A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
‘It Sends Little Chills Down My Spine’
In a closely watched emergency hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell quickly recognized the threat to the rule of law posed by President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie – and moved immediately to issue an order blocking key portions of it.
“I am sure that many in the legal profession are watching in horror at what Perkins Coie is going through here,” Howell said. “The order casts a chilling harm of blizzard proportions across the legal profession.”
Howell is not alone. Duke law professor Samuel W. Buell, a former prosecutor, told the NYT: “This is certainly the biggest affront to the legal profession in my lifetime.”
The executive order, among other things, sought to terminate government contracts with Perkins Coie or “with entities that do business with Perkins Coie”; denied Perkins Coie employees access to federal buildings and officials; and stripped them of security clearances.
In an unusual twist and a possible sign that career DOJ lawyers want nothing to do with the case, the executive order was defended in court by Chad Mizelle, the Justice Department’s chief of staff who is also serving as the DOJ’s acting No. 3.
Mizelle struggled to allay Howell’s concerns about the constitutionality of the executive order.
“This may be amusing in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where the Queen of Hearts yells, ‘Off with their heads!’ at annoying subjects … and announces a sentence before a verdict,” Howell said, “but this cannot be the reality we are living under.”
Meanwhile, the NYT reported that other big law firms were hesitant to defend Perkins Coie, which was “rebuffed” by at least one firm before Williams & Connolly rose to the occasion.
“I have enormous respect for Williams & Connolly,” Howell said in court, “and enormous respect for them taking this case when not every law firm would.”
What We Don’t Know About Ed Martin’s Shenanigans
Acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin has been up to far more mischief than has been publicly revealed so far, the WaPo suggests (emphasis added):
The letter is the latest among an estimated 20 inquiries that people close to Martin estimate he has sent since taking office Jan. 20 as the top federal prosecutor in the nation’s largest U.S. attorney office. Among those that have become public, Martin has demanded information from figures such as Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York), Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California), the legal disciplinary counsel’s office over the D.C. Bar and the dean of Georgetown University’s law school.
Chutkan Slams Gov’t Conduct In Crazy EPA Case
The Trump administration’s over-the-top effort to claw back Biden-era EPA grants was tested in open court for the first time, and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan was having none of it.
To orient you a bit, this case is a civil lawsuit brought by one of the grant recipients seeking to unfreeze monies it was due, so the case doesn’t directly touch on the Trump DOJ’s baseless effort to use criminal process to freeze the funds and intimidate the bank holding them and the grant recipients. Those corrupt efforts by acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, you’ll recall, led to the forced resignation of a senior prosecutor who refused to go along with it.
But even in the confines of the civil case, Chutkan said the government needed to provide some basis for freezing the funds: “Can you proffer any evidence that [the grant] was illegal, or evidence of abuse or fraud or bribery — that any of that was improperly or unlawfully done, other than the fact that Mr. Zeldin doesn’t like it?” Chutkan asked the DOJ lawyer, referring to EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, who purported to terminate the entire $20 billion program the day before the hearing, the timing of which also chagrined Chutkan.
Quote Of The Day
“My ethical duty as a Department of Justice employee — and now a former one — is to the laws of the United States and the people that I was entrusted to serve. It is not to the bullies who are currently running the Department of Justice.”–Elizabeth Oyer, the U.S. pardon attorney fired by the Trump DOJ after not agreeing to restore Mel Gibson’s gun rights
The Pattern Isn’t Hard To Detect
President Trump has pardoned a Republican former Tennessee state senator in prison for his conviction in a campaign finance scheme. Brian Kelsey, who at one point represented by Trump White House Counsel David Warrington, was released from prison after serving two weeks of a 21-month sentence.
DOGE Watch
- U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan became the first judge to order Elon Musk to produce documents in a court challenge to DOGE’s slash-and-burn attack on the federal government.
- DOGE is making its latest errors harder to find.
- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the chair of the House DOGE subcommittee, called for the Trump DOJ to investigate recent attacks on Tesla properties.
The New Spoils System
Don Moynihan: “Trump and Musk are engaged in a broad-based downsizing of government, using that downsizing to selectively target their enemies, while expanding their political power by trading exceptions to the downsizing.”
Social Security Is Suffering Under Trump
- ProPublica: Recording Reveals Head Of Social Security’s Thoughts On DOGE And Trump
- WaPo: Social Security scraps far-reaching cuts to phone services after Post report
The Purges
- FLRA: In a new ruling, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ordered the reinstatement of Susan Grundmann to her post on the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
- DoE: The Trump administration is gutting the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights.
- HHS: The workforce at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration could be slashed by as much as half as soon as this week.
Corporate America Avoids Standing Up To Trump
The WSJ has a very good anecdote on the gap between the private dismay corporate CEOs express over President Trump’s economic policies, particularly tariffs, and what they’re willing to say publicly to his face,
Senate Dems Getting Squeezed
The House-passed continuing resolution has put Senate Democrats in a tough spot. Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is trying to massage his way out of it with procedural and messaging maneuvering, TPM’s Emine Emine Yücel reports:
The short-term CR and the push for a bipartisan spending bill are believed to be part of a messaging effort by Democrats who want to be able to say they did not roll over and accept the MAGA funding bill that House Republicans and President Donald Trump are shoving down their throats.
Punchbowl runs through the most likely scenarios.
Khalil Still Detained In Louisiana
In a brief hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman of Manhattan did not immediately order the return of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil from detention in Louisiana but did allow his lawyers to have access to him by telephone.
In the jurisdictional fight over whether Furman can hear the case, the government said for the first time that Khalil was already in New Jersey by the time his lawyers filed court papers in New York to secure his release. No ruling yet from Furman on jurisdiction.
The government still hasn’t provided in open court its legal basis for detaining Khalil, but the WaPo obtained the Notice to Appear given to Khalil and it cites only a unilateral decision by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Khalil’s presence in the United States could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Meanwhile, the journalism school at Columbia, where Khalil led protests, warned its international students not to publish anything on on Gaza, Ukraine, or the Khalil case. “Nobody can protect you,” Dean Jelani Cobb said. “These are dangerous times.”
Trump EPA Rolls Back Environmental Regs
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin declared that his agency’s new mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business,” making no mention of protecting the environment or public health, the NYT reports.
RIP Mark Klein
Mark Klein, the AT&T whistleblower who revealed the National Security Agency’s bulk electronic surveillance during the presidency of George W. Bush, has reportedly died.
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