A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
The Ugly Reconciliation Bill Is Also Unpopular
Public support for the One Big Beautiful Bill is remarkably underwater by double digits in multiple polls, NBC reports. Similarly, bombing Iran is not popular, Greg Sargent explains at The New Republic. An analysis last week by the Pew Research Center found respondents had “mixed to negative views” on Trump’s immigration policies. The least popular actions, with the public disapproving by nine or more percentage points, were ICE raids at workplaces (-9%), building more detention facilities (-12%), ending Temporary Protected Status (-20%), suspending asylum applications (-21%), and deporting people to the CECOT prison in El Salvador (-24%).
DHS v. D.V.D. Fallout: Wildly Unconstitutional Chutzpah
Another clash between the Trump administration and the courts is coming to a head in a case involving a group of migrants that the Trump administration wants to deport to South Sudan. Government lawyers on Tuesday accused federal district judge Brian Murphy of defying the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing third-country removals to proceed.
Murphy had asserted that the court’s decision, which stayed a lower court’s preliminary injunction, did not affect a separate “order of remedy” applicable specifically to the men slated for removal to South Sudan. It was a reasonable conclusion because, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor made clear in her dissent—uncontested by the majority—the government had appealed the preliminary injunction, but not that other order. Nonetheless, government lawyers promptly accused Murphy of “unprecedented defiance” of the Supreme Court’s decision, insisting that it applied to all the orders Murphy has issued. The government then filed a motion at the high court, seeking clarification.
Lawfare’s Roger Parloff points out that in addition to asking the high court to clarify its Monday order (which arguably does not need any clarification), government lawyers also asked the justices to prevent Judge Murphy from issuing any further injunctions, or to remove him from the case. The government clearly sees Monday’s order as an open invitation not only to flout lower court orders, but also to recruit the right-wing justices in a campaign of retribution against the judges who enter them.
Meanwhile the risks to people caught up in the administration’s third-country disappearances are not remote or hypothetical. Nick Turse reports at the Intercept that the administration has been using “strong-arm tactics,” including threats of travel bans, in attempts to browbeat (aka “make deals with”) 53 different nations, “including many that are beset by conflict or terrorist violence or that the State Department has excoriated for human rights abuses.”
Secret Police Alert
The Los Angeles Times has a chilling report on the terror being waged on immigrant communities by unidentified people, purportedly federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, in ways that have kept even local elected officials and law enforcement in the dark as to their identity.
While the piece offers little hope for legally challenging these crackdowns, it does describe how public backlash to them can go viral, provoking officers to back down:
In a video posted to Instagram from Pasadena, a suspected federal agent is seen exiting a Dodge Charger at an intersection and pointing his gun at members of the public.
In the video, a person walks up to the back of the Dodge Charger and appears to take a photo of the license plate. That’s when the driver gets out of the vehicle and points a gun at the person who was behind the vehicle, then toward another person outside of the video frame. The word “Police” is visible on the driver’s vest, along with a badge on his hip. After a few seconds, the man puts the gun away and gets back into the car as bystanders shout at him. The man then activates the vehicle’s red and blue lights common to law enforcement vehicles and drives away.
The car, the Times reports, had a “cold” license plate, a tactic typically used by undercover cops to make the plate untraceable.
When Local Police Help ICE
In Jackson, Mississippi earlier this month, local police arrested Kerlin Moreno-Orellana for alleged illegal dumping when he was at work, performing tasks as directed by his boss. Now he’s in ICE detention.
The Mississippi Free Press reports:
What followed Moreno-Orellana’s arrest is a testament to the vast system behind U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s many detentions and deportations, both in the second Trump era and before. An automated message arrived at the office of the Pacific Enforcement Response Center, or PERC, in Laguna Niguel, California. ICE agents flagged Moreno-Orellana and forwarded it to the nearest ICE field office, likely one in Pearl, Mississippi.
That office then put a detainer on Moreno-Orellana, a controversial practice that immigrant activists argue conscripts local police officers into the already enormous apparatus of ICE enforcement. The Hinds County Sheriff’s Department complied with that detainer, turning Moreno-Orellana over to ICE Thursday morning.
Then, Moreno-Orellana boarded the same long ride to Jena, Louisiana, that so many other Mississippi immigrants have experienced, often while bound and shackled, to be deposited in the crowded cells of the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center. For now, nothing in his life is certain, least of all the day when his children will see him again.
Corruption Watch: Is Stephen Miller Profiting from Juiced-Up ICE Enforcement?
The Project on Government Oversight digs into fresh disclosures of Stephen Miller’s and other administration officials’ investments in the Peter Thiel-founded Silicon Valley giant Palantir Technologies, whose data systems ICE has described as “mission critical.”
Russell Vought’s Path to Christian Nationalist
Religion News Service’s Jack Jenkins has a deep dive into the religious ideology of Russell Vought, Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget and a key architect of Project 2025, the far-right blueprint for Trump’s second term. Jenkins details “how Christian nationalism provides the ideological foundation for Vought’s plan to gut federal government and curtail immigration through the expansion of executive power.”
Come for Vought’s fake John Quincy Adams quotes and stay for how he believes the Bible contains “principles for thoughtful, limited immigration and emphasizing assimilation.” America, Vought has said, needs “Christians insistent on being responsible stewards of a blessing that has been God-given: to live in this land, this particular land.”
Lie of the Day
House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed yesterday, “We are not cutting Medicaid. The president has said that and I have said that. We’re all said that. We’re strengthening the program.” Johnson has said this before. And it’s still not true.
No, Wait, There’s Stiff Competition
During a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. claimed that he had never promised Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) that, if confirmed, he would keep the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices intact. Cassidy has said that pledge was key to his decision to vote for his confirmation, but Kennedy purged the committee two weeks ago. Cassidy has called for a delay in convening the newly constituted panel of anti-vaxxers.
The Muskian Dystopia
In the Atlantic, Charlie Warzel and Hana Kiros assess Elon Musk’s assault on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the context of the billionaire’s racist, eugenicist, natalist views on the virtues of “Western civilization.” It’s a portrait of an unhinged narcissist beyond the imaginings of the most dystopian science fiction:
Cutting global aid frees up resources that can be used to help Americans, who, in turn, can work toward advancing Western civilization, in part by pursuing a MAGA political agenda and funding pronatalist programs that allow for privileged people (ideally white and “high IQ”) to have more children. The thinking seems to go like this: Who cares if people in South Sudan and Somalia die? Western civilization will thrive and propagate itself across the cosmos.
In other DOGE news, Wired reports that Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, the 19-year-old ground floor DOGE staffer deployed to multiple government agencies, including USAID, no longer works for the government.
Do Not Forget
Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, killed in a political assassination targeted at Democrats at her home earlier this month, will lie in state with her husband Mark and their golden retriever Gilbert at the Minnesota Capitol Friday. Their surviving children, Sophie and Colin, have asked that people honor their parents’ memory by doing “something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else.”
A Mayoral Upset in NYC
In a remarkable upset, disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has conceded to democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. The result could well mark a party shift away from a fossilized old guard towards younger, progressive candidates determined to address income inequality and other quality of life concerns of Democratic voters.
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