A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Republican Senators Try to Patch Things Up With the President

Even by our fully debased standard of grading President Donald Trump on a curve, yesterday was a rolling catastrophe of astonishing political blunders. Not even the kind that seem like gaffes to normies but energize his base with high-fiving celebrations of owning the libs. No, Trump didn’t own the libs yesterday. The only person he owned was himself. And yet, Senate Republicans remain submissive, even after showing small flashes of fight.

Voters of both parties are worried and stressed about housing costs and affordability, so any sane politician would seize the opportunity for a photo op of his support for a bipartisan housing bill. Instead, Trump, who lives in a gilded penthouse and private golf club when he’s not in residence rent-free at the White House, which he is needlessly renovating with taxpayer money, unexpectedly cancelled a scheduled signing ceremony (via Truth Social, of course), saying he would not sign the bill unless Senate Republicans passed the SAVE America Act, a voter suppression bill. Wow, this guy really knows how to negotiate, doesn’t he? As any viewer of Schoolhouse Rock knows, the housing bill will become law without his signature, and then he will have missed the opportunity to show everyone how much he cares. Instead, he hands Democrats an opportunity to show voters how much he only cares about his delusions and conspiracy theories, and not about addressing their struggles to afford housing.

Headlines about Trump’s lunch with Senate Republicans yesterday were dominated by the shouting matches, especially with Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, triggered by the tensions he has stoked with his own party, stemming from his SAVE America Act demands, his anger over the passage of the Iran war powers resolution, and other matters. While such a confrontation seemed to mark a new era in Trump-GOP relations, definitively declaring a turning point was perhaps premature. Late last night the Senate, with Cassidy switching his position, voted against another war powers resolution in a procedural vote GOP leadership brought to the floor for the sole purpose of assuaging Trump after his blow-up with Cassidy earlier in the day. According to the Washington Post, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and John Barrasso (R-WY) successfully pressed Cassidy to change his vote.

The Reflecting Pool Debacle Gets More Ridiculous and Embarrassing

Following his Capitol Hill showdown, Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office, where he reprised his conspiracy theories about his botched reflecting pool renovation, insisting there is photographic proof of “thugs” vandalizing it. “They took razor blades and they cut patches like that, 350 feet long. A lot of them are like a foot, a foot, a foot. They cut the lining and there’s pictures of the guy bending over. I don’t know if anybody saw that, but there are pictures of the guy,” he said. Reporters, of course, have asked the White House, the National Parks Service, and the Department of the Interior to see these photos for themselves. This is not just a “Trump claimed, without evidence” moment. Trump is just making stuff up — not unprecedented for him, but notable because the reflecting pool debacle is such a huge, visible, and easily comprehensible tale of corruption and incompetence that it will prove much more difficult for him to bullshit his way out of it.

While Trump fabricated his story about the vandalism of the reflecting pool, which he has portrayed as a great affront to himself and the country’s heritage, he claimed during the same meeting not to have seen actual photographic proof that an American Tomahawk missile struck an elementary school in Minab, Iran, at the outset of the war, killing 175 people. Although the proof of the U.S. strike has been reported in major news outlets, Trump nonetheless claimed to have not seen these reports, saying, “I have to wait for it to be complete,” adding later, “I don’t think it was us.”

Trump Is Trying to Blame Global Oil Shocks on “Liberal” U.K.

Responding to questions about the resignation of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and the likely ascension of newly elected Labour MP Andy Burnham to the role, Trump said, “I hear he’s extremely liberal,” which apparently bothers Trump because “that means he probably won’t open up the North Sea.” Trump claimed to have unsuccessfully pressed Starmer to “open up the North Sea,” by which he meant drill for oil there. This only became an issue after Trump’s war in Iran caused oil shocks around the world. So now Trump will judge Burnham on his “liberalism,” which Trump defines as not bailing him out of this historic self-inflicted wound.

Trump Declares “Golden Age” At Great American State Fair Launch

Trump gave a campaign style speech on the National Mall last night to kick off his Great American State Fair, which many states have declined to participate in. He announced several weeks ago that he would be speaking at the launch after numerous musical acts backed out of performing at his overtly partisan event. Last night he repeated some of his usual grievances and lies, and then boasted that the country is in a “golden age,” claiming, “There’s never been an age like this.”

Courts Deal Trump Losses in His Effort to Control Elections

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ruled against the Trump administration’s attempt to force state election officials in Michigan to turn over its voter rolls to the federal government. The court affirmed a lower court ruling by a Trump-appointed judge, dismissing the Department of Justice’s lawsuit filed to obtain the sensitive voter information. The ruling is binding on all states in the circuit, including Kentucky, where the DOJ has also sued state officials. This is the first appellate court to rule on the administration’s unprecedented power grab, along with nine trial courts who rebuffed Trump. In another case in which states challenged Trump’s 2025 executive order purporting to control elections, U.S. District Judge Denise Casper held Wednesday that significant parts of the order were unconstitutional, including its requirement to provide proof of citizenship when using the federal voter registration form, and its prohibition on counting mail ballots postmarked but not received at election boards by Election Day.

Election Fraud!

Thomas Pischke, a Republican senator in the South Dakota state legislature, is facing two felony counts for falsifying signatures for candidates for state Republican Party positions without their knowledge. “It’s a bad optic for the party,” said Jim Eschenbaum, the state GOP chair.

Judge Blocks Trump DOJ Attempt to Subpoena Trans Patients’ Medical Records

A federal judge in New York has blocked DOJ’s attempts to subpoena New York City hospitals for private medical information of trans youth who obtained gender-affirming care at their facilities. Chris Geidner has all the details at Law Dork.

Harrowing Read

Mother Jones’ Samantha Michaels profiles the Perez family, whose four children, all U.S. citizens, were left to fend for themselves after ICE detained both their parents. The Perezes, who live just seven miles from Mar-a-Lago, are among more than 146,000 U.S. citizen kids whose parents were detained by ICE between January 2025 and April 2026.

A Catholic at Pete Hegseth’s Prayer Meeting

After outcry over apparent snubs of Catholics at the Pentagon and anti-Catholic statements by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s religious mentor, Doug Wilson, Hegseth’s monthly prayer meeting yesterday featured a Catholic speaker. Jonathan Morris, a former priest, is also a Fox News contributor who has appeared on the network with Hegseth. Brian Kaylor watched it so you don’t have to.

Frozen Embryos Are People, Too, Says HHS

Moira Donegan takes a look at a Department of Health and Human Services call for grant applications, part of a revival of a George W. Bush-era program to raise awareness about frozen embryos. She finds that the Trump administration is referring to them as “children who already exist and are in need of a family.” The phrasing, she writes, “lends ammunition to anti-choice groups that have sought recognition of fetal and embryonic personhood in the courts, and who can now claim that embryos are already persons under the law as evidenced by the fact that they are treated as such in federal policy.”

Trump Keeps Trying to Strong-Arm the States

In Washington, D.C. yesterday, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan rejected an effort by the Trump administration to use a revised database of Social Security numbers and citizenship status to check the accuracy of state voter rolls.The database was created following a Trump executive order aimed at one of Trump’s phony “election fraud” obsessions: that massive numbers of non-citizens vote in our elections. Sooknanan found that the administration “had haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.” As a result, some states, after accessing the database, used its inaccurate information to remove U.S. citizens from voting rolls. “All in all,” the judge concluded, “the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”

In Maryland, Judge Stephanie Gallagher blocked the administration’s attempt to obtain state voter rolls — also for the purported reason of purging non-citizens from voting. The state records include dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. While some Republican states turned over their voter rolls to cooperate with Trump, the administration has sued 30 others and Washington, D.C. in an effort to force them to comply. Gallagher, who Trump nominated to the bench in his first term, became the ninth federal judge to reject this strong-arming, dismissing the case as built on “absurd” arguments.

Meanwhile, CNN reported yesterday that the Trump administration is threatening to withhold $1 billion of homeland security funding to states unless they make his demanded voting changes, including phasing out electronic voting systems, reverting to using paper ballots, and, yes, running their voter rolls through the database Sooknanan struck down. Expect court challenges to these demands and threats, if actually carried out, as well.

DC Circuit Steps in on Boasberg’s Contempt Inquiry

As David reported here back in April, two Trump-appointed judges on a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit blocked District Court Judge James Boasberg from pursuing a contempt inquiry over the Trump administration’s violation of his March 2025 order to halt deportations of Venezuelan nationals to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, and return any flights that were en route. The case provided the country some of our earliest visibility into the lawless brutality of Trump’s mass deportation plans, and of the shocking devolution of the Department of Justice and its commitment to the rule of law.

“The sneering tone toward Boasberg from Judge Neomi Rao in the majority opinion reinforced how much cover the Trump appointees have been giving the president as the administration seeks to cover up the details of its complicity in defying Boasberg’s orders,” David wrote about the opinion that aimed to put an end to Boasberg’s efforts to hold administration officials, possibly including DOJ attorneys, in contempt of court for flouting his orders and covering up their wrongdoing.

Yesterday, the D.C. Circuit vacated that April 2026 order and ordered a rehearing of the case en banc — that is, in front of all 11 judges on the court. Arguments are scheduled for September.

Huckabee’s Christian Zionist Pitch to America

Amid the highly unusual tensions between the Trump administration and Israel over his capitulations to end the war he started in Iran, it is important to keep your eye on how his white evangelical base — largely highly committed to its Christian Zionism and very supportive of the Netanyahu government — is reacting. Things have been pretty muted publicly, likely because they are caught now between their dedication to Trump, who they have long hailed as a stalwart supporter of their vision for Israel, and Trump’s apparent heel-turn on Netanyahu, who he’s called “fucking crazy,” among other Trumpian outbursts. Trump’s evangelicals cheerleaded his war in Iran, and now they are forced to think of ways to cut his losses for him, or somehow spin them as not as bad as they seem.

Trump’s Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, as an evangelical and ardent Christian Zionist, is deeply enmeshed in this world, and no doubt is intimately engaged with the squeeze they are feeling right now. He spoke this weekend to an international policy conference in Jerusalem, where he sought to reassure Israelis that America still had their back, despite Trump’s crash-out and Vance’s not-so-veiled threat that “Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.” Huckabee’s remarks were not only aimed at Israelis; they were particularly targeted to evangelicals at home who entangle their Christian nationalism with their Christian Zionism.

In making his case for America’s “unbreakable bond” with the state of Israel, Huckabee emphasized not so much that Israel should be thankful for American support, but that Americans should feel indebted to Judaism and Israel for our political founding and freedoms — an incredibly odd thing for anyone to say, but especially for an ambassador, who is supposed to be representing America’s interests in Israel, not convincing Americans that they owe a debt of gratitude to Israel based on his revisionist history. “One of the reasons that our nations are tied together is because it is upon the Jewish foundation that Christianity was formed and upon the Jewish and Judeo-Christian foundation, Western civilization was formed. And without that there would not be an America. It is as simple as that,” he said. Americans, he went on, “need to be grateful to God for the Jewish people and the foundation upon which freedom and the sanctity of the individual was founded because that is what separates our values from the values of totalitarianism and dictatorship.”

Trump Is Still Hiding Kennedy Center Signage With His Name Removed

Thanks to intrepid photography by the group Hands Off the Arts, the Washington Post has confirmed that Trump’s name has indeed been removed from the facade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as required by a court order. The Trump-less signage remains covered by scaffolding and tarp, because Trump can never admit that he has lost, which he has been doing a lot of lately.

Speaking of Losing

In California, U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles, rejecting, like judges in Boston and Chicago before him, Trump’s arguments that ordinances barring use of city resources to aid in federal immigration enforcement are unconstitutional. In Minnesota, Judge Patrick Schiltz threw out grand jury subpoenas issued to Governor Tim Walz and other Democrats, part of Trump’s political revenge campaign against the state.

Trump Is Also Losing Friends

Politico reports on how Trump has become a liability for far-right leaders in Europe, including Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the U.K.’s Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, and National Rally party leader Jordan Bardella in France.

Are Jared and Ivanka Triggering a Revolution in Albania?

Their investment in a planned 10,000-room luxury resort on the beloved, pristine Sazan Island off the coast of the Albanian Pishë Poro-Narta conservation reserve, has triggered an unprecedented uprising against the project — and against the Albanian officials who have supported it. “Not since the collapse of communism, more than three decades ago, has Albania been shaken by such collective fury,” the Guardian reports.

Speaking of Corruption

Casey Michel reports on an ongoing push by Trump allies to make the United States a safe haven for shell companies. “All of this is a staggering gift to cartels, Chinese money-laundering networks, Iranian proxies, and others who have relied on anonymous U.S. shells—all of whom Republicans supposedly stand against,” he writes.

Nepobaby Energy Drinks

What happens when the president’s son and granddaughter develop and market their own branded energy drinks? Nothing good.

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The Reflecting Pool as a Reflection of Trump’s Corruption and Tin-Potism

After President Donald Trump’s boastful, $16 million-plus makeover of the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial was spoiled by rapidly blooming algae and peeling paint, he flew into one of his trademark weekend Truth Social rages against “Radical Left Lunatics.” He baselessly blamed “terrible Vandals,” and called for the arrest and “Years in jail” for people who had, in his words, committed “a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.”

The entire debacle has all the hallmarks of a flailing dictator story. First, Trump’s supposed “makeovers” of Washington, D.C. landmarks and monuments are nothing more than vanity projects, as he fancies himself the sole definer of our national history, and importantly, our national aesthetics. Second, his administration doled out no-bid, taxpayer-funded contracts, one to a Trump donor and Mar-a-Lago neighbor who was once embroiled in a bribery scandal. (Yes, that scandal involves vintage TPM character Jim Traficant). Now, Trump is apoplectic that his vaunted “American flag blue” paint has peeled away as if it had been installed with a glue stick — a disastrous symbolism even Trump recognizes.

His response is to lash out, and claim, with no evidence, that curious residents and tourists had sabotaged his handiwork and even desecrated the monuments he claims to be restoring to a glory only he can achieve. As icing on the cake, his handpicked prosecutor, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, went on the state news network, aka Fox News, on Sunday to promise “serious charges” against anyone who puts their hand in the pool’s water, or touches a clump of peeling paint floating in it. She did not rule out prosecuting ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, who reported from the site last week.

Trump is baselessly accusing “vandals” of pouring “corrosive” substances into the pool to trigger the algae, and for a nonexistent 250-foot “gash into the beautiful facade.” The administration has already begun charging people, including David Hearn, a former Olympian who stopped to take a look at the reflecting pool while out for a bike ride on Friday, and spent five hours in detention at a Park Police facility before being released.

The entire episode is peak Trumpism: both preposterous and dangerous at the same time. As far as the likelihood that D.C. juries would convict anyone in the Reflecting Pool saga, just remember Sandwich Guy.

Hillbilly Elegy Elegy

“There is something deeply the matter here with JD Vance, and with this book,” is not exactly a sentence a writer wants to see in the second paragraph of a review of their newly published memoir, but that’s how Colin Dickey opens his appraisal of Communion, JD Vance’s 2028 presidential campaign salvo masquerading as a personal account of his faith journey. Dickey, writing in The New Republic, takes aim at Vance’s disingenuous efforts to pretend he’s a different kind of politician — and a different kind of religious thinker — than Trump and his evangelical loyalists. Vance’s tale of rejecting evangelicalism, and then atheism, in favor of Catholicism will baffle evangelicals and Catholics alike. For evangelicals, he left their faith for atheism, but when he returned to religion he chose Catholicism, with some disdain for his childhood religion. Catholics reading this book will be similarly mystified by how he writes about their religion, which he very recently joined but about which he nonetheless feels entitled to lecture the Pope.

“If nothing else, ‘Communion’ confirms what was already obvious: Vance is not the theologian he thinks he is, and indeed, he knows very little about the Catholic faith,” writes religious studies scholar Anthea Butler at MS NOW. Instead, Vance seems to have invented his own version of Catholicism, which he can use both as a political calling card for Republican voters and a bludgeon against the left. Remarkably, though, as Jessica Winter observes at the New Yorker, “the strongest emotion Vance seems able to express in ‘Communion’ is his distaste for the tenets and rituals of the faith he has elected to join.” This book, she writes, far more than Vance’s first, career-catapulting memoir Hillbilly Elegy, “is the work of an inveterate opportunist, one who appears torn between the urge to camouflage his careerism—Vance’s true religion—and an equally strong desire to be admired for how well and how profitably he plays the game.”

DOJ Civil Rights Division Aims to Christianize Major League Baseball

The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into whether the civil rights of Christian players for the San Francisco Giants were violated by the team’s special caps for Pride Night earlier this month. Four players who objected to the caps — three who had altered the cap with Bible verses, and one who refused to wear one at all — received warnings from Major League Baseball for violating its uniform policy. But in the eyes of Trump’s DOJ, MLB is woke, and, according to Harmeet Dhillon, head of Trump’s DOJ Civil Rights Division, the four players were being discriminated against for expressing “their opposition to MLB’s pro-Pride orthodoxy.” Dhillon griped to the New York Post, “It doesn’t really matter how gay San Francisco is — these workers have rights.” This is just the latest example of how far the Trump DOJ will go to completely remake the Civil Rights Division as a lawless enforcer of Christian nationalist persecution complexes.

Is the Trump Administration Now… Anti-Israel?

The Wall Street Journal editorial board goes there, accusing Trump of making Israel a “scapegoat” in his still-shaky Iran Memorandum of Understanding to end the senseless war he started in Iran. “Mr. Trump now finds himself in the position of attacking the best U.S. ally in the region for defending itself,” the board wrote. “Like Barack Obama, he risks becoming an apologist for Iran. This may win him support among Mr. Vance’s friends in MAGA’s anti-Israel wing. But it risks giving away the gains of his military campaign.” Is there something more enraging the Journal could write about Trump than to liken him to Obama?

No one in the conservative world, though, wants to ask this question: isn’t criticizing Israel, as both Trump and Vance have now done, grounds for being investigated for antisemitism by the Trump administration?

Tulsi Gabbard Was Not Acting Alone

The Washington Post’s Jon Swaine has a shocking, meticulously reported story about former Congresswoman and now former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and her lifelong relationship with the Hare Krishna breakaway group, the Science of Identity Foundation. Swaine’s investigation makes the case that Chris Butler, the group’s guru, directed many of Gabbard’s legislative and media actions throughout her tenure in Congress — if not longer.

Bill Pulte Bulldozes His Way Into Gabbard’s Former Role

After Trump blew up the prospect of quick confirmation hearings for Jay Clayton, his actual nominee to replace Gabbard as DNI in order to install Bill Pulte, his interim pick, Pulte showed up a day early at HQ and proceeded to make noises about firing hundreds of employees and demanding to know whether a private plane was one of the position’s perks. Pulte, as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is best known for ginning up ultimately unsuccessful, evidence-free criminal investigations of Trump nemeses former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud; for encouraging Trump to post the AI-generated photo of himself as Jesus; and for triggering Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to threaten to “punch you in your fucking face.”

RFK, Jr. Holding Up Crucial Social Services Funding

The Department of Health and Human Services, now under a directive that all funding be approved by the White House and Department Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is holding up hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to states and social services organizations that provide suicide prevention, opioid addiction, disease outbreak, and other crucial public health interventions, NOTUS reports. The first step in this new review system requires all funding Congress has already appropriated to “first clear an AI screening which flags certain keywords that the administration finds unacceptable, such as culture, harm reduction, gender and transgender.”

Happy Summer!

National Parks, a summer holiday destination made more attractive this year by rising costs of flying, are plagued by staffing shortages, gridlock, and delays at entry gates, the New York Times reports.

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Still Obsessed

Amid all the justified criticism of his flimsy deal to end his reckless and unlawful war against Iran, nothing seems to get under President Trump’s skin quite like unfavorable comparisons to President Obama’s deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

Trump famously pulled the plug on the JCPOA in one of the worst disasters of his first term, so the comparison is more than apt. It’s an essential point of reference for the capitulation Trump just made to Iran for it to get him out of the war he started against it.

“And you know what the Iranians did? They laughed at Obama, and they said, ‘He’s a stupid son of a bitch,’” Trump said in one of his biggest tantrums of the week.

The memorandum of understanding, which Trump unbelievably chose to sign while at dinner at Versailles last night, punts entirely on Iran’s nuclear program. It saves those negotiations for another day, with no real mechanism to force the parties back to the table or to compel Iran to strike a new nukes deal. In that narrow sense, Trump is right when he claims his deal is the “complete opposite” of Obama’s.

“When a reporter asked Trump about that absence, he said that what would guarantee Iran’s compliance is fear of renewed U.S. bombing,” Heather Cox Richardson notes. “But Iran has shown it can withstand such attacks, and in any case, the U.S. has no stomach for them.”

In any event, if it turns out badly, Trump can just blame JD Vance.

Trump coming out on the short end of these Obama comparisons happens to coincide with the opening of Obama’s presidential library in Chicago, which itself has stirred up Trump enough that he has felt compelled to mock it.

Boat Strike Survivors Lost at Sea

The two survivors of a U.S. strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat this week have presumably died at sea, after the U.S. Coast Guard suspended search and rescue operations:

Since a double-tap strike in September that killed the survivors of the first attack in the lawless U.S. campaign, most of the survivors of subsequent strikes have perished at sea.

The ostensible rescue missions, either launched by the U.S. Coast Guard or handed off to the Mexican Navy, have been too little too late and raise serious questions about whether the Trump administration wants to deal with survivors at all.

Senate GOP Shows Sign of Life

The Senate has tucked a provision into the must-pass annual defense bill that would drastically cut Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s personal travel budget unless the Pentagon coughs up more information on the lawless campaign of high seas boat strikes.

The bill, which passed the GOP-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee last week, is trying to force the disclosure of the unedited footage of every boat strike in the campaign. It also wants more information on the Pentagon’s investigation into the apparent U.S. missile strike on a girls school in the opening days of the Iran war.

If the Pentagon fails to provide the information, Hegseth’s travel budget would be cut by 75%. The Senate tried a similar but less draconian move late last year, which the new provision suggests didn’t succeed in obtaining the requested information.

‘Mistakes Are Made’

Good Read

TPM’s Josh Kovensky: DOJ Invokes McCarthy-Era Law to Strip Somalia-born Minnesotan of Citizenship

Mass Deportation Watch

• Politico: Immigration judges are denying ICE detainees release. Federal judges are stepping in.

• WaPo: ICE removed detainee protections after private outreach from top contractor

• Politico: ICE’s detention policy won at the 5th Circuit. Then judges found another way to reject it.

• NYT: Internal Emails Raise Questions About D.H.S. Ending Haiti Protections

For Your Radar: Bill Pulte Edition

With President Trump having successfully torpedoed yesterday’s Senate intel committee confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton as DNI, Bill Pulte is poised to become acting DNI tomorrow. The amount of mischief, disinformation, and chaos Trump’s favorite gremlin can generate in that position is alarming, even though DNI doesn’t have a direct operational intel function.

For our purposes though, pay particular attention to the upcoming elections. DNI served as a clearinghouse in recent elections for intel on attempts by foreign adversaries to influence the vote. It sets up an opportunity for Pulte to use the position to plant seeds of conspiracy theories, sow doubt about the results, and enable ratfuckery in various forms.

Important

The Trump DOJ moved this week to block an NAACP lawsuit in Mississippi against Elon Musk’s AI company which alleges that its dozens of gas-burning turbines violate the Clean Air Act. In doing so, the DOJ third-ranked official, Stanley Woodward Jr., made the extraordinary claim that the federal government has the authority to stop environmental lawsuits brought by private groups or individuals.

Anti-White Supremacy Lesson Costs Prof Her Job

Indiana University has declined to renew the contract of a non-tenured lecturer who was suspended in October from teaching the graduate-level course “Diversity, Human Rights and Social Justice.”

The scrutiny of the instructor, who showed a graphic in class that identified “Make America Great Again” as an example of covert white supremacy, came after Indiana passed a law claiming to promote “intellectual diversity” while protecting students from being subjected to political views unrelated to the course, the NYT reports.

Headline of the Day

The New Republic: Tommy Tuberville Hit With Lawsuit Over Secret Life as Florida Man

Travel Alert

I’ll be away until July, doing something I’ve always wanted to do but in my race to see as much of the world as possible have never managed to do: Go abroad to one place for a couple of weeks and just stay there. No city hopping. No multiple border crossings. No sandwiching in a wilderness trek or a mountain climb.

Copenhagen is my one and only destination (although day trips are allowed … hello, Malmö?). I’m a first-time visitor. Recommendations? Tips? Off-the-beaten path gems? I’m keen to simply be a local for a few days.

TPM contributing writer Sarah Posner will be subbing for me here. Please make her feel welcome.

Enjoy Your Long Weekend

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Pick Your Poison: Sanctions or Criminal Contempt

In a flurry of new filings overnight, attorneys for the Broadview Six continued to press their advantage in seeking a full accounting for the Trump DOJ’s misconduct and subsequent alleged cover-up in the now-dismissed case against ICE protesters.

Among the new requests, the Broadview Six are now asking U.S. District Judge April Perry to:

Appoint a Special Counsel: In seeking the appointment of a outside special counsel to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute DOJ officials in Chicago and D.C., including U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, they argue that the Justice Department is scapegoating the line prosecutor who appeared before the grand jury in the case:

Indeed, these steps must be taken in large part because of what appears to be a determined effort to blame a single prosecutor when the misconduct now known – particularly in this case – runs much deeper and indeed to the highest levels of the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office and likely to the Department of Justice in Washington D.C.

If the investigation yields evidence of criminal contempt, they want the court to empower the special counsel to prosecute those officials involved.

Conduct a Hearing on Prosecutorial Misconduct: In conjunction with the request for a special counsel, the Broadview Six also wanted an evidentiary hearing on sanctions for “both the misconduct that is already manifest, and additional misconduct which we anticipate is yet uncovered.” As they continue to pound the lectern that more misconduct is likely to be found upon further investigation, they ask for additional discovery to inform any hearing on sanctions or criminal contempt of court:

We ask that the Court direct the government immediately to conduct a search for any emails, text messages, phone calls, memos, notes, or other records of communications between anyone in the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office and anyone – including [DOJ official Aakash] Singh – from DOJ or DHS related to this case.

Note the particular focus on Main Justice.

Allow Limited Discovery to Recoup Attorneys Fees: In another new filing, the Broadview Six attorneys revealed that the Trump DOJ “will not contest” that the defendants are entitled to recover their attorneys fees and costs. How much they are entitled to recover remains in dispute. In pursuit of recovering attorney fees, the Broadview Six previously asked the court to allow additional limited discovery “to demonstrate the bad faith, vexatious, and/or frivolous nature of this misguided prosecution.”

Trump DOJ Goes After ICE Protesters in Minnesota

A sweeping new indictment of 15 ICE protesters in Minnesota is another test case of the Trump DOJ’s penchant for slapping conspiracy charges on alleged “antifa” dissidents — though the facts of this case are complicated and will take some time to unpack and distill.

It led to this bit of absurdism from Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen during a press conference announcing the charges:

The indictment of protestors comes even as the Trump administration continues to refuse to investigate or prosecute federal agents who killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti — or cooperate in the state investigations in their deaths.

Court Declines to Discipline DOJ Attorney

After appointing a special counsel to look into it, the federal court in Rhode Island has declined to discipline a DOJ attorney who failed to disclose to a judge that an ICE detainee she ordered released had an outstanding international arrest warrant.

The Trump Department of Homeland Security seized on the release of the detainee to attack the judge publicly, and the lawyer apologized for not being more forthcoming with the court, saying ICE has instructed him not to divulge the existence of the warrant.

In a letter to DOJ attorney Kevin Bolan, Chief Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. admonished:

Given your knowledge and the importance of the information you knowingly withheld from the Court, the Special Counsel found sufficient evidence that your conduct violated the duty of candor owed to the Court. And the Court agrees. In particular, your knowing decision not to disclose this critical fact was, under the circumstances, the equivalent of making an affirmative false statement to the Court about Mr. Gómez’s criminal history, in violation of Rule 3.3(a)(1).

Nevertheless, the special counsel and the court found “countervailing factors” that made formal disciplinary proceedings unnecessary:

While your error was serious, countervailing factors are also present. The Special Counsel’s investigation found, and the Court agrees, that there is no reason to conclude that you were part of a scheme to deceive the Court, or that you acted in bad faith or for personal gain. On your own initiative, you publicly accepted responsibility and apologized to Judge DuBose and this Court. Outside of this incident, you have participated responsibly in many cases here. Your lapse of judgment reflected a failure to prioritize your duty to the Court over the instructions of your client, but you did not act for any deceitful or illicit reason.

The April DHS news release — titled “Activist Biden Judge Releases Violent Criminal Illegal Alien Wanted for Murder” — remains online.

Secret Service Big Mad at Kash Patel

FBI Director Kash Patel jumped the gun again in racing to post news of a criminal investigation to social media while arrests were still being made.

It prompted an unusual public backlash from the deputy director of the Secret Service, which led the investigation into an alleged plot to attack the UFC event Sunday at the White House on President Trump’s birthday.

“I’ll tell you a phrase I learned early in my career in the New York field office and that’s `’Don’t choke on your own smoke,’” the Secret Service’s Matthew C. Quinn said at a press conference, without naming Patel. “I’ll tell you the Secret Service led that investigation from the beginning. I’ll tell you that case is ongoing. In order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan, we chose not to leak it.”

At least five people from four states — California, Missouri, Nebraska and Ohio — have been charged in the alleged plot involving drones and rifles, which was uncovered when a concerned mother called the police, though it remains unclear whether they had the means to carry out the attack.

In related news: The Trump DOJ seized on the alleged plot in its appeal of the court order shutting down construction of Trump’s vanity ballroom, dubiously arguing that it shows the need for a secure location (to hold UFC fights and related circus events?).

Patel Has a Slush Fund for FBI Loyalists?

In a new letter, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) claims FBI Director Kash Patel “may” have unlawfully paid more than $1 million in bonuses to agents on his Director’s Advisory Team and on his security detail.

Trump Holds DNI Nom Hostage to Election Interference Bill

In another sign of the gathering storm of a Big Lie redux for the midterm elections, President Trump this morning scotched a plan to quickly confirm Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence in order to pressure Congress into passing his election interference bill, the SAVE America Act, as part of extending FISA’s Section 702 surveillance authority.

Under Trump’s new plan, his loyalist Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, would step in as acting DNI in the meantime — an ironic move because fast-tracking Clayton was a way of sidelining Pulte, whose selection as acting DNI had derailed the FISA reauthorization in the Senate.

In his social media post announcing the move, Trump said he was cancelling today’s Senate Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Clayton’s nomination, but committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-AR) said the hearing would proceed.

Midterms Results: Georgia Edition

• GA-Sen: Trump-endorsed Rep. Mike Collins won the GOP runoff to challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff (D), giving Democrats the general election opponent they wanted.

• GA-Gov: Trump-endorsed Georgia Lt. Governor Burt Jones lost the GOP runoff to billionaire Rick Jackson, despite having led in the first round of the primary.

U.S. Boat Strike Leaves 2 Survivors

A U.S. attack on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific on Tuesday killed one man and left two survivors adrift on the high seas, bringing the death toll in the lawless Trump administration campaign to at least 208. In what has become a largely meaningless refrain, the U.S. military said it “immediately notified U.S. Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivors.”

Trump Faked Out Most Media on Iran War Deal Yet Again

It’s now basically confirmed that the U.S. and Iran agreed to disagree and that President Trump turned around and peddled that publicly as an agreement to end the war.

The terms of a draft of the memorandum of understanding between the two countries, which isn’t yet signed, is both generally favorable to Iran and leaves much unresolved for later negotiations (which may or may not happen).

After touting it over the weekend — and being inexplicably taken at face value by most major news outlets — Trump gave the whole thing an absurdist twist this morning in Europe at the G7 summit:

That’s not just Trump free-associating in front of the cameras. That’s the official administration line, per this rich CNN headline: “US officials downplay text of the Iran agreement, saying it doesn’t account for back-channel commitments.”

Meanwhile, each night since the MOU was conceptually agreed to, Iran has launched drones against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. has shot them down, NBC News reports. `

Messi Doing Messi Things … at Nearly 39

Vintage Lionel Messi last night against Algeria, where his three goals for defending champ Argentina tied him for most in a career in World Cup play:

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Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

President Trump’s oft-repeated claims that no public monies will be involved in his vanity ballroom project appear to be untrue, according to a new Washington Post report that also reveals the cost of the project has ballooned.

The newspaper obtained copies of detailed project summaries prepared for the White House by its contractor, Virginia-based Clark Construction. One summary from March estimated the cost of the project at $600 million, 50% more than the $400 million price tag Trump has repeatedly given publicly for the project.

More than half of the $600 million cost for the project would be covered by public funds, according to the March summary:

• $155 million from the Secret Service

• $149 million from the White House Military Office

• $3 million from the Executive Residence

Congress has not authorized the project or allocated monies for it.

The alleged private funding for the project was itself problematic, a prime opportunity for corruption, with little transparency. In the end, it turns out to be problematic in every way.

In response to the WaPo story, the White House was still insisting on the $400 million figure: “President Trump and generous American patriots are funding the ballroom to the tune of approximately $400 million …”

Take It With a Grain of Salt …

Kash Patel, the social media addict who happens to be FBI director, posted this morning on X that the bureau thwarted a planned attack on President Trump’s UFC event at the White House on his birthday. “[M]ultiple individuals are now in custody and allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold,” Patel posted.

Patel has a history of jumping the gun with social media posts on law enforcement activity and then having to backtrack, so proceed with caution on this.

The Retribution: Gavin Newsom Edition

The announcement by California Gov. Gavin Newsom — a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028 — that the Trump DOJ is investigating his wife prompted an darkly comic response from what appear to be Justice Department sources.

The Wall Street Journal put it like this: “The probes have been going on since at least 2025 and were started by federal law-enforcement officials in California—not political appointees in Washington—after witnesses there came forward with information, the person said.”

The New York Times version was: “A person familiar with the matter … disputed Mr. Newsom’s assertion that the investigations were politically motivated, and said they had been initiated by federal law enforcement officials in California, not launched by officials in Washington.”

The implication: Hey, we know exactly what politically motivated investigations driven by the Trump White House and Main Justice look like and this ain’t it!

Of course, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Federal prosecutors and FBI agents outside of D.C. can initiate their own politically motivated investigations, too. See, for example, Nevada.

The Corruption: Antitrust Edition

Political appointees at Main Justice short-circuited the antitrust review by career attorneys of the Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the WSJ reports:

A team of career lawyers who had spent months scrutinizing the deal were leaning toward recommending a lawsuit challenging it on the grounds that the combination of the two movie studios would be anticompetitive and violate antitrust law, the people said.

The staff investigators hadn’t yet made a final recommendation—a typical step in the deal-review process—and were told Friday that the department would close the investigation, effectively clearing the deal at the federal level, some of the people said.

Boris Epshteyn Watch

A somewhat convoluted story in the WSJ — packed full of denials by the key players — reports that Trump personal attorney Boris Epshteyn was involved in Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s successful effort to get the Trump DOJ to drop criminal charges against him.

As of last summer, the [Adani] family was telling people that Epshteyn was helping them, some of the people said.

Epshteyn, who also serves as the president’s adviser and legal coordinator, didn’t attend meetings with prosecutors. Nor did his name appear on legal papers. …

But Epshteyn’s presence was discussed inside the Justice Department and among others familiar with the case, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Epshteyn emphatically denied the claims in the WSJ article. The firm representing Adani in the case, Sullivan & Cromwell, said it “did not work with or retain Mr. Epshteyn.” The Adani Group also issued a denial: “We have no relationship with Boris Epshteyn, have not retained him in any capacity, and have made no payments to him, directly or indirectly.”

On Jeffrey Epstein’s Death

The NYT just published an exhaustive investigation of Jeffrey Epstein’s jailhouse death that concludes:

Some important questions about Epstein’s death remain unanswered and likely unanswerable. Nevertheless, our reporting establishes that Epstein showed a clear pattern of behavior in the weeks before his death suggesting an intent to kill himself. The apparent suicide note memorialized Epstein’s despair and desire to “say goodbye” on his own terms. Other writings from his final days presented a picture of a fraying mental state that sharply contrasted with the upbeat picture he presented to jail psychologists, including another note in which he hinted at ending his life. …

The picture drawn most clearly by this new information is not the elaborate conspiracy that his murder would have required; rather, it is an unfortunate though not improbable convergence of longstanding institutional failures, human errors and chance events, which created an opportunity for Epstein to act on what was by then a well-established desire that he had already tried and failed to realize.

Headline of the Day

I didn’t touch the reported deal with Iran in yesterday’s Morning Memo because so much of the reporting relied on President Trump’s own characterizations of it. I don’t grasp the editorial decision-making that leads major news outlets to take Trump’s statements on the Iran negotiations at face value, given his abysmal track record on exactly this topic.

A day later, the details remain sketchy. It’s not clear, for example, whether the two sides are even working from a common draft document. But what already seems to be unraveling is the initial round of misinformation from Trump that the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened with the same free passage that existed before the war.

This NYT headline captures the inanity: Iran Says Strait of Hormuz Won’t Have ‘Tolls’ but It Will Have ‘Fees’

No Means No, Jet Ski!

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The Work of Our Lifetimes

In typically shitty Trump fashion, he mounted a late bid to fight the removal of his name from D.C.’s Kennedy Center, blew the court-ordered deadline Friday for taking it down, and mostly shielded his loss from public view with a tarp. But before the new deadline of noon Saturday, the center notified the court that the work was completed.

Make no mistake: This was the first step in what will be a decades-long effort to strip Trump from American public life and repair the damage he has done. It will be slow, painstaking, halting, and thankless work — and perhaps most frustratingly it will have to overcome the inertia of faux reconciliation and indifference.

The political dynamics of this renewal, America’s reconstruction history suggests, will be brutal.

Each effort to undo what Trump has done will be met with howls of outrage, real or not, to maximize the political price exacted. Elected officials will have to decide whether to expend political capital to pay that price. If the 2008 financial crisis and Trump I are any indication, the stomach will not be there to engage in these fights even in the immediate aftermath of Trump II, let alone for the decades it will take to finish the work.

The destruction of state capacity is the biggest and hardest thing to reverse. But the cosmetic and structural changes Trump has wrought without legal authority, in D.C., national parks, and the White House itself will carry symbolic weight that is likely to trigger the kind of backlash past Democratic administrations have avoided. If we don’t begin to confront now the scale and scope of the work ahead, we, too, will wilt when the times comes.

It won’t be easy for all the obvious reasons but also for a particularly Trumpy one: He hasn’t just broken things. He’s replaced them with crap. Trump’s own track record across decades in business and his first term in the White House strongly suggests that we will face the additional friction point of projects done poorly, on the cheap, and not built to last.

Shoddy work is a direct product of two Trump mainstays: corruption and performative spectacle. If it’s all just a grift, it doesn’t need to last. It just needs to wow the audience and produce the opportunity to cash in. The suckers are stuck with the aftermath.

Everything Trump manages to accomplish creates a double whammy of burdens for those who to seek to undo it: the actual cost of demolishing, repairing, rebuilding, and replacing plus the opportunity cost of what else could have been done instead.

That’s why blocking Trump at every turn now has double the benefits.

Federal Courts Need to Step Up the Pace

It’s been obvious from the get-go that President Trump was going to rush to make his vanity ballroom a fact on the ground before the federal courts could stop him.

From the earliest hearing in the case, Judge Richard J. Leon tried to head off this possibility, but the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals did not back him up and let construction continue, with predictable results, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

The interim period has given the administration a reprieve it was able to drive an army of flatbed trucks through.

Now the same judges who gave the administration that breathing room are fretting over whether they effectively tied their own hands.

It is a repeated pattern that even 18 months into Trump’s second term, the federal courts have been reluctant to confront. “Even when litigants file cases quickly, the deliberative speed of the legal system is little match for Trump’s alacrity,” the WSJ notes.

Breaking: Trump Weighed Suspending Habeas Corpus

Just out this morning from the NYT: Early last year, Stephen Miller pushed President Trump to suspend habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants in order to turbocharge the mass deportation operation.

Judge Blocks $1.776B Slush Fund

I was in court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Friday when U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled from the bench that the Trump administration’s assurances that the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is dead weren’t enough and blocked it from moving forward with the fund.

The legal challenge to the fund will continue unless the judge receives within two weeks a sworn declaration, under penalty of perjury, from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr., and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Here’s my report from court.

Meanwhile, in the underlying Trump v. IRS lawsuit in Florida — the collusive settlement of which spawned the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” — Trump’s lawyers were largely non-responsive to the three questions that the federal judge in Miami had ordered them to answer about whether a fraud had been perpetrated against the court. Instead, they argued that the judge was acting beyond her jurisdiction in scrutinizing what had transpired.

Trump DOJ Watch

• Manhattan: President Trump said over the weekend that he wants to make Sullivan & Cromwell partner James McDonald, one of his former personal lawyers, the new U.S. attorney in Manhattan — though it remains unclear if he intends to nominate McDonald to the Senate-confirmed post or to appoint him to the acting role. McDonald, unlike the outgoing U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, has some experience as a federal prosecutor. Before that, he was a clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and worked in the Bush II White House Counsel’s Office.

• Chicago: A federal judge repeatedly called out U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros for not showing up in court personally for a Friday hearing on the dismissal of a fraud case because of prosecutorial misconduct in front of the grand jury: “Is Mr. Boutros here? I didn’t think so. This is serious … but he’s not here … ”

• Ohio: The FBI searched an office of the progressive group Ohio Organizing Collaborative on Thursday as part of a Trump DOJ investigation into its voter registration efforts.

Trump’s Crusade Against Trans Americans

The super knowledgeable Chris Geidner of Law Dork joined me Friday afternoon for a fast-paced rundown of the Trump administration’s multi-prong attack on transgender Americans:

Good Read

Following on TPM’s Josh Kovensky’s 2024 report on the secretive, far-right, all-male Society for American Civic Renewal, Politico tags along with SACR member Josh Abbotoy, who aspires to build conservative Christian “charter communities” throughout Appalachia.

The Destruction: National Parks Edition

U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley of Boston on Friday temporarily blocked the National Park Service from removing or revising signs, films and other materials at national parks across the country — and gave it three weeks to restore any exhibits that it had already been dismantled or altered under the Trump executive order with the Orwellian title “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

The Destruction: Measles Edition

The United States is on the verge of losing its status as a country that has eliminated measles. A Utah measles outbreak is nearing the one-year mark, which is a key public health metric for whether measles has been eliminated. The United States has enjoyed the status since 2000.

Is It Really a Mystery?

The Guardian: “An expansive US military campaign that has so far killed nearly 200 people across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September 2025 appears to have reached the fishing fleets of Ecuador and left eight men missing and presumed dead. But the Trump administration insists it had no part in these particular operations …”

Today’s Meditation

Kilauea erupted again over the weekend, the 49th episode of fountaining lava since the current eruption sequence began in December 2024. At one point during the 7.5-hour event, a whirlwind developed in the superheated air rising from the hot lava and advanced on one of the remote cameras along the crater rim:

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I was joined by Chris Geidner, publisher of the Law Dork newsletter and the leading American journalist covering these issues, to talk about this sweeping assault on transgender Americans.

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Trump Judge to DOJ: ‘Give Me a Break’

The judicial branch’s response to the Trump rampage has been slow but as The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic suggests, there are signs that it’s gathering steam. The more judges that dispense with the government’s presumption of regularity, the wider the door opens to investigating irregularities.

Still, the pace is halting and often hard to visualize because it comes in so many different flavors across so many different courts. But the past 24 hours have seen a flurry of examples of judicial pushback against the Trump administration that offers a good snapshot of the emerging moment:

In Florida: U.S. District Judge Kyle Dudek of Ft. Myers, a Trump appointee, issued an apoplectic order in a habeas case after the Trump administration failed to abide by his order to give an ICE detainee a bond hearing.

The Trump DOJ had originally conceded that the detainee was entitled to a bond hearing in front of an immigration judge. “What happened next borders on the surreal,” Dudek wrote in an order first flagged by Joyce Vance.

The immigration judge refused to hold a bond hearing, the administration went along with it, waiving its right to appeal, and then came back to Dudek saying its original concession “was in error.”

Dudek was not having any of it:

The Government was right the first time. And its request for a do-over here is not just legally unsupportable, it is a masterclass in litigation cynicism. A federal court is not a testing lab where the Executive branch can pilot a concession to get a case closed, stand by silently while its own administrative process flouts the resulting mandate, and then stroll back in demanding a clean slate. Give me a break.

But Dudek wasn’t done.

Rather than just re-order a bond hearing, he ordered the detainee released within 48 hours “because the Government has shown a complete inability to follow judicial directions.”

In Rhode Island: Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. popped the Trump administration for not immediately complying with his order to resume making asylum decisions and restart immigration processing.

“It should almost go without saying—but the Court will say it anyway for the sake of ‘clarify[ing]’ the Government’s ‘current obligations’ — that court orders vacating and setting aside agency policies have immediate effect once they are issued,” McConnell wrote.

McConnell gave the administration 24 hours to file a status report on the “specific steps” it’s taken to comply with his order: “There is no excuse this time; the Government has an obligation to immediately comply with this Order.”

In Illinois: After a federal judge ordered an evidentiary hearing into possible grand jury improprieties in an unrelated fraud case by the same prosecutor implicated in grand jury misconduct in the Broadview Six case, the Trump DOJ folded.

It moved to dismiss charges against two defendants in the rather serious fraud case rather than see its prosecutors, including potentially Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, hauled to the stand to give sworn testimony about the grand jury proceedings.

In D.C.: Chief Judge James Boasberg rejected a revisionist move by the Trump DOJ to vacate his earlier order quashing grand jury subpoenas in the politicized investigation of the Federal Reserve and its then-chairman Jay Powell. In revisiting his earlier ruling, Boasberg colorfully summarized it thusly:

This Court found that the subpoenas were meant to harass Powell and to pressure him to truckle to the President’s policy preferences. It also concluded that the Government had no good-faith basis to believe that Powell was guilty of any crime other than displeasing the President and that the Government’s justifications were mere pretexts.

As he rejected the latest move, Boasberg dryly called it “a creative way to clear its loss from the books.”

Trump’s Ultimate Revisionism

It sounds like Republicans will make a push in the lame-duck session of Congress after the midterm elections to expunge Donald Trump’s two first-term impeachments.

“I think it makes a lot of sense the more the evidence comes out, the more we know they really were sham impeachments,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) told the WSJ.

Slush Fund Ain’t Dead Yet

The Atlantic:

Behind the scenes, Justice Department and other Trump-administration officials have quietly assured allies that plans for some form of payout remain on track. I spoke with eight people familiar with the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund—including current and former Justice Department officials, current and former members of Congress, a defense attorney, and political operatives close to the administration. All said that Justice Department officials and people close to the White House have indicated that the payout idea has not actually been scrapped. Rather, they say, officials are exploring whether elements of the fund can be reactivated while also examining alternative arrangements to make sure loyalists get compensated.

Programming alert: I’ll be in court this morning in Alexandria, Virginia, in the case challenging the slush fund where the judge has already ordered the administration temporarily to pause any movement on the fund. Stay tuned …

Kennedy Center Deadline Is Today

Under court order to remove Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center by today, the performing arts venue’s Trump-aligned board made a last-ditch effort to buy more time, asking the judge to pause his order while it appeals his ruling. The move to appeal the ruling came on the 13th day of a 14-day window to remove Trump’s name, setting the stage for a series of last-minute rulings today from the trial court and possibly the appeals court.

Live Today at 3 p.m. ET: Chris Geidner

I can’t count the number of times that the Trump administration’s crusade against transgender Americans was the last item to miss the cut for that day’s Morning Memo.

Since it’s been a recurring frustration that I haven’t been able to give this important story more consistent attention, I’ve invited Chris Geidner, the nation’s leading reporter on it, to join me this afternoon for a catch-up session.

We’ll be live here at 3 p.m. ET. I hope you can join us.

Photo of the Day: 8647 Edition

You have to squint, but it’s mostly there. The WaPo paints a vivid picture of the Keystone Cops reaction to protest: “Multiple emergency vehicles could be seen encircling the grass about 1 p.m. A team of officers stood over brown patches in the grass, wearing gloves, and collected samples for testing from the grass with materials from a yellow case. Pedestrians were not permitted to walk on the grass, and a Park Service helicopter circled overhead.”

So Busted

A close friend texted me yesterday: “Hi, MM today is like Very Terrible, Very Terrible, Very Terrible, War Crimes, Ebola, THE END.”

It’s been like that a lot lately.

Over the past 18 months, I’ve drifted away from the practice of sprinkling into Morning Memo some nonpolitical reminders of our common humanity, the larger world, and … dare I say it? … joy.

So this is my pledge to try to get back to that practice and offer the occasional respite from the nonstop American carnage.

See Ya Back Here Monday

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‘A Credibility Crisis’

The prosecutorial misconduct with the grand jury in the Broadview Six case is threatening otherwise unrelated cases handled by the same prosecutor, Sheri Mecklenburg.

In a move that is likely to bring even more scrutiny to U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros’ office, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman of Chicago scheduled an evidentiary hearing for June 17 over alleged grand jury misconduct by Mecklenburg in a high-profile COVID-testing fraud case.

Defense lawyers allege that Mecklenburg vouched for the evidence, disclosed off-the-record negotiations with a defense attorney, and used “inflammatory characterizations of the defendants, including name-calling and folk-wisdom metaphors.”

Coleman opened the door to the defense counsel calling witnesses at the hearing, including potentially Boutros himself, the Sun-Times reports:

The judge also told [Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur] there are “a lot of people in your sphere that I’m assuming are going to be asked to come testify, and you may want to avoid that.” The judge didn’t say out loud how MacArthur could avoid it, but she said MacArthur knows what to do.

The judge’s apparent implication was that the prosecutors would do well to dismiss the tainted case.

The Chicago Tribune put it all in a uniquely Chicago context:

If the evidentiary hearing goes forward, it would be the most significant inquiry into potential prosecutorial misconduct by the U.S. attorney’s office since the mid-1990s, when a trio of judges concluded that Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan and others had improperly given favors — including conjugal visits in government offices — to cooperators against leaders of the violent El Rukn street gang.

More than 30 years later, Hogan is at the center of the Broadview Six controversy after taking over the case in February when Mecklenburg left the office for a job in Washington, D.C.

By his own admission, Hogan was responsible for the misleading redactions in the grand jury transcript in the Broadview Six case that so infuriated U.S. District Judge April Perry and has her considering sanctions.

In a separate case this week, lawyers for a man serving a three-year prison sentence for bank fraud asked U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland to review the transcripts of his grand jury, which was also handled by Mecklenburg.

Judge Rowland agreed to review the transcripts, despite the man’s 2023 guilty plea: “The front office has created, as you know, a credibility crisis, and that is a real problem,” the judge told the prosecutor.

Judge Declines to Block Trump Slush Fund

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of D.C. decided to take the Trump administration at its word (I know, but there’s at least a method to the madness) that the anti-weaponization slush fund is dead. After a brief hearing of less than 30 minutes, Leon ruled from the bench that if the slush fund is really dead then the case is moot and he has no jurisdiction to take action against it.

The ruling, while a win for the administration, came with a warning from Leon that it had now made representations to the court in writing and in arguments that he would hold it to.

After the hearing, I spoke with the lead attorney for the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which brought the lawsuit, and he acknowledged that one of the group’s goals was to get a ruling on mootness in order to box in the administration. After acting Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to commit in writing to Congress that the slush fund is dead, DOJ had to make that commitment in this case, and now Judge Leon can hold them to it.

Still, the biggest threat remains that the White House and DOJ will come up with a workaround, an alternative mechanism like the Federal Tort Claims Act, to pay off the Jan. 6 rioters and other Trump allies, a way of sidestepping the judge and their prior commitments not to proceed.

For more on the hearing:

Quote of the Day

“Don’t play possum with this court.”—U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, warning the Trump DOJ that it better not just be pretending that the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is dead

The Situation Room?

I struggle to get past the opening anecdote from this excerpt of the new book by NYT reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Top administration officials used the Situation Room last summer for a meeting on containing the political fallout from the Epstein scandal — and, as if to demonstrate that the White House and Main Justice were no longer distinct entities, the upper ranks of DOJ participated in the meeting:

• Attorney General Pam Bondi

• FBI Director Kash Patel

• Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche

• Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr.

• DOJ deputy chief of staff James Blair

Out of this meeting came Blanche’s infamous jailhouse interview of Ghislaine Maxwell.

The Retribution: The Banks

Another Trump grievance has come to forefront: Banks closing his accounts after the Jan. 6 coup attempt.

Trump signed an executive order back in August targeting the banks, and he and his family later filed suits against Capital One and JPMorgan Chase and its CEO Jamie Dimon.

Now, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has subpoenaed a slew of banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, about whether they improperly closed customer accounts for political reasons, the WSJ reports.

Pirro reportedly launched her investigation on her own, without a referral from bank regulators, and is using the same two hand-picked prosecutors she assigned to the politically motivated investigation of the Federal Reserve and its then-chair Jay Powell.

The Retribution: Michigan Protestors

Trump DOJ is bringing unusual federal conspiracy charges against pro-Palestinian protestors with ties to the University of Michigan, raising the stakes in the administration’s push to criminalize dissent, opposition, and political views it disfavors.

The Corruption: Trump’s Crypto Craze

It’s tails Trump wins, and heads investors lose, according to a new analysis from Reuters:

A Reuters examination shows that the Trump family has used this template to generate at least $2.3 billion in profit from investors since Trump retook the presidency. On the other side of that cash bonanza for America’s first family: the more than a million investors whose net losses totaled $2.3 billion at the end of April, according to a Reuters analysis.

On Morality and Voting

Brian Beutler chews over Graham Platner:

Voting, particularly in a two-party democracy, is about harm reduction. Even when candidates are inspiring and well-intentioned, voting is still about harm reduction, because politics is highly impure. Superpower politics are especially impure. Voting is utilitarian. It is not like flashing a gang sign. In a contest between a bad candidate and a worse one, voting for the bad candidate is like expressing the moral intuition that someone should amputate a gangrenous leg rather than allow the patient to die.

Boat Strikes Take an Even Darker Turn

Amanda Klasing, on last week’s revelation that targeting decisions in the lawless U.S. high-seas campaign against alleged drug-smuggling boats don’t factor in whether the boats are carrying drugs or arms:

The presence of drugs or arms on the targeted boats would not change the rights to due process and to life of people on board. It is, however, a baffling admission that this cruel and lethal program is targeting these boats based on criteria other than being in possession of the very items purported in the administration’s already unlawful and dubious justification.

Ebola Watch

Slate’s Jill Filipovic reports from Kenya: “The demise of USAID did not cause this Ebola outbreak. But it is a gift to Ebola. It likely delayed its detection and hampered efforts to deliver tests and treatment to the affected areas. It has broken down meticulously constructed networks of trust and generally slowed the response to the virus.”

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A Taxonomy of Trump DOJ Corruption

Shortly after the 2024 election, I offered a framework for making sense of the coming chaos, dividing Trump’s transgressions among what I called the three horsemen of the Trump II apocalypse: retribution, corruption, and destruction.

That has proven in the subsequent months to be a durable framework, not perfect, but generally reliable. Still, I have at times over the past 18 months felt like a 19th century taxonomist trying to make sense of the natural world. Some stories defy easy categorization. Is this the same species? A subspecies? Or does it deserve to be a new species?

The Broadview Six case has been one of those that is hard to classify. Is it a Operation Midway Blitz story, fundamentally about ICE and mass deportation? Or is it a story of DOJ corruption or retribution, or both? All of the above?

With the newly released transcripts, ordered unsealed by U.S. District Judge April Perry of Chicago, we have a bit more insight into the case, and though it’s still not easy to categorize, that in and of itself ends up being illuminating:

First, the Broadview Six case has never felt like it had the hallmarks of the retributive prosecutions Morning Memo has been so focused on. With some important caveats (more on those in a moment), the case appeared to be mostly run through the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago, not out of Main Justice or by political appointees parachuting in. Notably, the DOJ prosecutor who has emerged as the leading villain in the narrative was a career prosecutor (not a political appointee like Lindsey Halligan thrust in front of a grand jury) who was not obviously a Trump flunky.

Second, the problems with the Broadview Six case don’t necessarily seem new or confined to Trump II. If line prosecutors, as the transcripts seem to show, are casually violating the grand jury rules by, among other things, talking to grand jurors outside of the grand jury session, personally vouching for the evidence, failing to notify the court of no true bills, and misstating the law, then it suggests that there were problems that pre-existed Trump II and its decimation of the DOJ’s professionalism. I can hear my readers who are criminal defense attorneys crying “D’uh!” in unison.

Third, the problems that emerged in the Broadview Six case seem compounded by the Trump II takeover of the DOJ. Any pre-existing bad practices or patterns of prosecutorial misconduct seem likely to have been further exacerbated as the department’s professionalism eroded, career attorneys headed for the exits, and remaining prosecutors dealt with an increased workload, compounded by the flood of immigration cases the administration unleashed.

Fourth, the Broadview Six case came at a time of rampant DOJ chaos. U.S. attorneys were racing to respond to radically new department priorities and politically motivated demands from Main Justice, which itself was responding for the first time to direct orders from a notoriously chaotic White House. The chaos unleashed by a loose and broken chain of command, with an erratic president and freelancing White House aides at the top, would be expected to trickle all the way down to line prosecutors.

Fifth, the Broadview Six case and its aftermath suffered from a wider management breakdown at DOJ, while the administration laid siege to blue American cities. The Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office seemed to suffer from problems similar to what we saw in Minneapolis in the aftermath of Operation Metro Surge, where the U.S. Attorney’s Office had trouble even prioritizing cases, court orders, and deadlines. That’s a sign of an overarching management problem that doesn’t neatly fit into any one bucket but that does amplify the problems under Trump II: An office in chaos is even less able to effectively fend off demands from Main Justice.

Sixth, the case morphed into a cover-up. It was amidst this department-wide chaos that some of the most egregious conduct occurred, not in the grand jury room itself, but in responding to defense counsel and Judge April Perry. DOJ lawyers weren’t candid with the court, transcripts were redacted in ways that concealed some of the worst transgressions, the truth was elided. It went from misconduct to a cover-up of the misconduct.

Now back to those important caveats I mentioned:

(i) While the Broadview Six doesn’t feel like the other retributive prosecutions, I don’t want to get too fine-grained about it. The fact that the defendants were ICE protestors and included a Democratic candidate for Congress, one of her staffers, and a Democratic committeeman always made it ripe for vindictiveness, which the defendants have aggressively pursued evidence to prove.

(ii) The extent of the involvement from Main Justice, including Todd Blanche’s aide, Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh, remains to be fully determined. New facts may yet be uncovered that nudge this case closer to some of the others we’ve seen where political appointees in D.C. were giving marching orders.

What makes the unraveling of the Broadview Six case stand out is how it shows the pervasive impact, at all levels, of the corruption of the Trump DOJ into a politicized and weaponized tool of the White House.

Quote of the Day

“I heard this case like last week and I thought it was a crock of shit then and I still think it is.”—a grand juror, in newly unsealed grand jury transcripts in the Broadview Six case

Slush Fund Watch

• Patrick Davis, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, tried to recuse himself from matters relating to the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” because he himself planned to make a claim for actions the Trump I DOJ took when he was a top aide to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Politico reports. Current DOJ officials decided his recusal wasn’t necessary.

• New filings in two of the civil lawsuits seeking to invalidate the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” suggest DOJ officials are still refusing to definitively commit to the fund being dead and buried.

• Looking ahead: I’ll be in federal court late this afternoon in D.C. for a hearing in front of U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon in one of the lawsuits challenging the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” Stay tuned …

Blanche Confirmation Watch

If the past 16 months are any guide, Senate Republicans will find a way to cave to President Trump’s demands that they confirm Blanche as attorney general. But things have changed! you might say. Thom Tillis is retiring. Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn were defeated in GOP primaries. Perhaps. But the early indications aren’t looking great.

Here’s Cassidy with reporters yesterday: “I have to be convinced that Todd is not the president’s personal attorney who happens to be attorney general, but that Todd is the attorney general who used to be the president’s personal attorney.”

If Cassidy isn’t convinced yet, I don’t know what could convince him now.

Cornyn was similarly noncommittal with reporters: “I have no red lines right now, but we’re going to have an interesting conversation.”

No red lines …

2026 Midterms: Maine Edition

• Maine-Senate: Graham Platner easily won the Democratic nomination to challenge five-term incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R).

• CA-Gov: Former Fox News host Steve Hilton (R) secured the second runoff spot over billionaire climate activist activist Tom Steyer (D) and will face former DHS Secretary Xavier Becerra (D) in the general election.

• SC-Gov: Republican Reps. Ralph “Marshall Law!!” Norman and Nancy “I’m sick of your shit” Mace both failed to make the runoff in the GOP primary, meaning neither will hold public office any longer once their terms in Congress expire in January.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

No, The Constitution Is Not Colorblind

Law professor and civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill:

I will not participate in the pretense that colorblindness is a vision for our country grounded in our Constitution. It has become a weapon designed to cloak the Court’s decisions dismantling our civil rights infrastructure with a veneer of principled nobility. It represents at best, the wishful thinking of justices who have declared their sensibilities to be too delicate to concern themselves with, as Chief Justice Roberts once put it, “this sordid business” of “dividing people by race.” At worst, it is a cynical ploy designed to erase the work of activists, lawyers, and Congress who built a civil rights infrastructure to advance Black equality. Or perhaps a long game effort to tie the hands of future Congresses that might be inclined, as Congress was during the Civil Rights Movement, to respond to demands for equality and justice by passing civil rights laws.

Must Read

Sarah Posner: What the Pentagon’s Snub of Mormons Was Really All About

Thread of the Day

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How Far Is Too Far?

By formally nominating Todd Blanche as attorney general, President Trump set the stage for a late summer tableau in which Republican senators — in the midst of a midterm election — will be asked to ratify the unprecedented corruption of the DOJ by the Trump White House.

It fits a pattern of the Trump II presidency: move quickly, break things, and then get the compliant GOP Congress to paper it over later. But Trump has never asked his GOP allies on the Hill to bless misconduct as wide-ranging and extreme as that which has taken place at DOJ since Blanche became deputy attorney general, the department’s No. 2, in March 2025.

If, as I have argued, the politicization and weaponization of the DOJ is the single greatest threat to democracy of the Trump II presidency, then the Blanche confirmation hearing is arguably the most significant nomination that the Senate has ever considered.

Sanctioning everything that has happened up until now at the Justice Department would be a clear go-ahead from Republican senators to continue full steam ahead, or worse, for another 2 1/2 years. No accountability, no roadblocks, no pumping the brakes.

Blanche’s nomination comes immediately after he single-handedly purported to absolve Trump, whom he still treats as his client, from some $100 million in liabilities to the IRS. It follows the not-quite-dead-yet boondoggle of the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund.

Confirmation of Blanche wouldn’t just ratify the damage he has done in his two-plus months as acting attorney general — targeting, among others, James Comey (again), the Southern Poverty Law Center, John Brennan, Fani Willis, and Cassidy Hutchinson — but would serve as a stamp of approval for all the depredations of the Trump II DOJ.

The list is nearly endless:

• the attempted retributive prosecutions (Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook, Adam Schiff, Letitia James, Eric Swalwell, LaMonica McIver, and six sitting members of Congress);

• the defiance of court orders in cases involving the original Alien Enemies Act, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and countless other immigration cases;

• the coverups of the fatal ICE shootings in Minnesota;

• the vindictive purges of hundreds of prosecutors and FBI agents;

• the scheme to avoid the Senate confirmation process by lawlessly installing U.S. attorneys semi-permanently in some blue states;

• the unprecedented levels of prosecutorial misconduct, lack of candor, and basic incompetence that has wrecked the presumption of normality the government once enjoyed;

• the corruption and abandonment of the pardon process;

• the subversion of DOJ independence and allowing the department to be run out of the White House, including installing White House aides like Lindsey Halligan and Kurt Olsen in prosecutorial positions.

There’s no use in clutching pearls over what GOP senators will or will not do with the Blanche nomination. They have proven themselves time and again to be complicit at best as Trump rampages across civil society. But the Blanche confirmation process does give Democrats, who cannot by themselves block Blanche’s nomination, an election-year opportunity to publicly hold Blanche to account for the worst DOJ abuses, lawlessness, and grift.

Still, the urgent question is not how bad things have been at DOJ under Blanche, but how much worse things will get between now and January 2029 if he is confirmed.

Trump DOJ Watch

• Sun-Times: Controversial DOJ official Aakash Singh eyed by ‘Broadview 6’ was involved in Chicago deportation blitz, source says

• Democracy Docket: Dem senators “raise the alarm” over DOJ pullback on voter protections

• ProPublica: Trump Administration Killed Criminal Investigation of GOP Senator’s Coal Companies

Pentagon Dodges Its Mormon Issue

After outcry from Utah’s two Republican senators that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not designated a Christian faith in a new Pentagon policy, DoD responded not by adding the “Christian” designation to LDS but by removing the Christian designation from the list for all denominations. Nonetheless, that seemed to satisfy Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who was the most vocal about the designation decision.

Mass Deportation Watch

• $100K Visa Fee: U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin of Boston blocked President Donald Trump from charging employers a $100,000 fee if they hire foreign workers for specialized roles, ruling that it amounted to a unilateral tax without proper congressional approval.

• Denaturalization: The Trump administration moved to strip citizenship from 17 naturalized U.S. citizens accused of concealing previous crimes or committing fraud during the naturalization process

The Corruption: Don Jr. Edition

ProPublica: An Indian Billionaire Was Targeted by Trump. Then He Poured Money Into a Startup Secretly Backed by Donald Trump Jr.

Thread of the Day

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The Week Ahead

A big week ahead for the “anti-weaponization” slush fund that President Trump and his Justice Department insist is dead.

In similar filings on Friday in two of the cases challenging the “anti-weaponization” slush fund, the Trump DOJ finally put in writing what acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had refused to do: commit that the slush fund is now dead.

But in the same breath it was assuring federal judges there’s nothing to see here, it took an aggressive stance against court involvement in the matter that only further muddied the waters: “This is a rare case that is simultaneously moot and premature,” DOJ said in the filing.

The DOJ staked out its position ahead of court hearings this week in the two cases, one in D.C., the other in the Eastern District of Virginia, arguing that: (i) the slush fund does not now and has not ever existed so there is nothing to litigate; and (ii) the plaintiffs lacks standing to sue; and (iii) in any event, their claims are not ripe.

A third case in D.C. challenging the fund is lagging behind the other two; but the original Trump lawsuit against the IRS which produced the “settlement agreement” that created the slush fund has effectively been reopened by the judge overseeing it to hear claims that the lawsuit was a fraud upon the court. Trump has a deadline of this coming Friday to answer those claims.

Stay tuned.

The Purges: DNI Edition

President Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Friday that he wants acting DNI Bill Pulte to get started on firing Obama and Biden holdovers in the intelligence community.

Trump framed the scheme to make Pulte the acting DNI as a way to get the purges rolling without the permanent DNI having to take the heat for it:

“Frankly, it might be good for him to shake it up before people come,” Trump told the WSJ. “Because, if he [Pulte] reduced the size, in conjunction with me…and in conjunction with possibly the person coming in…he can do a lot of the hard work and we wouldn’t have to saddle somebody that goes in.”

The Purges: FBI Edition

FBI Director Kash Patel has fired as many as five analysts in its Richmond office who were involved in a rescinded 2023 internal intelligence memo about “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology” that the political right seized on as anti-Catholic.

A investigation under the Biden administration found no anti-Catholic bias, but then-Director Chris Wray apologized repeatedly for it not meeting bureau standards.

In a victory lap on X shortly after the firings, Patel wrote: “This FBI will never infringe on religious freedom.”

Trump DOJ Watch

• U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy of Rhode Island referred Justice Department lawyers for disciplinary proceedings over their conduct in a closely watched case involving the administration’s anti-trans subpoenas to hospitals.

• After President Trump criticized California’s slow counting of ballots in last week’s primary election and said it was under investigation, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angles confirmed multiples probe are active: “Without commenting on any specific investigation, my office has multiple election fraud investigations underway in coordination with @FBILosAngeles. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent.”

• Blanche deputy Aakash Singh, who had a major role in the vindictive prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, keeps popping up, most recently in a NYT account of the origins of the “grand conspiracy” against Trump investigation that threatens to sweep in former CIA Director John Brennan and other Trump political foes.

Only the Best People

Ryan D. Nelson, a Trump-appointed judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, faces misdemeanor charges of battery and malicious injury to property after an April 2 parking-lot confrontation that was captured on video. He has pleaded not guilty.

MAGA Nullification?

At least nine county prosecutors in red areas of Virginia are openly declaring that they won’t enforce Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s new assault weapons ban, Greg Sargent reports.

RIP 60 Minutes

Fired 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley had intimated that Bari Weiss had interfered in one of his stories so late in the process that that week’s entire episode of the storied news magazine barely made it on air. But it wasn’t until an interview last week with the NYT that Pelley divulged what happened.

The story in question was a segment Pelley did in February on the Minnesota protests against Operation Metro Surge. By his account, Pelley bent over backwards to, as he put it, “identify that the protesters themselves were being very aggressive and that they were half of these confrontations,” including instructing producers “to to find images in which we see the protesters acting aggressively.”

That wasn’t enough for Weiss, Pelley says:

We get the piece approved by everyone. And about four hours after our deadline, Bari Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer.

Pelley ignored Weiss’ notes and the segment ran without any changes. CBS did not deny Pelley’s account of Weiss’ notes, except to say they “had no political motivation.”

Quote of the Day

From oral arguments Friday before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, on Trump’s vanity ballroom:

Judge Patricia A. Millett: “If the government decides, very quickly, to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty — the people whose ancestors that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the government moved too fast — nothing can be done?”

DOJ attorney Yaakov Roth: “I think that’s right, yes.”

For Your Radar: LDS Edition

On Friday, the Pentagon announced a sweeping new policy that reduces the number of religious faiths it recognizes from 211 to 31 — 22 of which are Christian.

The biggest source of backlash to the move came from the conspicuous failure not to explicitly designate The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as “Christian” on the new list it distributed (LDS is tucked in there after a long list of “Christian” denominations):

Utah Republican Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis spent the weekend pushing back publicly and privately, but it was Lee — who has so ostentatiously hitched his wagon to MAGA — who had the most to lose, and it showed in his feverish posting blitz on X. Just after midnight, Lee posted that he’d spoken with President Trump about the issue: “I won’t speak for him, but I’m thrilled about where this is heading.”

Sign of the Times: Higher Ed Edition

Inside Higher Ed: “The Auburn University Board of Trustees on Friday gave itself complete control over course offerings, curriculum, degree requirements and academic credentials while eliminating shared governance at the Alabama land-grant university.”

Having a Normal One

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

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Fealty to Trump Wins Out Again

In an early morning vote, the GOP-controlled Senate passed the reconciliation bill funding immigration enforcement — but without any language in it barring President Trump’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund.

Hours earlier in the marathon session, Republicans had defeated an attempt by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to explicitly ban the slush fund. But Republicans had votes to spare, allowing vulnerable GOP Sens. Susan Collins (ME), Dan Sullivan (AK), and Jon Husted (R-OH) to vote for Schumer’s measure and campaign on opposing the slush fund even though all three senators ultimately voted in favor of the final bill.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was the only GOP senator to cross the aisle and oppose the final bill.

Two GOP senators who were loudly opposed to the slush fund — Thom Tillis (NC), who is not seeking re-election, and Bill Cassidy (LA), who lost in the GOP primary — ended up voting for the final bill. “I’m taking the cue from my colleagues that are in cycle,” said Tillis. “Whatever suits their purposes.”

The Trump administration has been playing a nod-and-wink game on the slush fund all week long.

In Senate testimony Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declared the slush fund dead but refused to commit to it in writing. On Wednesday, President Trump publicly declared his “love” for the slush fund and claimed to be unsure whether it was in fact dead.

On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tweeted that the purported victims of Biden DOJ “weaponization” could still press their claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, even if the slush fund were dead.

In response to Graham, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, who signed the settlement agreement that resolved Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS by creating the slush fund, tweeted: “We’re on it.”

Woodward’s tweet was deleted Wednesday morning.

“Republicans are trusting the word of Todd Blanche, who built a career on lying, that the administration will just drop this slush fund,” Schumer warned on the Senate floor before last night’s final vote.

It appears likely that the Senate GOP’s failure to ban the slush fund will at the very least encourage the Trump administration to make abusive use of the Federal Tort Claims Act to reach sweetheart settlements with Jan. 6 rioters and plotters, along with other purported weaponization victims.

The Trump DOJ has already shown itself more than capable of friendly, non-adverse settlements of weak cases it could have defended, not just in Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, but in million-dollar paydays for former Trump advisers Michael Flynn and Carter Page.

Voter Fraud Bamboozlement Alert

Main Justice is pressuring U.S. attorneys offices nationwide to pursue criminal cases against noncitizens who have illegally voted — an exceedingly rare occurrence that Trump has falsely claimed for years turns the results of elections.

During a May 13 conference call, Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh complained that DOJ’s 90 open investigations of illegal voting were languishing and urged prosecutors to “get creative,” the NYT reports.

Jan. 6 Rioters Are Notorious Recidivists

A new Lawfare study reveals that at least 97 of the 1,500 people granted clemency by President Trump for their roles in the attack on the Capitol have been arrested for, charged with, or convicted of separate crimes since Jan. 6.

Jan. 6 Never Ends

After the Arizona Supreme Court yesterday declined to revive the original indictment in her fake electors case, state Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) said she would seek a new indictment against allies of President Trump who tried to subvert the state’s 2020 election.

For Your Radar: ICE Shooting Edition

There are growing signs that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) may refuse to extradite to Minnesota the ICE agent charged with shooting an undocumented immigrant through a closed door during Operation Metro Surge — then lying about it.

The agent declined to waive extradition yesterday in state court in South Texas, where he is being held on $200,000 bail. Earlier this week, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) formally asked Abbott to extradite the agent.

Abbott’s office is not commenting on whether he will comply with the routine request from Walz.

John Bolton Expected to Plead Guilty

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton is expected to plead guilty later this month to one felony count of unlawful retention of national defense information. The circumstances of the Bolton prosecution set it apart from the prominent vindictive prosecution cases under Trump II.

Other Shoe Drops In Maine Senate Race

Even before the revelation last week that Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner had been sexting with women who were not his wife, the NYT had spent two months interviewing women with whom he had been romantically involved previously. After the publication of the NYT story yesterday, Platner did an extended live interview with Chris Hayes in which he conceded to “not exactly acting with the best behavior” but denied the account by one woman that he had physically harmed her.

FDA Moves to Restrict Abortion Pill Access

In an ominous move, the FDA — under pressure from antiabortion groups and GOP members of Congress — has launched a new safety study of mifepristone that is a thinly veiled move to restrict mail and telehealth access to the abortion pill.

“The administration is aiming for a robust study that will withstand legal criticism,” administration officials told the WSJ, previewing the intended outcome.

Boat Strike Death Toll: 207

Two people were killed Wednesday in the eastern Pacific in the Trump administration’s lawless campaign against alleged drug-smuggling boats, bring the overall death toll to at least 207.

‘Woke’ Quotes Removed at Bunker Hill

After a visitor to the Bunker Hill monument complained that a quote on display related to women’s suffrage represented “woke” feminist ideology, the Park Service removed three other quotes on display:

• “We find, upon reflection, that our duty to our country has not ended … We as Vietnam Veterans, strongly feel that the United States should cease to build memorials to death and begin to glorify life.”—from a 1971 anti-war editorial by Vietnam War veterans

• “As we drew near to Boston, there stood Bunker Hill Monument, towering up towards the heavens, as if in silent, bitter mockery of the millions of slaves guarded by the professed lovers of Liberty, who reared it’s lofty column.”—from a 1846 letter to the abolitionist newspaper the Liberator

• “Now that a public orator has declared that foreign-born men have no association with the men of the Revolution, it is our duty to show that in love of freedom and loyalty to the republic, the citizens of foreign birth take no second place.”—from a Boston newspaper in 1875

The quote that prompted the complaint was allowed to remain.

See Ya Back Here Monday

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Blanche Audition for AG Succeeds

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s elaborate audition to out-degenerate Pam Bondi has apparently won him President Trump’s nomination for the permanent position.

In his short time as acting AG, Blanche has re-indicted James Comey, indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center, and turbocharged the South Florida investigation into a supposed “grand conspiracy” against Trump. Under his watch, the DOJ has targeted Fani Willis, Cassidy Hutchinson, E. Jean Carroll (where Blanche did recuse himself), and reporters in leak cases.

But that’s not even the worst of it.

In the course of unwinding the Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy prosecutions, Blanche created a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund to be dispensed at Trump’s discretion with no transparency of accountability while improbably settling Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS by releasing Trump from some $100 million in potential IRS claims for unpaid taxes.

It’s a helluva track record for the two months since Bondi was fired as attorney general.

Blanche’s nomination sets up a potentially epic confirmation battle in an election year. Democratic senators are highly incentivized not just to block Blanche but to make the confirmation hearings a bloodbath for the Trump DOJ and White House. They’re further bolstered by a trio of GOP senators who may be out for blood after trump torpedoed their reelections.

Buckle up.

Zombie Slush Fund Not Dead Yet

While official Washington rushed to treat as credible the assurances from the White House and DOJ that the slush fund is dead, President Trump said he wasn’t sure that it’s gone for good: “I love it,” he said. “I think it’s so important.”

The Senate is considering the reconciliation bill on immigration funding today, and a small number of GOP senators want to insert language in the bill barring the slush fund, especially after Blanche declined to commit to put it in writing that the slush fund is being permanently abandoned.

Stay tuned.

MUST READ

Most of Morning Memo’s focus on the politicization of the Justice Department has been concerned with the big-picture problems like loss of independence from the White House, defiance of court orders, and purges of DOJ personnel for political reasons.

But there’s another super important dynamic that Bloomberg’s Ben Penn captures in an extraordinarily well-reported piece on Sigal Chattah, the top federal prosecutor in Nevada: The ways in which unqualified partisan prosecutors can run amok, allegedly pursuing their own vendettas, doing favors for preferred former clients and friends, and blowing off ethics concerns flagged even by the low-bar Trump DOJ.

Chattah is one of the acting U.S. attorneys whom the Justice Department has tried to install on a semi-permanent basis, bypassing Senate confirmation:

The first-time prosecutor frequently sought status updates on cases despite warnings that she was disregarding recusals signed by the deputy attorney general’s office in Washington that barred her involvement in matters where she had conflicts of interest, said several individuals.

Chattah also took calls from outside attorney acquaintances and intervened in their pending matters opposite her office—seeking favorable outcomes for their clients. …

Unlike in other offices, the Nevada disruptions are frequently disconnected from Trump’s priorities and are instead largely of Chattah’s own making, added many lawyers familiar with the office—most of whom spoke anonymously to avoid retaliation or share sensitive deliberations.

Really worth a read.

Trump DOJ Watch: Only the Best People

Lindsey Halligan was the first or at least the most prominent example of Trump inserting White House political aides directly into prosecutor roles within DOJ that are connected to his desired retributive prosecutions. It hasn’t stopped:

• On Monday, Kurt Olsen, the White House election security czar who aided Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 ​election, joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, where the mother of all retributive investigations is being conducted into a “grand conspiracy” against Trump, Reuters reports. While it’s not confirmed that Olsen, who has no prosecutorial experience, is on the “grand conspiracy” team, he appeared in a photo of that team posted last month by Miami U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quinones, according to Reuters.

• In a little-noticed report last month, CBS News confirmed that Trump ally and conservative firebrand Victoria Toensing was sworn in as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida. Toensing, a former federal prosecutor, is the wife of Joseph diGenova, who is leading the “grand conspiracy” investigation. “DiGenova declined to say whether she is working on the Brennan and grand conspiracy cases, but a source with direct knowledge confirmed she is,” CBS News reported.

• With the prospect of judicial sanctions, several prosecutors who played a role in the Broadview Six case have hired attorneys of their own, the Chicago Tribune‘s Jason Meisner reports.

The Retribution: SPLC Edition

The Trump DOJ obtained a superseding indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center that keeps the same counts and defendants as the original indictment but tightens up some of its loose and problematic language.

The SPLC immediately asked the judge to investigate how it came to be that a MS Word draft of the superseding indictment was distributed by Main Justice to reporters on Tuesday evening before the superseding indictment was docketed on Wednesday:

In decades of collective practice, including serving as prosecutors at DOJ, none of the SPLC’s counsel has ever seen anything remotely like what DOJ did last night—distributing what turned out not to be the actual superseding indictment returned by the grand jury and docketed today, but one that has no indication of its finality, in native Word that could be edited and reposted, and before the actual returned charges were unsealed, to a group of journalists.

The SPLC wants the judge to issue a show cause order requiring Main Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Alabama to explain their conduct and why they should not be sanctioned.

Picking Through the SCOTUS Carnage

The Supreme Court’s historically bad decision to allow Alabama to eliminate one of its two majority-Black congressional districts in time for the midterms, turning the 14th Amendment on its ear, continued to reverberate:

• Former Alabama U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance: “The Roberts Court’s derogation of Americans’ voting rights, starting with Shelby County v. Holder, working its way up to Callais, and now, putting the final nail in the coffin in Milligan, will go down in history as a shameful failure.”

• Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern: “It is not a mere aftershock from Callais but a separate earthquake of the same or perhaps even greater magnitude.”

• Chris Geidner: “This is truly one of the worst things the court has done — both in terms of legitimacy and in terms of the law — since I have been covering the court.”

Mullin Puts His Foot in It

In an exchange during his Senate testimony Tuesday that didn’t immediately garner much attention, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin seemed to inadvertently open the door to sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia to his preferred destination of Costa Rica rather than to Liberia or to one of the other African countries that the administration has sought to deport him to.

“Great, if he’s willing to do that, we’ll be happy to send him,” Mullin said under questioning from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers didn’t miss the exchange and immediately notified the court in his habeas case.

It appears to be an inadvertent misstep by Mullin because he also testified that he was not aware that Abrego Garcia had agreed to be removed to Costa Rica or that Costa Rica has agreed to accept him.

4 House GOPers Break With Trump on Iran

The House voted 215-208 to curtail President Trump’s military adventurism in Iran. Four Republicans crossed the aisle to form a majority with Democrats: Reps. Tom Barrett (MI), Warren Davidson (OH), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), and Thomas Massie (KY)

IMPORTANT

Last Friday, the Trump administration unveiled new proposed regulations that would require the approval of political appointees for all discretionary federal grants based on tight far-right political criteria.

The proposed regs would interject political appointees into scientific and health research, limiting “the subjects that they can explore, the foreign labs with which they may collaborate and even the conferences at which they can appear,” the NYT reports.

Scientist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein called it “the end of American science as we know it.”

To catch yourself up, I’d recommend Don Moynihan’s wide-ranging piece on the proposed regs and their intended impact: “The bottom line is that Russ Vought, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, wants to move scientific decisions away from the scientists and into the hands of political appointees. I don’t mean the big picture, strategic decisions of American science, which should be political, but the micro-decisions about what is and is not good research.”

The Purges: Schedule F Edition

In a culmination of the Schedule F push that began in his first term, President Trump has removed civil service protections for some 8,000 senior federal workers and made them at-will employees.

A Sea Change in Public Monuments

In retrospect, 2020 was the high water mark for removing public memorials to racists, traitors, European explorers, and other right-wing shibboleths. Since Trump’s reelection, the pendulum has swung in the other direction, with wink-wink re-namings of military bases, resurrected Confederate memorials, and, as the WSJ reports, the restoration of statutes that had been gathering dust in storage for the past six years.

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Mourning All We Have Lost

Laying awake last night processing the Supreme Court’s latest galling decision, I reflected on how many evenings over the past decade have been consumed by late breaking bad news of another historic setback.

My professional reactions to such news have slowly changed over time, from rushing to alert readers because it felt like an alarm needed to be sounded to waiting until I could provide better context to a growing sense that I have unwillingly become an obituary writer, chronicling the losses here each day.

This isn’t a lament. It is not self-excoriation that my hair isn’t sufficiently on fire 10 years into the Trump era. It’s not resignation. It’s an observation that over the course of a decade, the response to repeated losses, the next more serious than the last, takes on certain patterns.

The initial gut punch. The disbelief. The shock, but not really anymore, of another setback. The immediate urge to do something in response and finding few good options. Casting about for someone or something that explains what is happening better than I can. Coming to grips with where the new battle line must now be drawn, but with less confidence each time that it will hold any better than the last one did. Not feeling enervated exactly, but finding it harder over time to direct my energy productively.

Each setback brings its own constellation of losses, often deeply layered and spreading outward until they get entangled with all the others you haven’t yet fully processed.

Last night’s losses are staggering, even when seen through the prism of history, which usually mellows the perspective: a constitutional amendment born of the carnage of a civil war; a century of enduring Jim Crow’s base indignities; a grand mid-century civil rights movement; another half century of painstaking work to try to hold on to those gains.

Seen through a personal prism, the losses are of a small scale but no less difficult to fathom, a jumble of disparate anecdotes and the flickers of fading memories. That interview with David Duke in the mid-90s when Pat Buchanan was foreshadowing the GOP’s 21st century agenda. Discreetly pointing out John Lewis to my wide-eyed kids at a Capitol Hill diner while showing them a photo of him with Martin Luther King, Jr.

The losses on any given day come so fast and across such a wide spectrum of civic life that it overwhelms our capacity to mourn. One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.

Rest in peace, 60 Minutes and the military’s merit-based promotion system, but also the deep-ocean observation system that you probably hadn’t heard of before now but which you’re glad existed independently of naked partisanship and the raw urge for power.

Living through the Trump II presidency is an exercise in repeated loss and extended mourning for what is gone — while being daily confronted with the farcical and the absurd.

Bill Pulte as acting DNI. A Jan. 6 rioter hired in a Pentagon office that manages highly classified military operations. Expelled Rep. George Santos (R-NY), his prison sentence commuted by President Trump, now under investigation for allegedly manipulating prediction markets by front-running on whether he would show up for Trump’s State of the Union address. Elon Musk’s coming IPO for SpaceX potentially catapulting his net worth past the unfathomable $1 trillion mark.

In looking for historical parallels to the current moment, I’ve often fallen back on 1942, America’s first year in World War II, when Imperial Japan was marauding across the Pacific. We know it as the darkness before the dawn of an Allied counterattack that eventually swung the war, but they didn’t know then when the tide would turn or if it ever would. A lesson for us, perhaps, in enduring setbacks and uncertainty.

In an astute analysis this week, Ned Resnikoff posits that Trumpism is hyperfascism, by which he doesn’t mean turbocharged or souped-up fascism, but “hyper” in the sense of over the top.

“It’s a dramatic reenactment of totalitarian domination in a time and place where the infrastructure for real totalitarianism is nowhere to be found,” Resnikoff writes. “[I]t is a shallow sort of fascism, obsessed with outward appearances and completely uninterested in everything else.”

Hyperfascism eschews the hard work of sustaining itself, preferring the next spectacle to the grind of consolidating and entrenching its power through bureaucracy and structural advantages, at least as compared to other long-running authoritarian regimes.

“The good news is that this means hyperfascism can’t survive long as a governing ideology, because it has no program for long-term institution-building,” Resnikoff argues. “The bad news is that there may be no limits to the damage it can cause if left unchecked.”

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Fool Me a Thousand Times …

A confusing mishmash of reporting Monday afternoon inadvertently revealed that Donald Trump can still play Congress and the press like fools.

The flurry of reporting, mostly from Capitol Hill, was about whether the political heat around the corrupt “Anti-Weaponization Fund” had become too much to stomach, especially for GOP senators. The vague news, largely attributed to unnamed White House sources, was that Trump was signaling he “plans to drop,” “pause,” “retreat,” “backtrack,” and “back off” from the slush fund.

Adding an absurdist twist to the afternoon, the Trump DOJ put out a meaningless statement that it would abide by a court order blocking the slush fund.

Note that all the uproar yesterday only dealt with the slush fund — and only with the political furor over the slush fund. That represents only part of the corrupt scheme to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, which has three main elements:

• the slush fund;

• the IRS’ release of Trump et al. from any tax claims that predate the settlement (I should note there’s also an argument that the loose language of the settlement releases Trump et al. from any civil and criminal claims by the U.S. government prior to the settlement date);

• the fraud on the court for some combination of bringing a frivolous claim, collusively settling it, and using the court to launder public funds for Trump’s slush fund.

Despite all the talk on the Hill about the politics of the slush fund, it’s never been clear exactly what Republicans in Congress were going to do about the slush fund and whether it would be sufficient. My understanding is that Trump wanted to include authorization for the slush fund in the reconciliation package (still no publicly available language on any such provision), and Senate Republicans were considering putting some guardrails to prevent payouts to people who assaulted police on Jan. 6, a noble enough but limited goal and hardly the only corrupt aspect of the $1.776 billion slush fund.

What remains unclear this morning, but seems increasingly likely, is that Senate Republicans will merely not include a slush fund provision in the reconciliation bill. That would set up a grim scenario where Congress is silent on the matter, raising the possibility that Trump takes that silence as a greenlight to arrange some off-the-books executive branch funding for it. Some GOP senators want more concrete assurances from Trump that the slush fund is indeed dead, but why would anyone trust such assurances?

In an ideal world, Congress would bar the slush fund and anything like it. We are not, dear readers, in an ideal world.

Even if the Republican Congress stands up to Trump on the slush fund, it doesn’t appear to be preparing to scrutinize, let alone unwind (if it’s possible) the corrupt release of the IRS’ claims against Trump and fam. It’s a huge giveaway — $100 million, by some estimates — under extraordinarily corrupt circumstances. The improper leaking of Trump tax returns by an IRS contractor isn’t a proper justification for dropping all of the IRS claims against Trump, let alone other civil and criminal claims the government may have had against him or his family members.

Separate and apart from the political dimension, the legal side of this fiasco is on its own track regardless of what Congress does or fails to do:

• In Miami, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams set a deadline of June 12 for Trump to explain why the settlement wasn’t a fraud on the court.

• In the Eastern District of Virginia, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema already ordered the slush fund halted, with a hearing set next week in a civil lawsuit challenging the settlement.

• In D.C., a hearing is scheduled for next week in second civil lawsuit challenging the settlement.

• In a third civil lawsuit challenging the settlement, also in D.C., convicted fraudster Kevin Trudeau moved to intervene in the case, asserting that he is a claimant to the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and entitled to enforce the settlement agreement.

It’s still unclear how far federal judges can go in invalidating or unwinding the collusive settlement, so I’m not holding these out as surefire winners. The ultimate solution here would be a combination of legal and political guardrails, but we’ve spent a year and half now watching the supine GOP Congress decline to rein in Trump in any meaningful way.

The pattern is familiar.

Trump pushes all of his chips to the middle of the table — a collusive lawsuit, a bogus settlement, a corrupt slush fund, and a get-a-out-of-jail-free card for himself — and then merely signals that he’s pulling back one chip, and official D.C. gets the vapors.

BREAKING … Pulte Named Acting DNI

In a disastrous move, President Trump named Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency who has been moonlighting as political retribution czar, as acting director of national intelligence until he nominates a permanent replacement for Tulsi Gabbard.

Jim Comey, Call Your Office

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss of D.C. issued a temporary restraining order barring the National Park Service from interfering with the display of a “86-47” flag near the National Mall, ruling that “86” in the context of this case was not a threat against President Trump: “The question whether “8647” constitutes a true threat cannot be resolved in the abstract, without consideration of context, and, here, the relevant context makes clear that no reasonable observer could have viewed Plaintiff’s display of the flag as a threat to the President’s life or physical safety.”

Pete Hegseth Watch

• Anti-trans policy: In a complicated ruling, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals split on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ban on transgender servicemembers, finding that the policy was the result of unconstitutional animus and “the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group,” but struggling with how to respond to Supreme Court’s recents limits on nationwide injunctions.

• Racist and misogynistic promotion policy: In a highly unusual move that undermines merit-based promotions, Hegseth blocked nine Navy captains from becoming one-star admirals, including three women and two Black officers. The final list of 22 promotions includes no women and only two nonwhite officers.

• Anti-press policy: With news outlets still challenging in court the Pentagon’s revamped press policies, the Defense Department has designated its press office a classified space and banned journalists from accessing it.

Another Trump Defeat: Colorado Edition

U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson of Denver blocked the Trump administration from forcing Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research to relinquish its Wyoming Supercomputing Center.

Jackson found that that the broader administration effort to dismantle NCAR — the country’s premier weather and climate research center — came after Colorado failed to release convicted Big Lie promoter Tina Peters when Trump pardoned her: “The inference that retaliation played at least some role in the transfer decision is considerably strengthened by the fact that the federal government simultaneously undertook several other actions adverse to Colorado.”

Freed Tina Peters Spews More Big Lies

In a world where Tina Peters was repentant and chastened by her conviction, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’ decision to commute her nine-year sentence could have been justifiable. Nine years or two years or something in between wouldn’t have made much difference.

But she isn’t, and it wasn’t:

Among his many missteps in the case, Polis got himself wrapped around the axle of Peters’ supposed free speech rights, which is a category error in the criminal context. Contrition, genuine remorse, acknowledgement of guilt are key elements in sentencing and pardoning decisions that, because of the underlying conviction, don’t impede on First Amendment rights.

In post-coup America, we remain a long way from truly grappling with the persistence of a powerful cultish movement that includes seditious conspiracists who have already proven their willingness to bring down the Constitution.

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Accountability Blitz

Friday was a blitz of important news on the accountability front — an ICE agent arrested on state charges, a federal judge demanding reasons from the Trump DOJ for dismissing the Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy indictments, another federal judge ordering Trump’s name removed from the Kennedy Center — but the biggest development came in the previously closed case of Trump v. Internal Revenue Service.

In a strikingly worded order, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams of Miami demanded that Trump and the other Trump-related plaintiffs in the case respond to the allegations of collusion raised by 35 former federal judges about the settlement of the case, which purported to create the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund and to grant Trump et al. a sweeping release from as much as $100 million in back-tax liabilities.

Judge Williams’ decision to entertain whether she and her court were used to, among other things, launder public funds for use by Trump to award his allies sets up a categorically different kind of clash between the federal judiciary and rogue executive than we’ve seen thus far in Trump II.

This is largely uncharted territory. We have not encountered before a president audacious enough to sue his own government and corrupt enough to have his thumb on every lever of government such that he is essentially settling with himself. It is the lack of an adverse party in the case that caught Judge Williams’ attention in the first place, but the administration raced to settle the case before she could weigh in.

Now she’s taking another stab at it, giving Trump et al. until June 12 to respond to these three allegations:

(1) the charges of collusion and whether the Parties are truly adverse;

(2) the assertion that the dismissal in this case was premised on deception by the Parties; and

(3) the question of whether the case should be reopened because the Court was the “victim of a fraud.”

Williams seemed none too happy when she dismissed the case last month and even less pleased with what she has since learned. In three bristling footnotes to Friday’s order, she called out DOJ for not having ever formally entered an appearance in the case, for the strange settlement “addendum” signed only by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that potentially violates department policy on settlements, and for not defending the IRS against Trump’s claims with the vigor it has in other similar litigation.

But at least for now, it’s not the Justice Department that will get to respond to Williams because it never entered an appearance in the case. It will fall to Trump to respond.

Among the things to watch for: Trump immediately appealing to the 11th Circuit to avoid responding to Williams; the DOJ seeking to intervene so that it may respond (a tricky strategic decision for it to make at this stage); and the political pressure building from Senate Republicans opposed to the slush fund to drop it so that even more immigration enforcement funding can pass.

New Details on the Slush Fund Scheme

• Trump personal lawyer Boris Epshteyn has emerged as a key figure in the scheme to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS and establish the “anti-weaponization” slush fund, the NYT reports: “Mr. Epshteyn played a significant role in moving forward the deal to end the suit, coordinating and holding discussions with all of the sides involved: Mr. Trump, the president’s personal lawyers and Justice Department officials, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.”

• On the DOJ side, very few lawyers were reportedly involved, but among them was acting Blanche’s top aide, Trent McCotter, and the Office of Legal Counsel led by T. Elliot Gaiser, which blessed the scheme, according to multiple reports.

• As many as 12 Senate Republicans have balked at the scheme, and Trump’s top aides have “discussed whether he should kill” the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” in order to get the reconciliation bill on immigration enforcement passed, the WSJ reported.

Quote of the Day

“I mean, it’s deeply offensive to me that you could have a fund that could even possibly compensate people who assaulted police officers or vandalized the Capitol on January 6th.”—former Vice President Mike Pence, who made a harrowing escape from the mob at the Capitol

Jan. 6 Never Ends

• U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta of D.C. ordered the Trump DOJ on Friday to provide a fuller justification for seeking to dismiss the indictments of Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy, including founder Stewart Rhodes. In additions to commutations and pardons of Jan. 6 defendants by the president, the Trump DOJ has moved to wipe the historical record clean of the indictments and convictions arising from the attack on the Capitol.

• Tina Peters is scheduled to be released from state custody in Colorado today following the commutation of her sentence by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.

The Retribution: Vindictive Prosecutions

• James Comey: Matthew Petracca, the rookie federal prosecutor who brought the “86” case against former FBI Director James Comey, has dropped off the prosecution team and withdrawn from other criminal cases he was handling in the Eastern District of North Carolina. “Petracca had contemplated leaving the Justice Department altogether, according to two people familiar with the matter, but instead remained a Justice Department employee after taking a week off,” NBC News reported.

• SPLC: The Trump DOJ’s retributive prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center came after an earlier IRS review of the civil rights organization’s paid informant program in 2019-20 concluded that it was legal, CBS News reports: “The tax portion of the investigation, which has not been previously reported, was initiated during President Trump’s first term as an expansion of an FBI probe into whether that same former chief financial officer may have embezzled money from the SPLC, the sources said.”

ICE Agent Arrested on State Charges

Christian Castro, the ICE agent rung up on state charges of shooting an undocumented immigrant through the closed door of their residence during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis and then lying about it, was arrested in South Texas by Texas Rangers on a nationwide warrant. The arrest was made in the presence of Minnesota law enforcement officers and agents from the DHS Inspector General’s Office.

In announcing the arrest, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said her office has more than 30 other open investigations of federal immigration agents who took part in Operation Metro Surge, including the fatal shootings of American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the NYT reported.

Judge Orders ‘Trump’ Off Kennedy Center

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper of D.C. ruled Friday that tacking Donald Trump’s name on to the Kennedy Center, the official memorial for President John F. Kennedy, violated federal law.

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” Cooper wrote in giving the administration two weeks to remove Trump’s name.

The adverse ruling sent Trump on long meandering weekend tirades against the judge and the judge’s wife.

2026 Midterms Watch: Maine Senate

The wife of Graham Platner, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R), disclosed to his campaign last August that she had discovered on his phone in the spring of 2025 sexually explicit texts with other women, the WSJ reported.

The campaign confirmed that Platner had engaged in the sexting with other women and posted a video of his wife, Amy Gertner, responding to the news reports.

Genevieve McDonald, the Platner campaign’s political director until she resigned in October, was apparently the staffer in whom Gertner had confided. McDonald shared with the NYT a screenshot of a text message exchange she had with Gertner at the time.

A current Platner campaign official said that Platner had been communicating with up to six women but that the conduct had stopped before his Senate campaign launch, according to the NYT.

Two More Lawless Boat Strikes

A total of four U.S. strikes last week against alleged drug-smuggling boats brought the death toll in the lawless high seas campaign to more than 200:

• Friday: Three men were killed in a strike in the eastern Pacific.

• Saturday: Three more men were killed in a strike in the eastern Pacific

Ebola Watch

Jonathan Cohn in the Bulwark: Ebola Veterans Are Aghast at Trump’s Plan for the Outbreak

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Fund Halted Until at Least June 12

In a ruling just out this morning, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the creation of the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that emerged as part of the purported settlement of President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia paused any action on the fund while the case proceeds on an expedited briefing schedule that she issued simultaneously. She set a June 12 hearing for arguments on issuing an injunction in the case brought by a group that includes a former Jan. 6 prosecutor, Common Cause, and the National Abortion Federation.

In pressing pause, Brinkema delineated in her order exactly what she doesn’t want happening between now and next month’s hearing. She barred the administration “from taking any further action pursuant to the creation or operation of the Anti Weaponization Fund, which includes the transferring of money to the Fund; the consideration of any claims submitted to the Fund; and the disbursing of any funds from the Fund.”

In a footnote to her order, the judge said that it’s “important that the status quo be maintained” and cited previous claims by the plaintiffs that the Trump DOJ refused to commit to not rushing ahead with the fund:

… especially as plaintiffs allege in their Expedited Motion that defense counsel “was unable … to provide assurances of how long [the] status quo would last” and declined plaintiffs’ “request that the government commit to not transferring money to the Fund or processing or paying claims until at least June 19 to allow for less compressed briefing in this case.”

The case before Brinkema is one of a handful of early legal challenges to the corruptly conceived “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” A separate line of attack on the underlying IRS settlement with Trump emerged this week when a group of former federal judges asked the trial judge to reopen the case she had already dismissed.

Trump DOJ: We’re Targeting ANOTHER Trump Foe, Not E. Jean Carroll!

Quite of bit of conflicting reporting since CNN first scooped Wednesday that the Trump DOJ is investigating Trump sexual abuse victim E. Jean Carroll over bogus allegations of perjury in her successful civil lawsuit against him.

In an unusual move, Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros issued an outright denial that his office has opened an investigation into Carroll: “In light of wide-spread reporting and intense media and public interest into the E. Jean Carroll matter in New York, the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office can confirm that it has not opened — and has never opened — a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll. Any claim to the contrary is categorically false.”

That lines up with other reporting Thursday that the investigation in question is looking into Reid Hoffman and his nonprofit American Future Republic, which helped to fund some of Carroll’s legal costs in pursuing Trump. Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, has been a major donor to Democrats and progressive causes.

The probe is reportedly looking at alleged money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction at American Future Republic over its payments for Carroll, CBS News and Reuters reported.

It doesn’t appear this is a case of CNN getting it wrong. Some of the conflicting reporting come from sources whose accounts have changes, as in the case of Reuters: “The source had told Reuters on Wednesday that the investigation was examining ​whether Carroll had committed perjury regarding the funding of her suit in a 2022 deposition. But the person said on Thursday that ​while the probe is examining that funding, Carroll is not a focus of the investigation.”

Still, most of the reporting suggests it’s not an either/or situation but rather the Hoffman probe seems by design likely to sweep in the bogus perjury allegations against Carroll. As the WaPo put it: “The investigation, which is expected to look at statements Carroll made during a deposition, could also morph into a criminal perjury probe against the 82-year-old columnist.”

A lot of dancing on the heads of pins going on here.

Jan. 6 Never Ends: Wisconsin Edition

A revisionist Trump DOJ “investigation” of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin has been percolating in the background for a few weeks now. Like similar investigations in Georgia and Arizona, the focus is not statewide but on Democratic big cities, in this case Milwaukee.

The timing of the investigations and the focus on minority-heavy urban areas suggest a dual purpose of advancing President Trump’s Big Lie and muddying the waters ahead of the 2026 midterms.

The WaPo rounds up some of the recent reporting on FBI interviews in the state:

FBI agents recently showed up at the homes of former election officials in Milwaukee, according to two people familiar with their activities who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. The visits came after agents spoke to the state’s deputy elections director, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This week, agents were planning to interview police officers who escorted the election official responsible for delivering the city’s 2020 results to a Milwaukee County election office, according to WISN-TV.

What is particularly concerning in Milwaukee is the prospect of the FBI seizing ballots like it did in Atlanta, especially absentee ballots (emphasis mine): “The confiscation of tens of thousands of absentee ballots from Wisconsin’s largest city would set off alarms because Milwaukee maintains its absentee ballots in a way that could allow agents to determine who voters selected — undermining the secrecy of their ballots.”

One irony of of this is that typically Milwaukee County would have destroyed its 2020 ballots long ago but has refrained from doing so due to litigation over the results.

Unitary Executive Extremism

In former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey’s wrongful termination lawsuit against the Trump DOJ, the administration argued in court yesterday that the president has sweeping powers to remove career civil service employees “even if there were political motivations.”

It led to this exchange, reported by Politico:

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman pressed [DOJ lawyer] Lesperance on whether there are any limits to the president’s Article II powers. Could the president, for example, decide to fire people in order to achieve an “all-white executive branch? Or all-black?” he asked.

Lesperance stammered in response, finally saying, “I can’t answer on behalf of the government.”

Furman replied: “You’re here representing the government.”

Comey’s lawsuit is an important test case of whether wrongfully purged federal civil service employees can challenge their terminations in federal court or must go through the old civil service appeal process that has since been rigged by the Trump administration.

ICE v. Its Opponents

• The Spokane Three: A federal jury convicted three ICE protesters of conspiracy after an eight-day trial in a case that prompted the resignation of the acting U.S. attorney.

• Online commenters: D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has sent grand jury subpoenas to Reddit and X seeking the names, addresses, and banking information of commenters critical of the administration’s mass deportation policy, Bloomberg reports.

Boat Strike Death Toll Climbs to 199

The death toll in the Trump administration’s lawless high-seas campaign against alleged drug-smuggling boats has now reached 199, after factoring at least 22 people who survived an initial strike only to be hit again or left to die at sea, the AP reports.

Quote of the Day

“West Point cadets are already, by definition, smart, tough and patriotic. They are not snowflakes who will somehow be harmed by learning about controversial issues or competing viewpoints. They will not somehow be weakened in their future defense of our country if their classroom discussions are robust and open.”—U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel, blocking one of the Trump administration’s most heavy-handed assaults on academic freedom

Preach, Brother

G. Elliott Morris, on why so much of the analysis of close elections is basically useless: “Close elections are what social scientists call overdetermined — that is, the product of too many factors to decipher what dominated. This means they are also underpowered as causal evidence; when everything was enough to cause the loss, nothing is uniquely to blame for it. The election just doesn’t carry enough information to tell you which factor was the factor.”

As If On Cue

After my extended item yesterday about the rising threat of Russia attacking NATO territory, a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in NATO-member Romania. Two people were wounded in the incident after Romania jet fighters attempted to intercept the drone.

“It was the first known time that a Russian drone had caused damage and injuries in a major urban area on the territory of the Western military alliance,” the New York Times reports.

The drone does not appear from early reports to have fired munitions at the building in the city of Galati but instead literally crashed into the roof of the building. It’s not clear yet whether the incident was a deliberate provocation or an inadvertent spillover of the war from across the nearby Ukrainian border.

A senior Western military official told the NYT the cause of incident was “probably some combination of careless behavior by the Russian military and that the drone may have been jammed off course.”

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