Only KBJ Recognizes The Historic Stakes Of Trump’s Purges
INSIDE: John Brennan ... James Comey ... Tulsi Gabbard
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
A Devastating Supreme Court Decision
The Supreme Court, with only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting, cleared the way for the Trump administration to proceed with mass layoffs of federal workers that will devastate governmental capacity.
The high court’s decision to stay a lower court order blocking the layoffs at 21 government agencies while the Trump administration appeals effectively greenlights the purges and risks leaving some government services and capabilities so depleted that they won’t be able to be restored even if the workers ultimately prevail in court.
Jackson appears to be the only justice cognizant of those risks, and she let loose in a howl of a dissent that pegged the historical moment just right: ” In my view, this was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground.”
The decision by the other justices, Jackson warned, will “allow an apparently unprecedented and congressionally unsanctioned dismantling of the Federal Government to continue apace, causing irreparable harm before courts can determine whether the President has the authority to engage in the actions he proposes.”
Purge And Replace
Under the Trump administration, the Department of Energy has hired three scientists well known for their contrarianism about anthropogenic climate change, the NYT reports:
physicist Steven E. Koonin
atmospheric scientist John Christy
meteorologist Roy Spencer
Trump Retribution May Have Taken A Dark New Turn
In a lightly sourced but mostly credible report, Fox News Digital says the Justice Department has launched criminal investigations into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, two of President Trump’s longest-standing nemeses, for their roles in the Trump-Russia probe from his first term.
Key data points:
The investigation of Brennan is focused in part of whether he allegedly made false statements to Congress.
“CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred evidence of wrongdoing by Brennan to FBI Director Kash Patel for potential prosecution,” Fox reported.
Two sources described to Fox the FBI’s view of the duo’s interactions as a “conspiracy.”
This news comes after the CIA released last week a Ratcliffe-ordered revisionist report on the intel community’s 2017 assessment that Russia engaged in covert influence campaign to help Trump win in 2016.
Tulsi Gabbard Has Her Own Retribution Scheme Going
The task force that DNI Tulsi Gabbard set up to, among other things, enforce President Trump’s weaponization executive order wants access to the emails and chat logs of the major intel agencies, apparently as a way of punishing disloyalty, the WaPo reports:
The unprecedented interest in data by officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence startled some senior agency officials, who have expressed concerns about the counterintelligence and privacy risks of aggregating what could be a large amount of sensitive information that may include references to intercepts of electronic communications on overseas targets, said several U.S. officials and others familiar with aspects of the effort. …
Some senior intelligence officials are also privately concerned that the effort could be used to pursue perceived disloyalty to the Trump administration, including to identify individuals who implemented the policies of the previous administration.
Judge Takes Note of UN Report On El Salvador
The newly revealed UN report that El Salvador has pinned “jurisdiction and legal responsibility” for the U.S.-deported CECOT detainees on the United States continues to reverberate.
The report was filed in the original Alien Enemies Act case in D.C., but on her own initiative U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher of Maryland immediately took notice of the report in a separate case.
Gallagher has been stonewalled for months by the Trump administration in the case of the Venezuelan man named Cristian wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March in violation of a pre-existing court-approved settlement agreement. She ordered the administration to facilitate Cristian’s return, but it has continued to provided vague and non-responsive status reports pointing the finger at El Salvador for not providing more information.
In a stern letter to the attorneys in the case, Gallagher wrote:
In status reports submitted pursuant to this Court’s June 5, 2025 Order, Defendants have repeatedly skirted this Court’s directive to provide information regarding the steps they have taken and will take to facilitate the return of Cristian to the United States. Instead, Defendants have repeatedly made oblique references to their request of “assistance” from the U.S. Department of State (DOS), which has “enter[ed] into negotiations to facilitate Cristian’s return” and “assumed responsibility on behalf of the U.S. Government for…diplomatic discussions with El Salvador.”
Gallagher ordered the Trump administration to explain to her by next Tuesday why, in light of the UN report, it keeps insisting that diplomacy by the State Department is required to facilitate Cristian’s return.
In the meantime, another new development suggests that the United States does have control over the detainees it sent to CECOT. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was working on a since-botched deal to exchange about 250 Venezuelan migrants that the U.S. has deported to El Salvador for several Americans and dozens of political prisoners held in Venezuela, the NYT reports.
Today In Strange Plots
WaPo: Canadian troops arrested in alleged plot to seize part of Québec
The Guardian: Ten charged with attempted murder after allegedly ambushing ICE agents in Texas on July 4
WaPo: A Marco Rubio impostor is using AI voice to call high-level officials
ICYMI
TPM’s Josh Kovensky examines the speech that Vice President JD Vance gave the Claremont Institute over the July 4 weekend, a newer and darker version of his brand of blood and soil nationalism.
MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell’s Lawyers Fined For AI Filings
A federal judge in Colorado fined lawyers for MyPillow founder Mike Lindell for egregiously error-filled filings in a defamation case against him by a Dominion Voting Systems Employee. The judge ruled that the lawyers’ explanations for the errors fell short and would not have occurred “absent the use of generative artificial intelligence or gross carelessness by counsel.”
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
So much to comment on here but I will be disciplined and focus only on Mr. Vance's remarks on "heritage," a theme he talked about even before the election. My own ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but arrived soon thereafter. We are on the roll of members of Boston's First Congregationalist Church prior to 1670 so we've been around for a while. We also owned some of the the land now occupied by Princeton University. I imagine we might meet Mr. Vance's heritage criteria.
But other branches of our family were Hispanic and native American and were here centuries before the Pilgrims. Does 13,000 years on the continent count for something in Mr. Vance's estimation and what does Mr. Vance think of that heritage,? I'm afraid I know.
Color me triggered. The time has come for me to lay out my Unified Theory of Roberts Junta Shit Pulling. (I might have written this in a previous comment but I don't so. But if I did, I apologize for being a boring, repetitive dotard.)
Re the abuse of the shadow docket: A problem the apparatchiks has to face is a lawless POTUS who, for the overwhelming most part is complying with nearly no lower court order or directive.
So were SCOTUS to issue a formal order by way of decision after full briefing and oral argument and POTUS then essentially respond by telling them to fuck off and goes on to disregard the order, well that's many magnitudes worse than the Roberts junta obliging him as they are and in the manner in which they're doing so. I'd also daresay that while there's five or six votes to give Donny his way via procedural abuses, I'm not sure there's five votes in a lot of those cases for doing so *formally*.
Another problem going the full brief/argument route is that the decision becomes precedent applicable to a D POTUS. As a cohort that puts party before law, that's an obvious no-go. So again, the answer's to limit that by giving Donny license in the manner in which they have been doing.
Please note that none of the preceding is meant as a defense of the Roberts junta.
As for the targeting of Brennan and Comey: There's a parallel with the breaking of norms which were already broken. I'm not sure the investigations (assuming that there are actual investigations and this isn't performative BS) won't turn up stuff showing some profound unfitness or bad acts. Of course, as a dotard I grew believing that the IC was seriously lacking in that I there. So I have no doubt there'd be some smoke there.
If I hadn't already gone on too much already, I'd start ranting on how not having a vigorous opposition party and establishment media not doing that watchdog thing they boast about have sort the nation...