A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
First Came The Purges …
It’s always the same with Trump. His attacks on his foes usually telegraph not what they’re doing, but what he plans to do himself. So it is with the Deep State.
You have probably seen by now the Trump OPM’s new hiring policy which was unveiled last week. It is a road map for creating a politicized federal workforce – a Deep State, if you will. It is a marked departure from decades of efforts to professionalize federal workers and protect them from raw partisan politics. But it is also a logical next step following the mass purges of federal workers: replace them with loyalists.
Most glaringly problematic in the new policy is the essay-writing requirement for applications for positions at GS-05 and above. One of the four required essays comes with this prompt: “How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role?”
It is a green light for hiring to be done on a politicized basis, as political scientist Don Moynihan notes:
I cannot think of anything like this level of politicization being formally introduced into the hiring process. Under the George W. Bush administration, it was a scandal when appointees in the Justice Department were caught scanning candidate CVs for civil servant positions to try to discern their political leanings. Now they will just ask them to explain how they can serve President Trump’s agenda. Within the space of a generation, backdoor politicization practices went from being a source of shame to a formal policy.
What makes the Trump version of politicization arguably worse is that it’s not pinned to ideology or partisan leanings but to personal loyalty and fealty to him. In that, it is arbitrary, ever changing, and subject to constant re-evaluation.
All of this comes against the backdrop of Trump, with the Roberts Court’s blessing, having already neutered the Merit Systems Protection Board and other mechanisms for protecting federal workers. As Moynihan suggests, Trump in breaking the existing merit system is unleashing vast consequences that will take generations to fix.
The Corruption: The New Gilded Age Edition
- NBC News: “In four months, the Trump administration has dismantled key parts of that law enforcement infrastructure, creating what experts say is the ripest environment for corruption by public officials and business executives in a generation.”
- The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos wanders through the New Gilded Age America like a man in a foreign country: “In a matter of weeks, the flood of cash swirling around the White House swamped whatever bulwarks against corruption remained in American law and culture.”
- NBC News: Trump pardons drive a big, burgeoning business for lobbyists.
Quote Of The Day
“He’s dismantling not just the means of prosecuting public corruption, but he’s also dismantling all the means of oversight of public corruption. The law is only for his enemies now.”–Paul Rosenzweig, a George Washington University law professor who was a senior homeland security official in the Bush II administration, on President Trump
Peter Navarro Successfully Runs Out The Clock
The Trump DOJ has abruptly dropped the civil lawsuit to force Trump White House official Peter Navarro to turn over to the National Archives his Proton emails from the Trump I presidency.
Jan. 6 Prosecutor Resigns From DOJ
Greg Rosen, who was the chief of the Capitol Siege Section of the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, resigned from the Justice Department last week after being demoted by former interim D.C. U.S. attorney Ed Martin.
Good Point
Lisa Rubin, on the Trump’s one-two punch against the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society:
[I]n an era where fidelity to the whims of Trump is far more important than allegiance to any conservative legal agenda, much less the rule of law, Trump aims to be the sole arbiter of who’s qualified and fit for federal judgeships.
If Trump can reduce or even eliminate both the ABA’s and the Federalist Society’s impact on the judicial selection process, he’ll become the only judge of judges who matters — which is exactly, I would posit, how he wants it.
It Fooled Kristi Noem
A Milwaukee man allegedly tried to get a witness in the armed robbery case against him deported so he wouldn’t be able to testify. Seizing on anti-immigrant fervor, the man sent letters in the name of the witness threatening to assassinate President Trump. The witness was arrested, but law enforcement eventually figured out the scheme and have filed new charges against the imposter, but not before DHS Secretary Kristi Noem trumpeted the initial arrest.
Federal Judge Enforces Trans Care In Prisons
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth of D.C., an 81-year-old Reagan appointee, issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from ending hormone therapy and social accommodations for transgender inmates in federal prisons, while the lawsuit proceeds.
Gratuitous
In a decision reportedly timed to coincide with Pride month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to strip Harvey Milk’s name from an eponymous naval vessel. The assassinated gay icon was a Navy veteran.
“The Harvey Milk is a John Lewis-class oiler, a group of ships that are to be named after prominent civil rights leaders and activists,” Military.com reports.
Other ships in that class are also being targeted by Hegseth for renaming, CBS News reports. They include the:
- USNS Thurgood Marshall
- USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- USNS Harriet Tubman
- USNS Dolores Huerta
- USNS Lucy Stone
- USNS Cesar Chavez
- USNS Medgar Evers
Clarification
Yesterday’s Morning Memo said the National Park Service’s decision to close D.C.’s Dupont Circle event for an upcoming Pride event this month was made on “what is clearly a pretextual basis,” but it’s subsequently been confirmed that the request for the closure came from the D.C. police chief, who reversed her position yesterday. It remains up to the U.S. Park Police, which jurisdiction over the space, to decide whether to keep it open for the Pride event.
Happens In A Flash
The first eruption from Yellowstone’s Black Diamond Pool captured on video since last summer’s much larger hydrothermal explosion:
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