A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
A Permanent Coverup Mechanism
In highly unusual public statements about an unprecedented breach of national security at the highest levels of the U.S. government, Attorney General Pam Bondi not only shut the door on investigating whether criminal laws were broken in the Signal group chat fiasco but actively engaged in political attacks and rhetorical spin to defend the Trump administration and assail its critics.
The attorney general, who wears dual hats as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and as a member of the intelligence community, categorically dismissed the prospect of even investigating the matter during public remarks Thursday morning. Bondi quickly pivoted to regurgitating right-wing talking points about the prior mishandling of classified information by Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton:
REPORTER: The Signal chat controversy — is DOJ involved? If so, why? If not, why not?
BONDI: It was sensitive info, not classified. What we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission… if you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was at Hillary Clinton’s home
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 27, 2025 at 12:33 PM
By last evening, in a friendly appearance on Fox News, Bondi was lambasting U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who is overseeing a civil lawsuit seeking to preserve the Signal chat as official government records. In an extraordinary move, Bondi attacked three DC federal judges by name as unable to be impartial or objective before singling out Boasberg for his role in the Signal case:
Bondi has now made public statements assessing the facts and the law of the Signal case while resisting calls for an investigation. These are imply astounding actions by a sitting attorney general.
“The Justice Department’s approach thus far stands in contrast with its customary role of examining serious national-security breaches,” the WSJ reported in the most understated possible way.
The abiding concern all along has been that Trump would place loyalists at the Justice Department in part to protect himself and his administration from legal consequences for their wrongdoing – a permanent coverup mechanism to ignore, bury, and disregard executive branch lawlessness. Pam Bondi is eagerly filling the role of a loyalist attorney general. This is what it looks like.
Signal Group Chat Fiasco: Don’t Delete Your Messages
- U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe “to preserve all Signal communications between March 11 and March 15.”
- President Trump is unwilling to fire officials involved in the Signal group chat “because doing so would be a tacit admission of fault and seen as handing a victory to the Atlantic magazine,” The Guardian reports.
- Israel complained privately after HUMINT it provided for the anti-Houthi airstrike was included in the Signal group chat among U.S. officials.
CORRECTION
The original version of yesterday’s Morning Memo incorrectly described the prisoners who appeared behind DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in her propaganda video as Venezuelan detainees deported under the Alien Enemies Act. They were in fact El Salvadoran prisoners held in the same prison. The mistake was mine.
Tufts Student Whisked To Louisiana Despite Court Order
- A federal judge’s order barring the transfer of detained Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk out of Massachusetts came too late, the Trump administration said. Ozturk is now at a detention facility in Louisiana.
- Ozturk’s student visa was unilaterally revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who revealed that he has revoked some 300 visas for participating in pro-Palestinian activities on campus:
Marco Rubio on Rumeysa Ozturk: “We revoked her visa … once you’ve lost your visa, you’re no longer legally in the United States … if you come into the US as a visitor and create a ruckus for us, we don’t want it. We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 27, 2025 at 1:29 PM
The Latest On Trump’s Attack On Higher Ed
- The University of Michigan, a national leader in diversity efforts in higher ed, is shuttering its DEI offices.
- Case Western Reserve University, Ohio’s largest private university, has shut down its DEI office under pressure from the Trump administration.
- The Trump DOJ has launched an anti-DEI investigation into admissions policies at Stanford, UC-Berkely, UCLA, and UC-Irvine.
Trump Targets WilmerHale In New EO
President Trump’s retribution spree continued with an executive order targeting law firm WilmerHale, which at one point employed former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who led the investigation into Trump’s relationship with Russia in the 2016 campaign and its aftermath. In a statement, WilmerHale indicated it will challenge the executive order, which is similar in form and substance to the other Trump executive orders targeting the legal profession.
In other developments:
- Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom is in talks with the Trump White House to avoid being targeted by an executive order of its own.
- The WSJ looks at the Perkins Coie’s decision to fight back against the Trump executive order targeting it.
- Former Perkins Coie Bab Bauer partner examines the deal that the Paul Weiss firm struck with the Trump White House to get the president to rescind the executive order against it:
Paul Weiss disregarded the lawlessness of Trump’s actions, which is lawlessness of a particularly pernicious kind: punishing lawyers for representing clients or causes personally offensive to this president. Perhaps a different kind of business might sensibly conclude that it should do what it could to placate a hostile administration. But a law firm, in this instance a leading one, is not any kind of business: It is a professional association with obligations not only to its clients, but to the legal system itself.
Trump Takes Aim At Other Targets In Fresh Batch Of EOs
In addition to the Wilmer Hale executive order, President Trump issued new executive orders targeting federal worker unions and whitewashing U.S. history.
Trump Bids To Wield Power Over Elections
Election law expert Rick Hasen digs into Trump’s executive order on elections.
DOGE Watch
- “A federal judge in Maryland admonished the Trump administration for trying to rush her into lifting restrictions on an Elon Musk team seeking access to the private Social Security Administration information of millions of Americans,” Bloomberg reports.
- Rather than mounting a concerted legislative effort to block DOGE’s rampage, Republican lawmakers are scrambling to make personal appeals to head off DOGE cuts, the NYT reports.
- In a Fox News interview, Elon Musk made the preposterous claim that DOGE’s $1 trillion in spending cuts won’t harm federal services
The Purges
- Gov’t wide: Internal White House document shows the Trump administration is preparing to cut between 8 and 50 percent of the workforces of federal agencies, the WaPo reports.
- DHS: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he is axing 10,000 workers in his department.
- NWS: The union that represents workers at the chronically understaffed National Weather Service warns that the Trump administration could shed as much as one-quarter of the agency’s workforce.
Ban On Trans In Military On Shaky Ground
The Trump administration’s ban on trans service members has been blocked for the second time, when a federal judge in Washington state intervened yesterday shortly after the DC Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay on an earlier court ruling that blocked the ban. Notably, even though the appeals court was siding with the Trump administration, it used unusual language to suggest the Pentagon should not take any adverse action against trans personnel while the sorted things out. Chris Geidner has the play by play in real time from yesterday (scroll down past the first section).
Vances Visit U.S. Base In Greenland
After widespread local revulsion over their planned visit to Greenland today, Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha will now only stop at a U.S. military base. The cultural exchanges that were originally part of the trip have been jettisoned.
So Damn Sad To Witness
Canada is reorienting itself to the fact that its southern neighbor is no longer a benign presence:
Carney: “The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 27, 2025 at 3:57 PM
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