are for America first.” 

For some viewers who watched Bannon’s show online, the entire episode had distinctly apocalyptic overtones. On Rumble, the right-leaning streaming platform that has had business ties with Trump’s vice president, J.D. Vance, and his son, Donald Trump Jr., Bannon’s show was preceded by dramatic digital ads declaring that “war erupting between Israel and Iran” was evidence of “prophecy in real time” and looming catastrophe. Clicking on those ads directed “War Room” viewers to a page that declared “The AI Beast Is Rising” and advertised “prepper” guides “built for Christian men who lead in the storm.” 

Yet for Greene, the most cataclysmic event almost seemed to be the collapse of what she understood to be the America First agenda. 

“Six months in Steve and here we are turning back on the campaign promises,” she said. “We bombed Iran on behalf of Israel.”

A MAGA Schism on Iran? Not So Fast.

Posted on by Sarah Posner

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Why MAGA Evangelicals Support Bombing Iran

In the run-up to Saturday’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, certain prominent figures in MAGA-land sought to pressure Trump and his pro-war allies to remember the movement’s supposedly non-interventionist roots. Tucker Carlson made headlines for grilling Sen. Ted Cruz, a longtime ally of the Christian Zionist movement, about what evangelicals claim is a biblical imperative to support Israel. Steve Bannon actually accused Fox News of being an unregistered foreign agent of the Israeli government for its pro-war coverage. 

Trump has disingenuously claimed to be anti-war, and MAGA purports to be an isolationist movement opposed to further American military misadventures in the Middle East. But the Republican Party remains dominated by white evangelicals whose views are very much in line with the Cruz position that Carlson took such pains to mock. And despite Bannon’s plaint, Trump remains heavily influenced by Fox and its pro-war and pro-regime change coverage. 

MAGA figures like Carlson and Bannon know how to make headlines through viral posts and combative podcasts. But as they likely know just as well as anyone else enmeshed in American right-wing politics, Christian Zionists have spent decades building a movement that runs from church pews to the highest echelons of American power, advocating for the United States to intervene militarily to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Christian Zionists see Iran as a central player in what they say is a biblical prophecy about Jesus’s return. The core tenet of this movement holds that a series of prophesied events, including Jews’ return to Israel and invasion by armies of foreign countries including Iran, will culminate in a bloody, victorious battle at Armageddon. It’s a dangerous mix of warmongering theology and politics, and anyone is right to question it. But the truth is it still undergirds the thinking of many Republicans, including elected officials and other figures in Trump’s orbit.

John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and a top evangelical proponent of both this end-times scenario and U.S. military intervention in Iran, was close to Trump in his first term. After Saturday’s bombing raids, CUFI promptly praised Trump on social media, thanking him for “standing with Israel.” CUFI is hosting its annual summit starting Sunday in Washington, D.C., and you can expect it to feature high praise for Trump.

Elon Musk Watch: Inside Trump’s Destruction of USAID

You might have missed this amid the Iran news, but the New York Times published a harrowing moment-by-moment account of how the Trump administration and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rapidly descended on and destroyed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) within days of Trump assuming office. A cascade of White House edicts, firings, contract cancellations, and spending freezes sent shockwaves throughout the world, crushing, in just days, the vital work of USAID staffers and contractors on programs, including food aid, disease prevention and treatment, and democracy promotion.

But DOGE’s appearance at the agency on January 30, the Times reports, was what “sealed” USAID’s future–or lack of one. In DOGE’s sights was a career official who tried to stop the administration’s firings of agency staff, contending they were unlawful. DOGE had him escorted out of the building, and then seized control of the agency’s computers. 

Just in case anyone still believes the fiction that Elon Musk was never actually in charge of DOGE, as he and the administration have attempted to claim in public and in court, he in fact played a central role at USAID, according to the Times. “Employees at first declined to give that kind of [agency computer] access to DOGE, most of whom lacked security clearances, according to people familiar with what happened,” the Times reports. But then, “[m]embers of DOGE got Mr. Musk on the phone, who told U.S.A.I.D. employees to cooperate.”

Two days later, Musk tweeted, “U.S.A.I.D. is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” The next day he crowed on his social media platform X, “We spent the weekend feeding U.S.A.I.D. into the wood chipper. Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”

Senate Parliamentarian Lays Down the Law on the Big Beautiful Bill

The Senate Parliamentarian, the legislative body’s official, nonpartisan advisor on the intricacies of its own rules, has concluded that many key parts of the “Big Beautiful Bill” cannot be included through reconciliation. Republicans had hoped to push a host of insidious priorities through the rapid, simple majority track to passage for budget bills, free of the threat of a filibuster. But Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has said many are not budget items. They include:

  • Consumer protection: Cuts to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau so draconian they would eliminate the agency, along with other cuts to the Federal Reserve, the Office of Financial Research, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board;
  • Reverse Robin Hood: An attempt to shift Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) costs from the federal government to the states, undermining a key way Republicans hope to find money to fund their massive tax breaks for the wealthy;
  • Climate: GOP efforts to gut Biden-era emissions reductions and electric vehicle incentives, along with provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. MacDonough also found against a provision that would have forced the United States Postal Service to scrap its $1.5 billion fleet of electric vehicles and charging equipment;
  • Checks and balances: Crucially, MacDonough determined that Republicans could not include their provision to require litigants suing the government to post bond in order to seek emergency relief. If such a provision became law, it would forever shield the Trump administration from the sorts of lawsuits that have proven to be some of the sole checks on his naked power grabs.

Shadow President Stephen Miller

The Wall Street Journal reports on Stephen Miller’s unprecedented power and sway in the Trump 2.0 White House, with a hand in every high-profile decision on immigration and much more, including Trump’s assaults on universities, law firms, and museums. But it’s the mini-scoop in the lede of the piece that is likely of greatest interest to the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, James Boasberg. According to the Journal, it was Miller who, back in March, made the decision to defy Boasberg’s order to return  airborne planes carrying detained migrants back to the United States, instead handing them over to the brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador.

Judge Orders Mahmoud Khalil Released from Detention

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, one of Trump’s early targets in his supposed quest to eradicate antisemitism on college campuses, is back home in New York with his family. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz ordered his release from more than three months of detention in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Jena, Louisiana. Khalil said of his time there: “You see a different reality, a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human right[s] and liberty and justice.” 

Another Judge Orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Pre-Trial Release  

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara D. Holmes has denied the government’s attempts to keep Kilmar Abrego Garcia in pre-trial detention pending the human smuggling case against him in Tennessee. In her 51-page opinion, Holmes called into question the government’s claims about Garcia’s alleged criminality and gang affiliations, noting he “has no reported criminal history of any kind” and “his reputed gang membership is contradicted by the government’s own evidence.” The government nonetheless has pledged to keep him in ICE custody and possibly deport him again.

Texas Theocracy Watch (Again)

Over the weekend, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed two Christian nationalist bills into law. One requires the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms and the other authorizes school districts to permit staff and students time during the school day for prayer.

Speaking of Texas and Christian Nationalism

Trump’s White House Religious Liberty Commission, chaired by Dan Patrick, the Lone Star state’s Lieutenant Governor, had its first meeting in D.C. last week–at the Museum of the Bible. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State’s Alessandro Terenzoni has a disturbing report on the seeming merger of the commission’s work with that of the Department of Justice (DOJ). With Attorney General Pam Bondi as a surprise guest, commission members appeared on stage flanked by a line alternating flags: the American flag and the official flag of the DOJ. 

The Rise of a White Nationalist Legal Movement

This past semester, a law student at the University of Florida, Preston Damsky, won an award in an “originalism” seminar, for a racist paper arguing the phrase “we the people” in the Constitution’s preamble refers only to white people. The professor who made the decision to honor this student was John L. Badalamenti, a Trump-nominated federal judge in the Middle District of Florida. Damsky has since been suspended from the law school for a social media post stating that Jews must be “abolished by any means necessary.” 

WMD Redux, Trump Capitulation Edition

Who needs Judith Miller when you have Tulsi Gabbard?

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Day After Thoughts on Trump’s Iran Strike

Posted on by Josh Marshall

A few points on the effect rather than the wisdom or possible fall-out of these attacks.

The President has repeatedly said the Fordow nuclear facility was “obliterated”. Clearly that is a party slogan rather than any kind of factual analysis. We’re now getting the first after-action reports out of the Pentagon and Israel which speak of the Fordow facility appearing to have sustained “severe damage” but not being destroyed. One thing that struck me last night was the US assessment that helped prompt this attack which, reportedly, was that the entirety of the Israeli assault had pushed Iran’s program back roughly six months. That’s pretty paltry in terms of any great change in the strategic outlook. I note that because we should wait a significant period of time before we conclude – if the evidence ever merits it – that the US has somehow put the Iranians back to square one in their ability to build nuclear warheads.

Continue reading “Day After Thoughts on Trump’s Iran Strike” →

A Few Thoughts on Trump’s Bombing Raid

Posted on by Josh Marshall

A few quick thoughts on Trump’s military strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities, in no particular order.

Trump has referred to this as very successful and — if I’m understanding his statement — essentially done. I don’t think that’s how it works. My understanding is that there’s real uncertainty about how many strikes it would take to destroy especially the Fordow facility, which is buried deep in a mountainside. So I think we should be skeptical about how we know how successful this was. You need after action reports to have any sense of what actually happened. The geography here, the composition of the mountainside, how it interacts with these particular munitions. These are incredibly complicated and make outcomes uncertain. (I’m going from memory since we’re reacting to breaking news. So keep that in mind.) The U.S. has conducted extensive testing on these “bunker buster” bombs. And there has been extensive planning going back a number of years on how this attack specifically would be carried out. The Pentagon produces and maintains war plans on almost everything. But this specifically has been planned out in great detail and over many years.

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Is There Fire Behind the Sergio Gor Smoke?

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I wanted to flag your attention to a story bubbling up in the MAGA world that may amount to something or may be merely entertaining. It turns on a guy named Sergio Gor, a 38-year-old who is in charge of the Presidential Personnel Office. He’s in charge of vetting presidential appointees, but with an apparently very Trumpian emphasis on evidences of political loyalty as opposed to more conventional kind of reviews. But it turns out that Gor himself has yet to submit what is called an SF-86, the standard form for appointees who need a high level security clearance. So the guy in charge of vetting political appointees has yet to submit his own materials to be vetted himself. Not great, but the kind of mix of incompetence and probable sleaze that’s pretty standard in Trumpland.

But now there’s a bit more.

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