Credulous Roberts Court Still Pretends To Believe Trump And His DOJ

Posted on by Jacob Harris

Buckle Up

A potentially big day ahead in the case of the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Following the Supreme Court order last evening directing the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return from an El Salvadoran prison, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland ordered the Trump administration to file a status update by 9:30 a.m. ET today from an official “with personal knowledge” regarding:

  1. the current physical location and custodial status of Abrego Garcia;
  2. what steps, if any, Defendants have taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s immediate return to the United States; and
  3. what additional steps Defendants will take, and when, to facilitate his return.

A short time ago, just before the filing deadline, the Trump DOJ asked for an extension until next Tuesday in a court filing that made little effort to conceal its exasperation with Judge Xinis.

In the meantime, all the parties are due in court at 1 p.m. ET for a status conference that Xinis also called last night. The Trump DOJ asked that to be pushed back until next Wedenday.

As we await Xinis’ response, let’s dive into the Supreme Court order.

The Presumption of Regularity

While the Supreme Court mostly did the right thing in its order last night, it took a helluva long time to get there and still managed to sound like it was pulling teeth to get enough conservative justices on board to form a majority.

The tone of the order was off, leaving it to Justice Sotomayor in her accompanying statement joined by the other two liberal justices to give emotional voice to the outrageousness of the original error in deporting him and in the administration’s non-existent effort to correct its own mistake.

The original deadline for the Trump administration to get moving on the matter was Monday night. The Supreme Court lifted that deadline then took almost three full days to issue its order. Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia has been mistakenly imprisoned in El Salvador since March 15, almost a month now.

The Supreme Court did not spend those three days mustering a full-throated defense of the rule of law or an outraged reprimand of the Trump administration’s slow-rolling of the case. Instead, it issued a strained, tone-deaf order that left open the possibility that some justices might have been content to abandon Abrego Garcia. The order was issued with no noted dissents, but was not labeled unanimous.

The court tossed the Trump administration enough of a bone that Stephen Miller and the Justice Department each managed to trumpet it as a win, a dishonest contention but one the justices brought on themselves.

At base, the Roberts Court continues to treat President Trump and the Justice Department with the traditional levels of deference that have been accorded the chief executive and the government in court. At this point, it requires the embrace of an especially willful blindness to ignore the voluminous examples of that deference being abused for ends that do not serve justice.

For more on the presumption of regularity, some strong on-the-fly analyses by two law professors:

For a less-anguished assessment of the court’s order last night, I’d suggest Cornell law professor Michael C. Dorf.

Mahmoud Khalil’s Fate Could Be Decided Today

An immigration judge in Louisiana could rule as soon as today on whether the government has presented sufficient evidence to deport Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil. Ahead of the deadline to show its evidence, the Trump administration filed a thin, undated letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that confirms he unilaterally revoked Khalil’s legal status on the basis of Khalil’s political beliefs. The Columbia University graduate remains protected from deportation by a federal court order in New Jersey, where he is challenging his detention and potential deportation on First Amendment grounds.

Trump’s Retribution Scheme Comes Into Sharp Focus

  • NYT: Trump Escalates Use of Official Power to Intimidate and Punish His Perceived Foes
  • Aaron Blake: Trump crosses the Rubicon on ordering investigations of foes
  • Philip Bump: Trump moves to legally enforce 2020 election denialism

Trump Threatens Columbia University With Consent Decree

In a Twilight Zone move, the Trump administration is planning to force Columbia University into a consent decree, which would put the Ivy under the kind of federal court supervision you might be familiar with from cases where public school districts resisted integration or police departments were chronic civil rights violators.

Law Firms Rush To Secure Deals With Trump

Among the major law firms scrambling to strike deals with President Trump to avoid being targeted by his punishing executive orders, according to the WSJ:

  • Latham & Watkins
  • Simpson Thacher
  • Kirkland & Ellis
  • A&O Shearman

In typical Trump fashion, he is lording the deals over the heads of the firms who already caved, describing them as paying “me a lot of money in the form of legal fees,” an inaccurate but telling description of what his strong-arming them accomplished.

Quote Of The Day

Adam Unikowsky, a partner at Jenner & Block, on why law firms should fight the Trump executive orders targeting them instead of striking corrupt bargains with the president:

At core, these settlements reflect an attitude of deep cynicism. Cynicism towards the law firm’s own clients—that they would prefer a law firm that is beholden to the government than one that maintains its ability to provide independent, uncompromised advice. And cynicism towards our justice system—that it is so toothless that the law firm would be better off capitulating than suing even if it prevails. We should be optimistic both about the clients we exist to represent and the justice system we are sworn to uphold.

First Purge Then Install The Loyalists

WaPo: “The Justice Department is building a roster of lawyers willing to defend in court the most controversial parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda, firing career attorneys whom leaders view as standing in their way and hiring dozens of political appointees to carry out the president’s agenda.”

Under My Radar …

I wanted to flag a fews things from this week that I had missed:

  • A criminal defense lawyer in DC scoffs at acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin and the myriad ways he has made life easer for defense attorneys.
  • In a new court filing, the Trump DOJ cryptically said it “intends to review the government’s theory of the case underlying [the] conviction” of Alexander Smirnov, the former FBI informant who lied about the Biden family’s Ukraine ties and was subsequently prosecuted by Special Counsel David Weiss. It appears to be a potential precursor to dropping the case in which Smirnov pleaded guilty.
  • Trump is trying to quietly wrest control of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights by removing Democratic chair Rochelle Garzam, who is fighting the move.
  • President Trump issued a memorandum Wednesday that tries to retroactively apply the Supreme Court’s historic Loper Bright decision to repeal existing federal regulations without providing advance notice or going through the traditional public input process.

House GOP Passes Trump’s Big Bill

Despite initial difficulties, President Trump was able to cow the far right in the House GOP conference and Republicans passed the centerpiece of his legislative agenda on a 216-214 party line vote.

Retribution: Greenland Edition

This is all so insane.

After Vice President JD Vance’s controversial, saber-rattling trip last week to a U.S. military installation in Greenland, the base’s commander sent a conciliatory email to everyone on base, which included Greenlanders, Danes, and Canadians, Military.com reported.

After that report, the Pentagon removed Col. Susan Meyers as commander of the 821st Space Base Group.

The Pentagon spokesperson tweeted the Military.com story along with the news that Meyers was being removed from command:

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

Purge Watch test?

Posted on by Jacob Harris

Let’s say up here we have some kind of introductory paragraph that explains what we are trying to do with this page. The general idea is that this is a document that can be continually updated and republished in a manner that highlight the latest updates. We might call it a workbook or notepad etc. The hope is that it gives us another tool to both internally keep track and externally signal to our readers that we are keeping track of various events without having to write up a whole article about each event. Examples use cases might include the purging of government departments, the backlash at congressional town halls, the antics of DOGE, etc. Updated?ff

Continue reading “Purge Watch test?” →

another morning memo test

Posted on by Jacob Harris

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

The Quiet Before The Storm

Many of you have have enjoyed this quiet interregnum between Christmas and the New Year to unplug from the news and focus on family and friends. I did, too, but it has felt like an uncanny quiet, a pause after the GOP’s self-own chaos over the last-minute passage of a CR to fund the government and before the grueling pace of Trump II destruction begins in earnest.

Morning Memo will be around most of this week (except New Year’s Day). We’ll begin the week with a roundup of things you may have missed over the Christmas holiday and a few things to look ahead to this week.

Great Scoop

Just before the holidays, NPR had a great scoop – headlined “Louisiana forbids public health workers from promoting COVID, flu and mpox shots” – about a new policy being low-key implemented by the Louisiana Department of Health:

According to the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear losing their jobs or other forms of retaliation, the policy would be implemented quietly and would not be put in writing.

Staffers were also told that it applies to every aspect of the health department’s work: Employees could not send out press releases, give interviews, hold vaccine events, give presentations or create social media posts encouraging the public to get the vaccines. They also could not put up signs at the department’s clinics that COVID, flu or mpox vaccines were available on site.

Listen here:

Trump Border Czar Wants To Use Military As ‘Force Multiplier’

“Donald Trump’s team is looking at using military bases to detain migrants and military planes to boost deportations, the president-elect’s incoming border czar Tom Homan said.”–WSJ

‘How Much Did You Pay To Have Your Daughter Raped?’

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) latest grandstanding over immigration is a $100,000 billboard ad campaign to deter migrants from crossing the border with crude messages like “How much did you pay to have your daughter raped?”

Sign Of The Times

WSJ: Some Justice Department Lawyers Look for Protection—and the Exits

Elon Musk Watch

  • Donald Trump dismisses talk that he’s ceded the presidency to Elon Musk as a “hoax.”
  • Musk doubles down on support for German far-right party.
  • Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré: Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk

For Your Radar …

When the new Congress convenes for the first time Friday, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) will try to retain the speakership after the pre-Christmas debacle over the continuing resolution to fund the federal government until mid-March and avoid a shutdown. It’s an early measure of how chaotic GOP rules in Washington will be. Matt Glassman has everything you could possibly want to know about the speaker election.

Texas Congresswoman Suffering From Dementia

Retiring Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), until April the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has been little-seen in Washington since then and is residing in an independent living facility in Texas where she is suffering from “dementia issues,” according to reports over the holidays.

Granger’s situation was first reported by The Dallas Express. Some aspects of the initial report were disputed by Granger’s office, but the upshot is that her health issues have made serving out the remainder of her term difficult at best.

ICYMI

TPM’s Kate Riga: Ethics Committee Finds ‘Substantial Evidence’ That Gaetz Committed ‘Statutory Rape’

Rudy G Faces A Reckoning

After dressing up as Santa Claus to promote his Rudy Coffee, Rudy Giuliani faces a contempt of court hearing Friday in the defamation case against him by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The judge is already signaling it may not go well for the former NYC mayor.

‘This Is Trump’s America Now’

A Colorado man was arrested on suspicion of bias-motivated crimes, second degree assault and harassment for a Dec. 18 incident in Grand Junction when he allegedly attacked TV reporter Ja’Ronn Alex, who is of Pacific Island descent:

After arriving in Grand Junction, Egan, who was driving a taxi, pulled up next to Alex at a stoplight and, according to an arrest affidavit, said something to the effect of: “Are you even a U.S. citizen? This is Trump’s America now! I’m a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!”

Alex, who had been out reporting, then drove back to his news station in the city. After he got out of his vehicle, Egan chased Alex as he ran toward the station’s door and demanded to see his identification, according to the document laying out police’s evidence in the case. Egan then tackled Alex, put him in a headlock and “began to strangle him,” the affidavit said. Coworkers who ran out to help and witnesses told police that Alex appeared to be losing his ability to breathe during the attack, which was partially captured on surveillance video, according to the document.

‘Target On My Back’

Nashville TV reporter Phil Williams was targeted by the Christian right in a pre-Christmas wave of online abuse: “Rarely in my nearly 40-year career as a journalist have I felt the target on my back as continuously and intensely as I have in the last 15 months.”

Trump Files Brief In TikTok Case At SCOTUS

“The Trump brief, on which Trump’s intended nominee to be Solicitor General, John Sauer, is counsel of record (indeed, Sauer is the only listed counsel), is a striking document. It includes a series of wholly irrelevant platitudes about Trump; and, even though it takes no position on whether the TikTok statute is or is not constitutional, it urges the Court to ‘stay’ the January 19 effective date to allow for Trump, once he comes to office, to pursue some (unspecified) political solution to the dispute.”–Steve Vladeck

Joe Biden Agonistes

Jimmy Carter dying in the waning days of the Biden presidency felt like a passing of the baton from the last one-term Democratic president whose legacy has been debated for half a century to the next. The debate over Joe Biden’s legacy is just beginning but will probably last at least as long, depending on how destructive the return to Trump turns out to be. The WaPo gives Biden world an early chance to weigh in.

Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024

My own memories of Jimmy Carter are those of a child: As a bleary-eyed six-year-old barging in on my shaving father the morning after the 1976 election demanding to know why he hadn’t woken me in the night, as promised, with the result. He had, he assured me. Or driving the old family station wagon with the Carter-Mondale bumper sticker on it through a good chunk of high school deep into the Reagan ’80s. If you’re feeling a little nostalgic, too, our slideshow may spark some memories.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

Louisiana Bans Promotion Of COVID, Flu, And Monkeypox Vaccines

Posted on by Jacob Harris

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

The Quiet Before The Storm

Many of you have have enjoyed this quiet interregnum between Christmas and the New Year to unplug from the news and focus on family and friends. I did, too, but it has felt like an uncanny quiet, a pause after the GOP’s self-own chaos over the last-minute passage of a CR to fund the government and before the grueling pace of Trump II destruction begins in earnest.

Morning Memo will be around most of this week (except New Year’s Day). We’ll begin the week with a roundup of things you may have missed over the Christmas holiday and a few things to look ahead to this week.

Great Scoop

Just before the holidays, NPR had a great scoop – headlined “Louisiana forbids public health workers from promoting COVID, flu and mpox shots” – about a new policy being low-key implemented by the Louisiana Department of Health:

According to the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear losing their jobs or other forms of retaliation, the policy would be implemented quietly and would not be put in writing.

Staffers were also told that it applies to every aspect of the health department’s work: Employees could not send out press releases, give interviews, hold vaccine events, give presentations or create social media posts encouraging the public to get the vaccines. They also could not put up signs at the department’s clinics that COVID, flu or mpox vaccines were available on site.

Listen here:

Trump Border Czar Wants To Use Military As ‘Force Multiplier’

“Donald Trump’s team is looking at using military bases to detain migrants and military planes to boost deportations, the president-elect’s incoming border czar Tom Homan said.”–WSJ

‘How Much Did You Pay To Have Your Daughter Raped?’

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) latest grandstanding over immigration is a $100,000 billboard ad campaign to deter migrants from crossing the border with crude messages like “How much did you pay to have your daughter raped?”

Sign Of The Times

WSJ: Some Justice Department Lawyers Look for Protection—and the Exits

Elon Musk Watch

  • Donald Trump dismisses talk that he’s ceded the presidency to Elon Musk as a “hoax.”
  • Musk doubles down on support for German far-right party.
  • Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré: Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk

For Your Radar …

When the new Congress convenes for the first time Friday, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) will try to retain the speakership after the pre-Christmas debacle over the continuing resolution to fund the federal government until mid-March and avoid a shutdown. It’s an early measure of how chaotic GOP rules in Washington will be. Matt Glassman has everything you could possibly want to know about the speaker election.

Texas Congresswoman Suffering From Dementia

Retiring Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), until April the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has been little-seen in Washington since then and is residing in an independent living facility in Texas where she is suffering from “dementia issues,” according to reports over the holidays.

Granger’s situation was first reported by The Dallas Express. Some aspects of the initial report were disputed by Granger’s office, but the upshot is that her health issues have made serving out the remainder of her term difficult at best.

ICYMI

TPM’s Kate Riga: Ethics Committee Finds ‘Substantial Evidence’ That Gaetz Committed ‘Statutory Rape’

Rudy G Faces A Reckoning

After dressing up as Santa Claus to promote his Rudy Coffee, Rudy Giuliani faces a contempt of court hearing Friday in the defamation case against him by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The judge is already signaling it may not go well for the former NYC mayor.

‘This Is Trump’s America Now’

A Colorado man was arrested on suspicion of bias-motivated crimes, second degree assault and harassment for a Dec. 18 incident in Grand Junction when he allegedly attacked TV reporter Ja’Ronn Alex, who is of Pacific Island descent:

After arriving in Grand Junction, Egan, who was driving a taxi, pulled up next to Alex at a stoplight and, according to an arrest affidavit, said something to the effect of: “Are you even a U.S. citizen? This is Trump’s America now! I’m a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!”

Alex, who had been out reporting, then drove back to his news station in the city. After he got out of his vehicle, Egan chased Alex as he ran toward the station’s door and demanded to see his identification, according to the document laying out police’s evidence in the case. Egan then tackled Alex, put him in a headlock and “began to strangle him,” the affidavit said. Coworkers who ran out to help and witnesses told police that Alex appeared to be losing his ability to breathe during the attack, which was partially captured on surveillance video, according to the document.

‘Target On My Back’

Nashville TV reporter Phil Williams was targeted by the Christian right in a pre-Christmas wave of online abuse: “Rarely in my nearly 40-year career as a journalist have I felt the target on my back as continuously and intensely as I have in the last 15 months.”

Trump Files Brief In TikTok Case At SCOTUS

“The Trump brief, on which Trump’s intended nominee to be Solicitor General, John Sauer, is counsel of record (indeed, Sauer is the only listed counsel), is a striking document. It includes a series of wholly irrelevant platitudes about Trump; and, even though it takes no position on whether the TikTok statute is or is not constitutional, it urges the Court to ‘stay’ the January 19 effective date to allow for Trump, once he comes to office, to pursue some (unspecified) political solution to the dispute.”–Steve Vladeck

Joe Biden Agonistes

Jimmy Carter dying in the waning days of the Biden presidency felt like a passing of the baton from the last one-term Democratic president whose legacy has been debated for half a century to the next. The debate over Joe Biden’s legacy is just beginning but will probably last at least as long, depending on how destructive the return to Trump turns out to be. The WaPo gives Biden world an early chance to weigh in.

Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024

My own memories of Jimmy Carter are those of a child: As a bleary-eyed six-year-old barging in on my shaving father the morning after the 1976 election demanding to know why he hadn’t woken me in the night, as promised, with the result. He had, he assured me. Or driving the old family station wagon with the Carter-Mondale bumper sticker on it through a good chunk of high school deep into the Reagan ’80s. If you’re feeling a little nostalgic, too, our slideshow may spark some memories.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

The Golden Dukes Return For 2024

Posted on by Jacob Harris

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Quisque rutrum iaculis lorem ac faucibus. Vivamus vitae augue in augue laoreet euismod nec vel justo. Vestibulum eu felis lorem. Sed lacinia mollis purus sit amet varius. Mauris laoreet laoreet est vel sodales. In aliquet ante id lorem dictum rutrum. Suspendisse ipsum tellus, cursus ut ultricies vitae, pharetra tempus leo. Praesent nulla dolor, accumsan non laoreet eget, vestibulum sit amet purus. Vivamus orci orci, pulvinar in porttitor at, venenatis eu ligula. Nullam iaculis felis ultrices varius iaculis.

Etiam cursus, libero tincidunt scelerisque dapibus, nunc velit dapibus augue, sed efficitur felis est sed libero. Phasellus ultrices semper risus, dictum finibus nisl sagittis at. Donec tempus sapien nec urna tincidunt vehicula. Donec iaculis libero ullamcorper elementum suscipit. Nunc sodales dolor et arcu sagittis, vel congue ante maximus. Aliquam id tortor suscipit, tincidunt lacus quis, porttitor elit. Nulla egestas mattis rutrum. In mattis velit augue, at cursus quam dignissim ut. Aliquam in eros vel sapien tincidunt lobortis eget quis tortor. Mauris aliquam ultricies magna aliquet ornare. In consequat lacinia magna id tempor. Fusce feugiat cursus hendrerit. Nam rutrum magna diam, ut molestie metus consequat in.

This is an h2 tag

This is an h3 tag

Integer venenatis malesuada tellus. Vivamus vel lectus eget nibh volutpat ornare. Sed ac lorem tempor, consequat est et, placerat massa. Proin sit amet quam ut risus hendrerit porttitor. Aenean sed ante urna. Proin et erat pellentesque purus volutpat efficitur nec et nunc. Mauris dapibus blandit tellus, vel ultrices neque pretium ac. Nullam consectetur dui eu laoreet mattis. In vulputate ante in lacinia finibus. Vivamus eu congue sapien. Suspendisse pretium mi in ex aliquet lacinia. Duis pulvinar pretium tincidunt. Cras aliquet erat euismod, gravida tellus eu, molestie sem.

Donec pretium ultrices enim nec accumsan. Vestibulum risus orci, efficitur in arcu sit amet, volutpat tempus urna. Donec a facilisis turpis. Fusce vulputate lorem luctus tellus suscipit lobortis. Morbi eu quam lacus. Praesent sit amet dolor malesuada nisl venenatis egestas ac ut nibh. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia curae; Sed ac porta est. Duis pulvinar felis vel eros accumsan, eu suscipit mauris lacinia. Nam eu imperdiet mauris.

Suspendisse potenti. Sed mattis nunc non rhoncus venenatis. Quisque placerat, ligula sed pharetra tempus, risus mi fermentum ipsum, sed faucibus nisi elit et libero. Phasellus molestie laoreet volutpat. Aliquam pulvinar leo non velit varius, at ultricies purus dapibus. In vitae odio et ex tempor laoreet in sed odio. Praesent ut lacus a est ornare consectetur at vitae sem.

Nullam in ex quis elit ultrices ornare. Nullam vel odio euismod, faucibus augue sed, malesuada ante. Sed sapien augue, rhoncus quis porttitor rhoncus, rhoncus vitae dolor. Proin ut ipsum aliquet, mollis est nec, ullamcorper dolor. Quisque porta tellus lectus. Aliquam nec turpis ligula. Phasellus et molestie massa.

Edblog Post

Posted on by Jacob Harris

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque eget eros at erat euismod consectetur. Sed ac purus vitae leo maximus hendrerit id at augue. Fusce dignissim vitae elit in porttitor. In iaculis, dolor eu rhoncus hendrerit, libero dui auctor metus, ut mattis erat neque eget massa. Integer congue, mi non volutpat sollicitudin, ante sapien pulvinar ipsum, et efficitur est odio vitae urna. Fusce a viverra justo, ut congue purus. Duis ultricies sapien sit amet fringilla tincidunt.

Vestibulum volutpat bibendum nisi sit amet aliquam. Proin est ligula, aliquam id dignissim et, posuere nec eros. Nunc blandit eros ac dictum rutrum. Aenean sed placerat arcu, et elementum nisl.

As I wrote earlier:

Trump’s Retribution Scheme Comes Into Sharp Focus

  • NYT: Trump Escalates Use of Official Power to Intimidate and Punish His Perceived Foes
  • Aaron Blake: Trump crosses the Rubicon on ordering investigations of foes
  • Philip Bump: Trump moves to legally enforce 2020 election denialism

Trump Threatens Columbia University With Consent Decree

In a Twilight Zone move, the Trump administration is planning to force Columbia University into a consent decree, which would put the Ivy under the kind of federal court supervision you might be familiar with from cases where public school districts resisted integration or police departments were chronic civil rights violators.

View Article →

From: Credulous Roberts Court Still Pretends To Believe Trump And His DOJ
By jacobtpm | April 11, 2025 4:16 p.m.

An Interesting Data Point

Posted on by Jacob Harris

I’ve told you a few times about Professor Michael McDonald’s early vote analysis. He has a paywalled final analysis of the early vote in North Carolina. The upshot is that by conventional early vote analysis, Donald Trump appears poised to win North Carolina. That wouldn’t be a surprising result either on the basis of history or the current polls, which show a dead heat race with the slightest advantage to Trump.

Continue reading “An Interesting Data Point” →

Political Betting Markets Remain Over-Valued

Posted on by Jacob Harris

If you’ve followed my thinking on this you know I’ve long had a pretty low opinion of political betting markets. Their user base tends to lean right, with the built-in bias you would expect that to cause. They’re also prone to manipulation. But the biggest problem is that, in my view, they’re largely derivative of polls and the press narratives. Garbage in, garbage out. I will simply note that the wild gyrations all of them have been doing over the last three or four days provide, I think, some backing for my argument.

Morning Memo 2

Posted on by Jacob Harris

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

History Comes At You Fast

The rapid-fire series of events over the past 18 days has been as mind-bending a stretch in American politics as I can remember.

Less than three weeks ago, Donald Trump was awaiting sentencing for his conviction in New York state on 34 felony counts and needed to win the presidential election to have any chance of avoiding additional criminal convictions and likely jail time.

Then came President Biden’s Thursday night debate debacle, leaving the anti-Trump forces adrift in the doldrums over whether Biden should remain as the Democratic nominee.

The morning after the debate, the Supreme Court reset the playing field for most of the regulatory state, sweeping away its own precedent in Chevron and launching the political economy into a new era with uncertain but far-reaching implications that will take years to fully appreciate.

The following Monday, the Supreme Court rejiggered the balance of power carefully arranged by the founders in order to gift Trump an elaborately favorable ruling on presidential immunity that may keep him out of jail win or lose in November. As a result, his imminent sentencing in New York had to be postponed until at least September. But the constitutional framework will remain fundamentally altered long after Trump has passed from the political scene.

I wrote then that it had been a surreal week in our politics, but what’s happened since beggars belief.

After years of extolling violence and playing with the fire of incitement, Trump survived Saturday’s assassination attempt by a 20-year-old man with unclear motives who was immediately taken out by counter-sniper fire. The spasm of political violence at a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania killed one spectator and seriously wounded two others. It was captured in photos and video from a thousand different angles, yielding iconic images of a bleeding Trump with his fist raised exhorting the crowd to “Fight!”

(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Yesterday, Trump secured another major win in his effort to stave off imprisonment when U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the Mar-a-Lago case against him in its entirety, freeing him for the moment from the threat of what had always been the most slam-dunk criminal case against him on the law and the facts, an assessment upended by Cannon’s corrupt handling of the case.

Within hours of Cannon’s ruling, having just announced Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his vice presidential running mate, Trump made a triumphal appearance at the first night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, his wound from the weekend gunfire conspicuously bandaged. The crowd serenaded him with chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

What we’ve all just witnessed with our own eyes — the breathtaking pace of events, the mix of staged and spontaneous spectacles, and Trump’s uncanny ability to emerge mostly unscathed through a combination of extreme good fortune and corrupt intervention on his behalf — have all the elements of a fictional political thriller, but one we would probably find preposterous for lack of believability. The whirlwind of political developments has defied what we know about the long, slow, grinding work of politics and political change.

For those desperate to see Trump as a larger-than-life hero touched by the divine, the past three weeks are irrefutable confirmation of everything they believed to be true about the man. For those appalled by the sinister impulses driving Trump and the dark forces he’s unleashed in America, his swift series of wins on the political and legal fronts is an inexplicable reward for such despicable behavior.

The unrelenting pace of events echoes 1968, the standard for tumultuous years in politics, with the assassinations, an incumbent Democratic president who is unpopular despite his historic legislative accomplishments, and his party’s convention in Chicago. The backdrop is different. Then it was the Vietnam War, white backlash to the civil rights movement, and a generational moment as the baby boomers came of age. Now it’s the existential threat of climate change and a far-right politics that makes even the worst fears of a prospective Richard Nixon presidency seem tepid by comparison. The white backlash remains and is, it seems, eternal.

Our faces are pressed too closely to the glass of current events to see what the past three weeks portend for the next few months. The past may be prologue, but past performance is no guarantee of future results. The intense pace is not likely sustainable, but anomalies happen. The impacts of each of these events on the election outcome is inscrutable; their collective impacts are indecipherable. We just don’t know. We pretend to know, sometimes, because it offers a respite from the doubt and confusion. But we don’t really know.

A more Zen person than I would urge you to embrace the uncertainty. I’m just trying to hold on for dear life.

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The Morning Memo 07/16

Posted on by Jacob Harris

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

History Comes At You Fast

The rapid-fire series of events over the past 18 days has been as mind-bending a stretch in American politics as I can remember.

Less than three weeks ago, Donald Trump was awaiting sentencing for his conviction in New York state on 34 felony counts and needed to win the presidential election to have any chance of avoiding additional criminal convictions and likely jail time.

Then came President Biden’s Thursday night debate debacle, leaving the anti-Trump forces adrift in the doldrums over whether Biden should remain as the Democratic nominee.

The morning after the debate, the Supreme Court reset the playing field for most of the regulatory state, sweeping away its own precedent in Chevron and launching the political economy into a new era with uncertain but far-reaching implications that will take years to fully appreciate.

The following Monday, the Supreme Court rejiggered the balance of power carefully arranged by the founders in order to gift Trump an elaborately favorable ruling on presidential immunity that may keep him out of jail win or lose in November. As a result, his imminent sentencing in New York had to be postponed until at least September. But the constitutional framework will remain fundamentally altered long after Trump has passed from the political scene.

I wrote then that it had been a surreal week in our politics, but what’s happened since beggars belief.

After years of extolling violence and playing with the fire of incitement, Trump survived Saturday’s assassination attempt by a 20-year-old man with unclear motives who was immediately taken out by counter-sniper fire. The spasm of political violence at a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania killed one spectator and seriously wounded two others. It was captured in photos and video from a thousand different angles, yielding iconic images of a bleeding Trump with his fist raised exhorting the crowd to “Fight!”

Yesterday, Trump secured another major win in his effort to stave off imprisonment when U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the Mar-a-Lago case against him in its entirety, freeing him for the moment from the threat of what had always been the most slam-dunk criminal case against him on the law and the facts, an assessment upended by Cannon’s corrupt handling of the case.

Within hours of Cannon’s ruling, having just announced Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his vice presidential running mate, Trump made a triumphal appearance at the first night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, his wound from the weekend gunfire conspicuously bandaged. The crowd serenaded him with chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

What we’ve all just witnessed with our own eyes — the breathtaking pace of events, the mix of staged and spontaneous spectacles, and Trump’s uncanny ability to emerge mostly unscathed through a combination of extreme good fortune and corrupt intervention on his behalf — have all the elements of a fictional political thriller, but one we would probably find preposterous for lack of believability. The whirlwind of political developments has defied what we know about the long, slow, grinding work of politics and political change.

For those desperate to see Trump as a larger-than-life hero touched by the divine, the past three weeks are irrefutable confirmation of everything they believed to be true about the man. For those appalled by the sinister impulses driving Trump and the dark forces he’s unleashed in America, his swift series of wins on the political and legal fronts is an inexplicable reward for such despicable behavior.

The unrelenting pace of events echoes 1968, the standard for tumultuous years in politics, with the assassinations, an incumbent Democratic president who is unpopular despite his historic legislative accomplishments, and his party’s convention in Chicago. The backdrop is different. Then it was the Vietnam War, white backlash to the civil rights movement, and a generational moment as the baby boomers came of age. Now it’s the existential threat of climate change and a far-right politics that makes even the worst fears of a prospective Richard Nixon presidency seem tepid by comparison. The white backlash remains and is, it seems, eternal.

Our faces are pressed too closely to the glass of current events to see what the past three weeks portend for the next few months. The past may be prologue, but past performance is no guarantee of future results. The intense pace is not likely sustainable, but anomalies happen. The impacts of each of these events on the election outcome is inscrutable; their collective impacts are indecipherable. We just don’t know. We pretend to know, sometimes, because it offers a respite from the doubt and confusion. But we don’t really know.

A more Zen person than I would urge you to embrace the uncertainty. I’m just trying to hold on for dear life.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!