Redoing 2020?

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️

There’s a story that Trumpists tell about 2020.

The mass protests of that summer were a missed opportunity; Trump, having been thwarted in his desire to call out the military, was too kind. The left took that as an opportunity to riot. In MAGA cosmology, violent protestors then torched cities; the Biden “regime” followed on by spreading a poisonous ideology bent on dividing and demeaning the country.

A version of that story has now morphed into a telling of why the White House sent troops into Los Angeles this week. Take a look at the following quote from Axios, attributed to an anonymous Trump confidant:

“What’s driving the President is how the riots of 2020 are seared into his brain, and how he wished he could’ve sent in the troops to end it.”

Tautologies aside (is Trump’s brain-sear causing the driving, or is the driving causing his brain-sear?), this might explain part of what’s going on. It’s true that the right recalls the summer 2020 George Floyd protests as a defeat. Intimidating people now could help block future mass demonstrations — helping him avoid the damage the Black Lives Matter protests did to his first term. Activating the military in 2025, with years left to go in the administration, accustoms the country early on to the use of the armed forces domestically as a means to respond to protests. People get used to things; the bar for what’s outrageous grows ever-higher.

But it concedes way too much to the spin: that White House officials like Stephen Miller and others are only ever in the position of responding to what they describe as the excesses of the left. In this telling, these people wouldn’t have dreamt of the idea to use the military to intimidate protestors were it not for mass riots.

The reality is that this has been on the Trump agenda for a long time. It’s another direct way of exercising power, demonstrated most clearly when it’s taking place in a vacuum. We can laugh at the Marines being called in to “defend” a placid federal building in West LA, but it’s a precedent made all the nastier by the lack of any precipitating events outside of right-wing media. The upshot is that it’s not really about supposed riots or bad memories of 2020; that gets the logic backwards.

They’re doing it because they want to use the military against their enemies at home.

— Josh Kovensky

Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:

• An update on Trump’s so far unsuccessful attempts to inject himself into election administration before the 2026 midterms.
• Far-right Senate Republicans might be backing down on their demands for A LOT more spending cuts than what is included in the House’s reconciliation package.
• RFK Jr. tries to explain away his decision to change U.S. policy on COVID vaccine recommendations … with unpublished, disputed data.

Let’s dig in.

Another Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Election Takeover Attempt

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked parts of President Trump’s executive order purporting to take over elections, noting that the Constitution does not grant the President that power. 

The decision comes in one of many similar lawsuits swirling over the order, this one brought by Democratic attorneys general. A judge in D.C. had previously blocked parts of the order as well, writing: “The President has no constitutional power over election regulation that would support this unilateral exercise of authority. The Constitution vests that power in the States and Congress alone.” 

Trump is trying to add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to federal voting forms as well as block states from counting ballots that arrive late but were postmarked before Election Day. Even with a mostly sympathetic judiciary, the gambit will be a stretch; Presidents are largely boxed out of election administration.

— Kate Riga

A New Level Of Unseriousness

We have been reporting on several poison pills baked into the House bill that could force Senate Republicans to change parts of the legislation or cut a deal, possibly shifting how destructive the reconciliation bill might be. One of these was a call for more spending cuts coming from a handful of far-right members, including Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rick Scott (R-FL).

But new reporting suggests Republican senators and the White House no longer view Sens. Johnson, Scott and Mike Lee (R-UT) as a threat to the megabill. As a reminder, Senate Republicans can only lose three votes from their caucus and still pass the bill.

Johnson sure has softened his tone after threatening to tank the bill just last month.

“We all want to see President Trump succeed,” Johnson said this week, per Politico. “Everybody is trying to help. That’s why, if I seem to have been striking a more hopeful tone, it’s because I am more hopeful.”

Johnson’s change in tone comes shortly after conversations with President Donald Trump, who apparently told him to speak more positively about the bill and be proud of selling it to the public. 

“When the president says, ‘Ron, you’ve been so negative, that’s just not even helpful,’ I want to be helpful,” Johnson said per Politico, adding he has “downplayed what is good in the bill.”

The senator’s wildly performative request for $6 trillion in spending cuts — an ask way larger than what is included in the House-passed bill — did not last very long after Trump entered the chat.

— Emine Yücel

RFK Jr Uses Anti-Vax Disinfo To Try To Prove Kids, Pregnant Women Don’t Need COVID Vaccine

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sent lawmakers a letter to explain his decision to remove the COVID vaccine from the recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and healthy pregnant women.

But turns out, just like most of his conspiracy theories, his reasoning was full of citations of scientific studies that are unpublished or under dispute, as well as other studies that were blatantly mischaracterized.

An expert who spoke to NPR called the memo in question “willful medical disinformation,” and slammed the head of HHS for presenting lawmakers with such disinformation.

“It is so far out of left field that I find it insulting to our members of Congress that they would actually give them something like this. Congress members are relying on these agencies to provide them with valid information, and it’s just not there,” said Dr. Mark Turrentine, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine, according to NPR.

This is what happens when you put an anti-vaccine advocate in charge of the country’s public health services.

— Emine Yücel