A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
More Bad News for Bove
A third whistleblower has come forward to the Senate Judiciary Committee, charging that Emil Bove, Trump’s nominee for a lifetime appointment to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, misled senators during his confirmation hearing, the Washington Post reports.
This latest whistleblower follows two others who accused Bove of telling Justice Department attorneys to ignore court orders blocking Trump’s deportations. Specifically, former DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni said that Bove had told department lawyers to say “fuck you” to judges blocking Trump’s scheme to render Venezuelan detainees to an El Salvador prison. Bove claimed in his confirmation hearing he did not recall saying this.
“We have substantial information relevant to the truthfulness of the nominee,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said in a floor speech yesterday. But Senate Republicans have shown no interest in even finding out what the new whistleblower has to say.
The opposition of Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) is insufficient to deprive the Republicans of the 50-vote majority necessary to confirm someone who allegedly told DOJ attorneys to flout court orders to be a judge for the rest of his life. Bove is 44.
Meanwhile, a New Jersey defense attorney is seeking to have drug and gun charges dismissed against his client on the grounds that Alina Habba’s second appointment as interim U.S. Attorney was “under questionable legal authority,” Politico reports. Even if the motion is ultimately unsuccessful, it points to potential turmoil and disruptions as a result of the supposedly tough-on-crime Trump administration’s extreme measures to keep his close ally in power as the state’s top federal prosecutor.
As Morning Memo reported last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi thumbed her nose at an order issued by federal judges in New Jersey, who had blocked Habba’s continued appointment following the expiration of her 120-day interim term. (Bondi said that DOJ “does not tolerate rogue judges — especially when they threaten the President’s core Article II powers.”) Trump then withdrew Habba’s nomination to serve in the role permanently (subject to Senate confirmation). That cleared the way for Bondi to make Habba her “chief deputy” — a maneuver that in turn allowed her to reappoint Habba for an additional 210-day interim term.
If Bove is confirmed to the Third Circuit, he potentially could be on a panel of judges to hear appeals of challenges to Habba’s or any other DOJ-installed U.S. Attorney’s appointment in New Jersey.
Trump Administration Greenlights Proselytizing in the Federal Workplace
Under a memo issued by the Office of Personnel Management yesterday, federal workers are permitted to talk to their co-workers about their religion, including engaging a colleague “in polite discussion of why his faith is correct and why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs.” They are also allowed to engage in religious displays, conversations, or prayer in public spaces and with members of the public.
All of the examples of protected conduct cited in the memo involve Christianity or Judaism, but not other religions. The memo cites the acceptability of displaying a cross, crucifix, rosary beads, mezuzah, tefillin, or Star of David, or of citing or keeping a Bible at one’s desk. It does not cite any examples of permissible workplace religious expression from Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, or other religions.
Christian nationalists have long portrayed a secular workplace as one that discriminates against conservative Christians, who claim that their religious freedom demands they be allowed to share the gospel with co-workers or refuse service to prospective clients or the public on the grounds their conscience forbids same-sex marriage, for example. While the movement has long focused on private workplaces, the new OPM guidance exemplifies how the Trump administration’s plans to completely remake the federal workplace include Christianizing it. Project 2025 envisioned a broad Christianization of the federal government and American workplaces, calling on the new administration to “enact policies with robust respect for religious exercise in the workplace, including under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), Title VII, and federal conscience protection laws,” and to “provide robust accommodations for religious employees.”
Speaking of Project 2025
Project 2025 author and former Heritage Foundation official Paul Dans has announced a primary challenge to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) next year. During the height of the 2024 presidential campaign, Dans had stepped down from his Heritage post amid rising public opposition to Project 2025, and the Trump campaign’s duplicitous effort to “distance” him from the controversial policy tome. Now Dans is accusing Graham of “betraying” the state’s conservatives, and is taking credit for helping Trump “implement the America First agenda that’s reshaping America into the country we have always dreamed of.” Former Trump campaign advisor Chris LaCivita, now advising Graham, accused Dans of having attempted to “torpedo” Trump’s 2024 prospects, and ominously predicted his Senate primary campaign would “end prematurely.”
That’s right: Dans left Heritage because he was supposedly talking too much about the blueprint document that the Trump administration has since largely implemented, and Graham’s campaign is accusing him of having tried to torpedo Trump’s campaign by being too public about it.
Speaking of Religious Freedom
Several non-MAGA religious denominations have filed a fourth lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s rescission of a 2011 policy restricting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at “sensitive locations,” including houses of worship. The plaintiffs, which include several synods of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, three Quaker groups, American Baptist Churches USA, Alliance of Baptists, and Metropolitan Community Churches, allege that ICE raids and the prospect of ICE raids at houses of worship infringe on congregants’ ability to participate in religious services and fulfill religious obligations. The raids are not hypothetical: the complaint cites several arrests outside of California churches since the Trump administration ended the sensitive location policy.
Christian Right Activists Suddenly Concerned Some of Their Own Might Be Deported
Although Trump’s anti-immigrant policies are widely supported by white evangelicals, some leaders are now worrying that deportations might sweep up some of their fellow travelers, including parishioners and pastors. At Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla reports on an episode of Christian right activist Jim Garlow’s podcast “sound[ing] the alarm over the prospect that tens of thousands of Latino Christians could be forcibly deported from the United States because of the Trump administration’s policies.”
Feds Forced to Drop Charges Against Anti-ICE Protesters in L.A.
Federal immigration officers in Los Angeles made false or misleading statements about the arrests of protesters against Trump administration crackdowns earlier this month, the Guardian reports. As a result, in addition to the previously reported refusal of grand juries to indict protesters, federal prosecutors have also been forced to drop felony charges against some protesters who had been charged with assaulting or impeding officers.
The Making of Trump’s “Border Attack Dog”
The Phoenix New Times’ Stephen Lemons is out with a deep dive into Trump’s vicious “border czar,” Tom Homan, a veteran of Arizona immigration enforcement under Republican and Democratic presidents whose former colleagues remember as a “reasonable” person who “abhorred Donald Trump.” But now:
In the second Trump administration, Homan seems to be enjoying all the attention that helming a cruel and chaotic mass deportation scheme has afforded him. The 63-year-old — that’s a year younger than George Clooney, though Homan appears a million city miles older — has become a mainstay of conservative media. He threatens to arrest Democratic lawmakers who oppose the actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents whom he’s let off the leash. He gloats over the abduction and removal of non-criminal migrants to foreign gulags. He peddles bullshit about the doxing of ICE agents to justify hiding their identities. Ironically, considering how much his agents conceal their faces, Homan’s love of the MAGA spotlight has made his craggy visage one of the most recognizable among Trump’s cronies.
In Epstein Scramble, Mike Johnson Blames Democrats for His Early House Summer Recess
In an interview with the Family Research Council’s radio program This Week on Capitol HIll, the House Speaker claimed that Democrats are to blame for the House calling an early recess to avoid a possible vote to force the Trump administration to release the Epstein files.
Although MAGA influencers have spent years clamoring for the release of the Epstein files, it has not been a huge issue for the Christian right. That’s why Johnson could mislead that audience into believing the whole transparency debate is the Democrats’ fault, accusing them of an underhanded attempt to derail Trump’s agenda. Displaying some serious chutzpah, Johnson claimed the Democrats are “suddenly trying to manufacture something … with the so-called Epstein files.”
Elon Musk Still the DOGE Villain
Unidentified creative activists have been displaying a 12-foot high replica of Elon Musk’s head at national parks this summer, seeking to link longer wait times with DOGE cuts of National Park Service staff. They have wheeled the head on a flatbed bearing signage reading “Make America Wait Again” and “Now With Longer Lines Thanks To Doge Cuts!”
Important Read
Princeton University authoritarianism expert Kim Lane Scheppele lays out the stakes in Trump’s assaults on universities, and how to combat them.
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