Trump Has Long Been Itching To Use The Military On American Streets
INSIDE: Gavin Newsom ... Terry Moran ... Damian Williams
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
What A Weekend
We come into the new week with more weekend news to process than we’ve had since February or March, so I’m going to jump right into it. I tried to condense it as much as possible, grouping like things together, in roughly descending order of importance. One note: I wrote extensively about the return of Abrego Garcia on Friday so I didn’t include it here given the volume of other news, but we’ll come back to this, especially the news that the criminal division chief in Nashville resigned over the Abrego Garcia indictment. In the meantime, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed a flaming retort last night to the Trump DOJ’s attempt to end the original case and sidestep the contempt of court proceeding entirely.
Civil Unrest As A Pretext For Presidential Lawlessness
We can’t talk about the protests in Los Angeles against mass deportation and President Trump itching to send in the military without a quick reminder that we all knew there was an extremely high risk that if Trump were re-elected he would provoke civil unrest in order to use it as a pretext for lawless actions he was already determined to take.
It’s too early to say whether this particular incident ends up being the defining episode of the erosion of the line between the military and domestic law enforcement. But it’s understandable why everyone has a hair trigger about Trump sending in the National Guard over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).
Two things in particular:
The President’s memo was concerningly open-ended. It didn’t specify Los Angeles or California; it applies anywhere. It empowered the defense secretary “to employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary.” It broadly defined protests as rebellion: “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a big deal over the weekend about a detachment of 500 Marines at Twentynine Palms being ready to provide backup to the National Guard.
A former acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau told Fox News: “This is an inappropriate use of the National Guard and is not warranted.”
National Guard Call Up: Legal Analysis And Discussion
The most astute analysis:
Law professor Chris Mirasola, who used to work in the DoD Office of General Counsel, unpacks the presidential memo.
The NYT’s Charlie Savage on the various legal issues implicated.
Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck on what the presidential proclamation did and did not do and why it remains alarming.
A helpful thread from Carrie A. Lee, a former associate professor at the US Army War College:
Quote Of The Day
“I’ll say it over and over again; you can’t build the mass deportation machine without first building the police state machine.”–Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council
‘He Eats His Hate’
ABC News suspended veteran newsman Terry Moran for a blistering tweet about White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. Here’s the tweet:
IMPORTANT
A great visualization from Amanda Shendruk and Catherine Rampell on the people Trump doesn’t want to exist:
This is part of a broader campaign to delete the statistical and visual evidence of undesirables, or at least those who may not fit into President Donald Trump’s conception of the new American “golden age.” Entire demographics are being scrubbed from records of both America’s past and present — including people of color, transgender people, women, immigrants and people with disabilities. They are now among America’s “missing persons.”
The Purges: FBI Retribution Edition
The Trump administration has forced out two senior FBI officials and punished a third for his friendship with former FBI agent Peter Strzok, the longtime Trump target.
Two Time Losers
Damian Williams, the former U.S. attorney in Manhattan, is leaving Paul Weiss, which cut a deal with President Trump, and joining Jenner & Block, which in contrast sued over Trump’s executive order against it and won.
Proud Boys Sue Over Jan. 6
Proud Boys Enrique Tarrio, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Dominic Pezzola – all convicted in the Jan. 6 attack then given clemency by President Trump – have sued prosecutors and FBI agents in federal court in Florida over their prosecutions, demanding $100 million in punitive damages.
A Mother Lode Of Extremist Materials
An alleged series of thefts of combat equipment from an Army Ranger regiment in Washington state led to the arrest earlier this month of two veterans at a home full of Nazi and white supremacy paraphernalia and a stockpile of stolen weapons, the NYT reports.
What Happened To The ADL?
The Forward: ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt compared pro-Palestinian student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaeda in an address to Republican attorneys general.
DOGE Watch
A 6-3 Supreme Court granted DOGE access to confidential Social Security records, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasting the decision in a written dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Over the objections of the three liberal justices, the Supreme Court cut back the scope of discovery the watchdog group CREW can seek from DOGE.
Frank Bisignano, the new head of the Social Security Administration, declared himself to be “fundamentally a DOGE person.”
Trump’s Ban On AP Reinstated
In a widely panned decision, two Trump appointees on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals largely reinstated the Trump White House’s ban on the Associated Press in retaliation for not using “Gulf of America” in its stories.
Federal Judges Are Begging Us to Pay Attention
Adam Bonica used computational text analysis to examine judicial decisions in nearly 300 cases involving the Trump administration and found what he called an “institutional chorus of constitutional alarm“:
The sharp language from the bench isn’t judicial activism; it’s the sound of democracy’s defense mechanisms under unprecedented stress. These interventions span the political spectrum. Judges were responding not to partisan disagreement but to actions that crossed fundamental legal and constitutional lines.
The alarm is being sounded by conservative and liberal judges in a range of cases, many of which you’ll be familiar with from Morning Memo.
Well, David, a lot to chew on early this Monday a.m., but what strikes me — and has virtually since tRump began to issue his mostly illegal EOs — is the earnestness with which legal scholars present constitutional arguments against tRump regime actions, and yet the latter just carry on either twisting or obliterating laws to fit the moment. Those of us who actually still believe in the "rule of law", while appreciating the exegesis of federal laws by constitutional experts with reference to regime actions, find it ultimately frustrating that tRump persists in raising the level of presumptive law-bending — or breaking — despite solid and irrefutable evidence presented by legal minds against such actions, as cited in today's MM for example.
So, I ask, at what point does critical legal analysis become insufficient unto the day of the quotidian evils visited upon us by this regime? Rule by fiat is in fact the new order, respecting no law other than what the regime says it is, and well-meaning dissections of patently illegal actions are simply brushed aside. Nothing is dissuading this criminal regime from carrying out its vile agenda, and although the federal courts are attempting to slow it down, the Leviathan rolls on, undeterred. What is to be done?
Thanks for the link to Jackson’s dissent on lifting the stay on DOGE access to SSA data.