A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Why MAGA Evangelicals Support Bombing Iran
In the run-up to Saturday’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, certain prominent figures in MAGA-land sought to pressure Trump and his pro-war allies to remember the movement’s supposedly non-interventionist roots. Tucker Carlson made headlines for grilling Sen. Ted Cruz, a longtime ally of the Christian Zionist movement, about what evangelicals claim is a biblical imperative to support Israel. Steve Bannon actually accused Fox News of being an unregistered foreign agent of the Israeli government for its pro-war coverage.
Trump has disingenuously claimed to be anti-war, and MAGA purports to be an isolationist movement opposed to further American military misadventures in the Middle East. But the Republican Party remains dominated by white evangelicals whose views are very much in line with the Cruz position that Carlson took such pains to mock. And despite Bannon’s plaint, Trump remains heavily influenced by Fox and its pro-war and pro-regime change coverage.
MAGA figures like Carlson and Bannon know how to make headlines through viral posts and combative podcasts. But as they likely know just as well as anyone else enmeshed in American right-wing politics, Christian Zionists have spent decades building a movement that runs from church pews to the highest echelons of American power, advocating for the United States to intervene militarily to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Christian Zionists see Iran as a central player in what they say is a biblical prophecy about Jesus’s return. The core tenet of this movement holds that a series of prophesied events, including Jews’ return to Israel and invasion by armies of foreign countries including Iran, will culminate in a bloody, victorious battle at Armageddon. It’s a dangerous mix of warmongering theology and politics, and anyone is right to question it. But the truth is it still undergirds the thinking of many Republicans, including elected officials and other figures in Trump’s orbit.
John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and a top evangelical proponent of both this end-times scenario and U.S. military intervention in Iran, was close to Trump in his first term. After Saturday’s bombing raids, CUFI promptly praised Trump on social media, thanking him for “standing with Israel.” CUFI is hosting its annual summit starting Sunday in Washington, D.C., and you can expect it to feature high praise for Trump.
Elon Musk Watch: Inside Trump’s Destruction of USAID
You might have missed this amid the Iran news, but the New York Times published a harrowing moment-by-moment account of how the Trump administration and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rapidly descended on and destroyed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) within days of Trump assuming office. A cascade of White House edicts, firings, contract cancellations, and spending freezes sent shockwaves throughout the world, crushing, in just days, the vital work of USAID staffers and contractors on programs, including food aid, disease prevention and treatment, and democracy promotion.
But DOGE’s appearance at the agency on January 30, the Times reports, was what “sealed” USAID’s future–or lack of one. In DOGE’s sights was a career official who tried to stop the administration’s firings of agency staff, contending they were unlawful. DOGE had him escorted out of the building, and then seized control of the agency’s computers.
Just in case anyone still believes the fiction that Elon Musk was never actually in charge of DOGE, as he and the administration have attempted to claim in public and in court, he in fact played a central role at USAID, according to the Times. “Employees at first declined to give that kind of [agency computer] access to DOGE, most of whom lacked security clearances, according to people familiar with what happened,” the Times reports. But then, “[m]embers of DOGE got Mr. Musk on the phone, who told U.S.A.I.D. employees to cooperate.”
Two days later, Musk tweeted, “U.S.A.I.D. is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” The next day he crowed on his social media platform X, “We spent the weekend feeding U.S.A.I.D. into the wood chipper. Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”
Senate Parliamentarian Lays Down the Law on the Big Beautiful Bill
The Senate Parliamentarian, the legislative body’s official, nonpartisan advisor on the intricacies of its own rules, has concluded that many key parts of the “Big Beautiful Bill” cannot be included through reconciliation. Republicans had hoped to push a host of insidious priorities through the rapid, simple majority track to passage for budget bills, free of the threat of a filibuster. But Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has said many are not budget items. They include:
- Consumer protection: Cuts to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau so draconian they would eliminate the agency, along with other cuts to the Federal Reserve, the Office of Financial Research, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board;
- Reverse Robin Hood: An attempt to shift Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) costs from the federal government to the states, undermining a key way Republicans hope to find money to fund their massive tax breaks for the wealthy;
- Climate: GOP efforts to gut Biden-era emissions reductions and electric vehicle incentives, along with provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. MacDonough also found against a provision that would have forced the United States Postal Service to scrap its $1.5 billion fleet of electric vehicles and charging equipment;
- Checks and balances: Crucially, MacDonough determined that Republicans could not include their provision to require litigants suing the government to post bond in order to seek emergency relief. If such a provision became law, it would forever shield the Trump administration from the sorts of lawsuits that have proven to be some of the sole checks on his naked power grabs.
Shadow President Stephen Miller
The Wall Street Journal reports on Stephen Miller’s unprecedented power and sway in the Trump 2.0 White House, with a hand in every high-profile decision on immigration and much more, including Trump’s assaults on universities, law firms, and museums. But it’s the mini-scoop in the lede of the piece that is likely of greatest interest to the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, James Boasberg. According to the Journal, it was Miller who, back in March, made the decision to defy Boasberg’s order to return airborne planes carrying detained migrants back to the United States, instead handing them over to the brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador.
Judge Orders Mahmoud Khalil Released from Detention
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, one of Trump’s early targets in his supposed quest to eradicate antisemitism on college campuses, is back home in New York with his family. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz ordered his release from more than three months of detention in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Jena, Louisiana. Khalil said of his time there: “You see a different reality, a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human right[s] and liberty and justice.”
Another Judge Orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Pre-Trial Release
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara D. Holmes has denied the government’s attempts to keep Kilmar Abrego Garcia in pre-trial detention pending the human smuggling case against him in Tennessee. In her 51-page opinion, Holmes called into question the government’s claims about Garcia’s alleged criminality and gang affiliations, noting he “has no reported criminal history of any kind” and “his reputed gang membership is contradicted by the government’s own evidence.” The government nonetheless has pledged to keep him in ICE custody and possibly deport him again.
Texas Theocracy Watch (Again)
Over the weekend, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed two Christian nationalist bills into law. One requires the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms and the other authorizes school districts to permit staff and students time during the school day for prayer.
Speaking of Texas and Christian Nationalism
Trump’s White House Religious Liberty Commission, chaired by Dan Patrick, the Lone Star state’s Lieutenant Governor, had its first meeting in D.C. last week–at the Museum of the Bible. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State’s Alessandro Terenzoni has a disturbing report on the seeming merger of the commission’s work with that of the Department of Justice (DOJ). With Attorney General Pam Bondi as a surprise guest, commission members appeared on stage flanked by a line alternating flags: the American flag and the official flag of the DOJ.
The Rise of a White Nationalist Legal Movement
This past semester, a law student at the University of Florida, Preston Damsky, won an award in an “originalism” seminar, for a racist paper arguing the phrase “we the people” in the Constitution’s preamble refers only to white people. The professor who made the decision to honor this student was John L. Badalamenti, a Trump-nominated federal judge in the Middle District of Florida. Damsky has since been suspended from the law school for a social media post stating that Jews must be “abolished by any means necessary.”
WMD Redux, Trump Capitulation Edition
Who needs Judith Miller when you have Tulsi Gabbard?
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