Thank you for your patience over the last few weeks while I, and other TPMers who help me put this together each day, took a break for the holidays. We’re back, with an appropriately brutal series of events to wade through to mark our return … 🙃

In a long-winded social media post this morning, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — who likes to call himself the Secretary of War — announced that the Defense Department had placed a formal censure letter on Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-AZ) file and “initiated retirement grade determination proceedings” against the Navy veteran. This is all a long way of saying he has initiated the formal proceedings for reducing Kelly’s Navy rank in retirement (he is a retired Navy Captain) and may also threaten Kelly’s retirement pay.

It is a Trumpian retribution-laced attack on Kelly, but it is not quite the same as Hegseth’s initial threats to recall Kelly into active duty and arrange court-martial proceedings. The FBI has also gotten involved in the matter, however it is unclear whether the bureau has done anything beyond requesting interviews with the elected-Democrats who participated in the video with Kelly. You’ll recall, Kelly and five other Dem members of Congress who are either veterans or former CIA officials posted a video last year encouraging members of the military to remember their oath to the Constitution, which includes “refusing illegal orders.”

The video was posted late last year, around the time the U.S. military was conducting scores of lawless, lethal airstrikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, claiming to target alleged drug traffickers. The video was also posted as the Trump administration deployed National Guard troops to blue cities around the nation under the guise of a crackdown on crime as civilians protested Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

In his Twitter post announcing the censure and additional retirement grade proceedings, Hegseth suggested, without pointing to anything of substance, that the actions against Kelly are being taken for additional “public statements from June through December 2025 in which he characterized lawful military operations as illegal and counseled members of the Armed Forces to refuse lawful orders.” He again suggested these public statements were “seditious in nature,” language Trump himself has used ever since Kelly, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and others posted the video on social media. Trump also suggested the supposed offense was “punishable by DEATH!” and elevated social media posts calling for the Democrats’ death by hanging.

For his part, Kelly has continued to promote a similar line in response to each new Hegseth attempt to act on Trump’s long and much discussed interest in punishing elected Democrats and anyone who dares criticize him: that he will fight all of the retribution efforts, not for himself, but for all Americans’ freedom of speech.

“I will fight this with everything I’ve got — not for myself, but to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government,” Kelly posted on Twitter Monday.

FWIW, per the Washington Post:

“None of this will stand up,” predicted Eugene Fidell, a senior research scholar and military law expert at Yale Law School. While a grade determination can be opened against a service member under narrow circumstances, he said, the actions under scrutiny must have occurred while someone was on active duty.

“This is dead on arrival as a grade determination,” Fidell said. “It’s free speech, it’s a free country, still, and there’s no ‘there’ there in terms of the power to reopen a retired grade.”

Maduro Pleads ‘Not Guilty’

Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who was removed from the country by the United States in an attack over the weekend, and his wife Cilia Flores pleaded “not guilty” during their first appearance before a federal judge in New York City Monday. Both have been charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy and weapons charges. In court today, Maduro said he had been “kidnapped” by the U.S. and described himself as “a prisoner of war.”

Meanwhile, President Trump has continued to claim that the U.S. is “in charge” of Venezuela and plans to use the country’s oil reserves. He also issued threats against Colombia, Mexico and Greenland and prophesied that Cuba will fall. Few Republicans in Congress have been outspoken thus far about the legality of Trump’s actions over the weekend, even though the “Gang of 8” was not informed of the attack ahead of time.

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Don Bacon (R-NE) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — who frequently break with the president, though Greene’s disparagement of MAGA only began after Trump’s reportedly blocked her from running for Senate in Georgia — have all questioned whether the actions were “constitutionally sound.”

Blue State Retribution Continues

Trump’s White House has been looking for reasons to withhold federal funding from states with populations that did not vote for him. Last year, for example, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said it’d suspend billions in funding for key infrastructure projects in New York.

It looks like the White House is now using a YouTube video that purports to show empty daycare centers in Minnesota as a pretext for withholding billions in funding for child care and low-income families in five blue states. The New York Post was first to report on the news:

The Department of Health and Human Services will freeze taxpayer funding from the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, and the Social Services Block Grant program.

…

The funding pauses were to be announced via letters to each state sent Monday, citing concerns that benefits were fraudulently going to non-US citizens.

In Case You Missed It

New from Josh Marshall: Venezuela Regime Change and the Theater of the Absurd

Morning Memo: Trump’s Venezuela Attack Is a Uniquely Dangerous Threat to the Constitutional Order

ICYMI this weekend: Rural Health Fund Awarded To All 50 States, But Trump Admin Can Still ‘Claw Back’ Cash

Yesterday’s Most Read Story

First Thoughts on Trump’s Excellent Venezuela Adventure

What We Are Reading

How Elon Musk’s X Shapes the AI Boom

CIA Concluded Regime Loyalists Were Best Placed to Lead Venezuela After Maduro

Corporation for Public Broadcasting to Shut Down After 58 Years Due to Trump Eliminating Funding