On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that an anti-trans health care law out of Tennessee does not qualify as sex discrimination, thus doesn’t trigger heightened legal scrutiny.
Continue reading “Gorsuch’s Shameful Silence “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.
Continue reading “Is There Fire Behind the Sergio Gor Smoke?”Kate and Josh discuss the Supreme Court decision upholding a trans care ban, Trump’s potential war and the shooting of Democratic Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses.
Continue reading “Listen To This: ‘The One Night Stand of Wars’”House Republicans included massive cuts to federal social safety net programs, like Medicaid, in the reconciliation package they passed in May. Experts tell TPM that the cuts to the programs amount to an effort to repeal elements of the Affordable Care Act.
This week, Senate Republicans signalled they might go even further in that ACA repeal effort than their counterparts in the lower chamber.
Continue reading “Senate Republicans Take The Attack On Obamacare To A New Level”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
A key storyline through the first five months of the Trump administration is how the judicial branch has held up to the challenge of an autocratic president. While on balance the judiciary has fared better than it might have, one group of cases has been particularly vexing: the unlawful removals of foreign nationals in defiance of court orders.
The courts have either been slow, too solicitous of the executive branch, or wrong-headed in their approaches. That has yielded lethargic outcomes that don’t provide justice to the wrongfully deported or sufficient accountability for the bad-faith defiance by the administration.
A quick accounting of some of the most notable cases where detainees have fallen into and remain in an interminable legal limbo:
Alien Enemies Act
Who? The CECOT detainees remain the single biggest cluster of wrongfully removed foreign nationals. They are a group of 137 Venezuelan nationals sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) without the due process that U.S. courts – including the Supreme Court – have since nearly universally found to have been required.
When? The CECOT detainees were removed on two flights from Texas on March 15 despite a court order that they not be removed and that the planes should be turned around.
What next? The original Alien Enemies Act case in front of Judge James Boasberg in D.C. is now a class action lawsuit consisting of all the CECOT detainees removed under the AEA. While Boasberg has generally been amenable to their claims, his most recent ruling was more focused on providing them with the due process they were denied than on immediately returning them to the United States, contemplating some sort of remote or virtual hearing process that has yet to be determined.
Why the delay? Boasberg’s early June order has been stymied by a Trump-heavy appeals court panel, which issued an administrative stay and is considering whether to grant the Trump administration’s request that the case be paused during its appeal. A ruling here may come as soon as today.
Contempt of court: In the background of all this remains the violation of Boasberg’s original March order barring the removals in the first place. Boasberg found probable cause that the Trump administration is in criminal contempt of court, but the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay in April blocking him from continuing with contempt proceedings and still hasn’t ruled even though two months have now elapsed.
Cristian
Who? Cristian is a Venezuelan national removed to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act in violation of a 2024 court-ordered settlement agreement.
When? Cristian was removed on March 15. On April 23, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher of Maryland ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return.
What next? Under orders from Gallagher, the Trump administration is required to facilitate Cristian’s return and file weekly status reports on its progress. It has thus far filed desultory status reports, with the Department of Homeland Security pointing the finger at the State Department but providing no real update on diplomatic efforts, if there are any. The next status report is due today.
Why the delay? The Trump administration is continuing to stonewall in this case like it did for months in the Abrego Garcia case, which was only resolved when the administration took the face-saving step of indicting him on criminal charges that it used to justify asking the Salvadoran government to return him.
Contempt of court: Judge Gallagher has confronted the stonewalling by ordering expedited discovery similar to that previously ordered in the Abrego Garcia case. The expedited discovery has been underway since early June, and so far it’s unclear whether the administration has stonewalled that process, too.
South Sudan Detainees
Who? A group of six detainees of various nationalities has been stuck at a U.S. military base in Djibouti where their flight to South Sudan was diverted after U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of Boston intervened to enforce his already-issued injunction against such third-country removals without notice.
When? The detainees have been in Djibouti since about May 21.
What next? Under orders from Murphy, the Trump administration must give the detainees a chance to raise objections to their deportations to South Sudan or to other third countries. That was supposed to be a 14-day process beginning around May 23. It’s now been almost a month and the status of that process remains somewhat opaque.
Why the delay? It’s not clear exactly. By giving the administration a chance to provide due process to the detainees while still in Djibouti, he set up the potential for further delays and opacity. The Trump administration has described the conditions at the U.S. base as harsh, but it was the administration’s choice to keep the detainees there instead of returning them to the United States.
Contempt of court: Murphy is poised to launch a contempt of court proceeding over the violation of his order blocking such removals without notice after the immediate fate of the South Sudan detainees is determined. Murphy is already probing a separation alleged violation of his order that occurred when the Department of Homeland Security used the Defense Department to fly detainees from Gitmo to El Salvador as a ham-handed way to get around his order.
Jordin Melgar-Salmeron
Who? Jordin Melgar-Salmeron is a Salvadoran national deported to his home country in violation of an order from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
When? Melgar-Salmeron was deported on May 7, minutes after the appeals court issued its order barring his removal.
What next? After revising its explanation, the Trump administration is now calling the violation of the court order an inadvertent mistake due to a “confluence of administrative errors,” but it has moved slowly to remedy the situation.
Why the delay? The Trump administration is taking the position that it must only allow Melgar-Salmeron into the country, not actively seek his return.
Contempt of court: The appeals court has been asking tough questions of the administration, but it has not yet launched a contempt proceeding per se, as Melgar-Salmeron’s legal team has asked for.
We may see movement in some of these cases as soon as today, but when you step back and survey the blatant violations of court order by the administration and the long delays in remedying those violations, it’s clear that the process and procedures in place – plus problematic interventions by appeals courts – have been insufficient to produce just outcomes. Even the cases of two detainees – Kilmar Abrego Garcia and another migrant known as O.C.G. – who were returned eventually don’t offer any satisfaction. So even if the courts have “stood up” to the administration, the rule of law has not been validated in a timely or robust way.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, as expected, paused a lower court order blocking President Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard while the administration’s appeal proceeds.
Alistair Kitchen: How My Reporting on the Columbia Protests Led to My Deportation
Chris Geidner on the Supreme Court’s anti-trans decision this week.
U.S. intel assesses that Iran remains undecided on whether to build nukes, the NYT reports.
I’m handing over the reins to Morning Memo so I can get away for a few days.
Sarah Posner, whose work you’ve often seen at TPM, will sub for me next week, and the TPM team will handle things the following week. Be kind and supportive to them in my absence.
See you soon.
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
Our Executive Editor John Light discussed these hires already. But I wanted to share with you what we’re doing and how you fit into it. I don’t have to tell you that we are in the midst of a protracted national crisis. By some measures we’ve been in one for a decade. But I’m talking about the one that kicked off on January 20th and has continued, unabated and even accelerating, in various forms ever since. From the start of this we’ve been committed to upping and expanding our game, even within our limited resources, because the moment requires it. You’ve made that possible through your memberships and through your contributions to The TPM Journalism Fund. This week we added two new positions to our roster and two new members of our team. Allegra Kirkland, a TPM alum, has returned to TPM as a deputy editor. Layla A. Jones has joined us a reporter.
Continue reading “Expansion at TPM, Thanks to You”The idea that Trump or MAGA is in any sense “anti-war” is something between an absurdity and a misunderstanding. Kate and I had a good discussion of it in this week’s podcast. At one level it’s a simple fraud. Trump claimed he’d always been against the Iraq War at a time when the U.S. had been bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan for years. It was a helpful attack line and it was completely false. Trump wasn’t in politics in 2002 or 2003 and to the extent he said anything, like a lot of people, he was for it when it was popular and against it when it wasn’t.
During his presidency he signed off on the assassination/targeted attack that killed Qasem Soleimani; he heavily involved the U.S. in the Saudi war in Yemen; he maintained or expanded the U.S. fight against ISIS in Iraq/Syria. Those are at least a continuity with the Obama years and in key respects an expansion of it. The one arguable exception is the deal Trump made with the Taliban to leave Afghanistan — a bad deal which Joe Biden was saddled with and followed through on and was endlessly criticized for, by Trump more than anyone else. Afghanistan captures Trump perfectly — his one notionally “anti-war” position was continuity by definition. And he turned against it as soon as he was unpopular. Trump has gotten “anti-war” mileage out of his opposition to Ukraine aid. But that’s pro-Russia rather than anti-war.
Continue reading “Trump Has Never Been Anti-War; He’s Not Even Anti-War inside the USA”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
In the aftermath of the Minnesota assassination spree, Garrett Graff crisply traces the arc of violent right-wing extremism from the 1980s to the present day. For those of us who have covered it and lived it, it’s drearily familiar. But I was struck anew by how what seemed like a winning fight for so long went sideways so quickly.
Across most of that time, the fight against right-wing extremism seemed like a manageable, containable, and winnable problem. It often felt like stamping out a final rear-guard action by the retreating forces of intolerance and racism. In fact, in retrospect, the war was far from over.
The “good people on both sides” in Charlottesville marked the beginning of a new era of state-sanctioned violent extremism that historically had been seen only in the South. From there through “Stand back and stand by” and up until the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, you might have been able to argue that it wasn’t state-sanctioned so much as it was merely endorsed by the head of state, a thin reed of a difference, but a plausible distinction.
After Jan. 6, the state was still functioning on a rule of law basis. But as we noted then, Jan. 6 was the beginning of a new battle, not a culmination. While clear and deeply worrying cracks like the Supreme Court’s corrupt immunity decision were emerging, there was still a chance to avoid going over the cliff’s edge into lawlessness. Trump’s re-election foreclosed that last chance. It cleared the way for him to the empower the apparatus of the state with his brand of right-wing authoritarianism.
But it was the Jan. 6 pardons specifically that brought it all full circle. As Graff notes, “The January 6th pardons — and a host of other abuses of the presidential pardons — have made clear a chilling message to Trump’s most extreme supporters: Violence in support of the regime will be not only tolerated but excused.”
Combined with the Trump White House’s takeover of the Justice Department, the Jan. 6 pardons and the retaliation against investigators and prosecutors marked the end of a functioning rule-of-law-based state apparatus. In its place is violence and retribution. The law is used as a shield for his supporters and a sword to his foes. That’s where we are now and the way out of this wilderness remains alarmingly unclear.
The U.S. bankruptcy trustee has filed multiple lawsuits to recover assets that Alex Jones allegedly transferred fraudulently to avoid paying the $1.3 billion he owes Sandy Hook families.
It was a convoluted series of opinions, but it boiled down to a 6-3 majority, along conservative-liberal lines, to sanction government discrimination against transgender youth and their families.
“It was a stark decision from Roberts using circular reasoning that will serve to empower those seeking to discriminate against transgender people — although the decision does leave some narrow routes open to challenging certain anti-trans laws and policies going forward,” Chris Geidner writes in an exhaustive unpacking of the multiple opinions by the justices.
On the same day at the Supreme Court ruled against gender-affirming care for transgender youth, the Trump administration said it was ending specialized support for LGBTQ callers to the national suicide prevention hotline.
As it restarts the system for issuing student visas, the Trump administration is imposing a new system of censorship on international students. Among the new requirements, according to cable signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio:
The new requirements take effect in five business days.
WSJ:
Plano, Ill., made national news in 2021 when it designated Juneteenth a holiday before the state or federal government. But this year, Plano’s fifth annual celebration is canceled.
Organizer Jamal Williams said he called off the event after local business sponsors in the 13,000-person town declined to commit, saying they feared losing customers. A downsized version is being planned at a church in the town next door.
“I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”–Donald Trump, on potential U.S. military strike on Iran, which he has reportedly approved plans for but hasn’t given the final order to launch
A brutal new assessment out today on how quickly we are speeding toward irreversible catastrophic climate change:
Brian Klaas: “The death of the student essay is not merely an academic concern. It is not just a problem for young people hoping to get good grades, nor is it only relegated to the realm of my fellow elbow-patched nerds. Instead, the rapidly improving ability to impressively mimic human language poses an existential threat to traditional methods of crafting smarter minds—which thereby challenges the future of human cognition.”
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Minnesota shooting suspect Vance Boelter allegedly targeted abortion providers for future violence, a jarring detail in the evidence as the Trump administration systematically rolls back protections passed when anti-abortion violence was at a fever pitch.
Continue reading “Minnesota Shooter Allegedly Targeted Abortion Clinics At Time Of Threats, Lax Protections”The Reality TV reveal version of war-planning and everything that is going on right now in the White House is so crazy I don’t know what to say about it. I’m reduced to trying to piece together what the various parties to the conflict and those adjacent to it may want or be trying to accomplish. I think TPM Reader JS is on to something in the email I just published a few moments ago. To the extent Trump may look to the Saudis and Emiratis as to what to do they may want him to finish this. When I responded to JS I told him that I agreed but with a major caveat. Even in the Move Fast and Break Things MBS era I think being a Gulf royal means being scared. Luck and geology made them fabulously wealthy and in part because of that wealth able to sustain deeply archaic political systems in which they have close to absolute power. That status is precarious. It’s one thing to build an anti-Iran coalition or an anti-Iran alliance with Israel. Blowing up the Iranian state is a very different and profoundly dangerous and unpredictable proposition.
Continue reading “Thoughts on the Counterpoints”
