Trump Lays the Groundwork to Rig the 2026 Midterms
INSIDE: Cleta Mitchell ... John Roberts ... Pete Hegseth
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
The Ratfucking Is Already Underway
The Trump Justice Department is taking the unprecedented step of compiling a national voter database, the NYT reports:
The effort to essentially establish a national voting database, involving more than 30 states, has elicited serious concerns among voting rights experts because it is led by allies of the president, who as recently as this January refused to acknowledge Joseph R. Biden Jr. fairly won the 2020 election. It has also raised worries that those same officials could use the data to revive lies of a stolen election, or try to discredit future election results.
The effort is being speared by two DOJ components acting in parallel: the civil rights division and the criminal division. They have been seeking individual voter data from around the country, involving 16 GOP-controlled states and 17 Democratic or swing states, the NYT reports:
In a private meeting with the staff of top state election officials last month, Michael Gates, a deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division, disclosed that all 50 states would eventually receive similar requests, according to notes of the meeting reviewed by The New York Times. In particular, he said, the federal government wants the last four digits of every voter’s Social Security number.
Part of the motivation for the data collection appears to be stoking claims of widespread voting by undocumented immigrants, according to the report. But election law experts and state election officials are sounding the alarm about other uses the Trump DOJ may make of the data, ranging from sowing further doubt about the 2020 election to interfering in the 2026 midterms.
Combine the NYT report with recent comments from longtime GOP election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who before she became a major player in the Trump effort to overturn the 2020 election had spent decades trying to make it harder to vote, and you can start to see the groundwork being laid first for delegitimizing, then for rejecting a loss in the 2026 midterms:
Mitchell and those of her ilk must create a corrupt permission structure for Trump to involve himself in the midterms because constitutionally there is no legal role for the president. Indeed there is no national election, but rather concurrent state-level elections.
Law professor Justin Levitt, a noted election law expert at Loyola Marymount University, compared it to Trump’s takeover of D.C.: “It’s wading in, without authorization and against the law, with an overly heavy federal hand to take over a function that states are actually doing just fine,” Levitt told the NYT, “It’s wildly illegal, deeply troubling, and nobody asked for this.”
SCOTUS Okays Racial Profiling in Immigration Raids
With no explanation, the Supreme Court used its emergency docket to give the Trump administration a greenlight to continue targeting people in immigration raids who look Hispanic, speak with an accent, or gather where undocumented Latinos are more likely to be found.
The court’s decision to lift a lower court injunction while the appeal proceeds suggested it was enforcing a lower standard than the individualized suspicion required by the 4th Amendment, though Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied as much in a concurring opinion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor vigorously dissented and was joined by the other two liberal justice.
Sifting through the implications of the case:
Orin Kerr: “[A]ll of this means a lot more practically than legally. Legally, this doesn’t change the law, as far as I can tell. It’s an order with no reasoning, and Kavanaugh’s opinion can be read in different ways but I wouldn’t think of it as changing the law (at least on Fourth-Amendment-related issues). What matters here is the practical reality that the Trump Administration’s enforcement program can continue. That’s a very big deal on the ground.”
Charlie Savage: “The ruling is not the final word in the case, which stems from the Trump administration’s attempt to carry out mass deportations. But the court’s Republican-appointed majority will allow the government to continue using aggressive — and unconstitutional, in the eyes of its critics — tactics in immigration sweeps as the litigation slowly plays out.”
Adam Klasfeld: SCOTUS swallows “10%”: The disputed stat behind a racial profiling ruling in LA
Quote of the Day
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”–Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo
Constitutionally Infirm
At least 11 defendants arrested during President Trump’s show of force in D.C. have languished in jail longer than the constitutionally-permitted 48 hours before their initial appearance in front of a judge, the NYT reports.
Roberts Court: Farewell, Indy Agencies
The Supreme Court action on immigration raids in Los Angeles was not the day’s most glaring example of its misuse of its emergency. In an important independent agency case, Chief Justice John Roberts allowed President Trump to proceed with firing Democratic FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter while the appeal of the case is heard.
The emergency docket action effectively reversed Humphrey’s Executor, the landmark 1935 Supreme Court case that held President Franklin D. Roosevelt could not unilaterally remove FTC commissioners without cause. It wasn’t a surprising outcome given the Roberts Court’s steady undermining of the Humphrey’s Executor.
The Downfall of CBS News
A right-wing think tanker was chosen as the first ombudsman to oversee CBS News under the Trump administration’s condition of approval for the merger of its parent company. Kenneth R. Weinstein, a former CEO of the Hudson Institute who also spent time at the Heritage Foundation, has no experience overseeing news coverage.
Puerto Rico Becomes a Staging Ground for U.S. Saber-Rattling
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made an unannounced visit to Puerto Rico as part of the Trump administration’s effort to destabilize Venezuela.
E. Jean Carroll Keeps on Winning
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld E. Jean Carroll’s $83.3 million defamation judgment against Donald Trump.
Texas A&M Removes Dean and Dept. Head Over LGBTQ Content
An unidentified professor faces discipline and a department head and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences have been removed after a student objected to LGBTQ content in a children’s literature class, the Texas Tribune reports.
The employment actions came after a video of a in-class confrontation went viral:
The video, which does not show anyone’s face, captures audio of a student objecting to a professor teaching that there are more than two genders. The student says this conflicts with President Donald J. Trump’s executive order and her religious beliefs, and the professor responds she has a right to teach the lesson and the student has a right to leave.
Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III defended the employment actions in a statement on X, framing it as misleading to students to include content in the classroom “that was not consistent with the course’s published description.”
‘Fascist at Home, Fascist Abroad’
It used to be that one could roughly say that while paleocons were fascists at home, reimagining America as a white ethnostate, they were relatively more dovish abroad and skeptical of foreign entanglements, while the neocons were fascists abroad, favoring unabashed imperialism, foreign adventures, and unilateral wars, but broadly in support of center-right liberal democracy at home. The current fusionism of the right is the worst of all possible worlds: fascist at home, fascist abroad.
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If this country does not show up in overwhelming numbers to protest, to vote, to speak out LOUDLY…we are royally screwed. What the arsonists of our democracy don’t seem to grasp is that they will be no safer than us.
When, FLOG, do people rise up?