Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
One feature of MAGA authoritarian planning is its ineptitude. Think back to January 6: yes, it was a coup attempt — the violent culmination of a multi-month campaign to reverse the election result. But, it was also oddly lackadaisical: it’s still unclear if there was one plan for what to do; Trump backed off after it became clear that the rioters were being dispersed.
That’s not to diminish the seriousness so much as it is to note that it’s a feature, not a bug. Dan Bongino, the FBI’s deputy director, is a case in point.
Bongino had spent years as a podcaster and conservative influencer before Trump nominated him to the FBI this year. It was a comparatively easy job, and one that came with substantial influence: he took over Rush Limbaugh’s spot after the talk radio host’s death, and was able to make money selling merch and hold an ownership stake in conservative video platform Rumble, via his company.
The problem is, Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, doesn’t like it.
“I gave up everything for this,” Bongino complained to Fox News earlier this year, adding that he has to show up for work at 7:30 a.m. ET.
“I stare at these four walls all day in D.C., by myself, divorced from my wife. Not divorced, but I mean separated, divorced. And it’s hard. I mean, we love each other, and it’s hard to be apart,” he added.
It’s only gotten harder to be Dan. He reportedly mulled leaving the bureau in July, over the Epstein files (sure); eventually, Trump appointed Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to help him co-run the FBI.
Since then, he’s been oddly diminished, even as the Trump administration has tried to muscle the FBI into an era of overt politicization not seen in decades. He complained about some reporting of the Charlie Kirk murder, and made a desultory remark about the assassin being influenced by left-wing ideologies, but really? It’s been low energy. Other parts of his pre-FBI empire continue to hum on.
A company now controlled by his wife, Bongino Inc., still sells merch. Gulf of America and Alligator Alcatraz tees go for $30 each.
— Josh Kovensky
Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:
- The Trump White House’s has put forward many threats about how it claims it will punish Democrats and the Americans who vote for them.
- North Carolina’s Democratic governor is being vocal about his interest in attempting to oppose state Republicans’ efforts to redraw some of North Carolina’s congressional maps to help their party keep the House in the midterms. This comes after Republicans in the state legislature were successful in stripping Gov. Josh Stein of some of his authority over elections before he even came into office.
- The Trump administration has chosen to use the shutdown to obscure numbers that suggest the president’s policies are crippling the U.S. economy. But ending Bureau of Labor Statistics operations during a government shutdown isn’t necessarily unique to the second Trump administration.
The Trump Admin’s Many Shutdown Threats
We are only a few days into the government shutdown. And already the Trump White House and the Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought have been broadcasting their not-so-secret plan to ransack the federal government and make this shutdown as “painful” as possible for Democrats — and the people who vote for them.
President Donald Trump and Vought have been threatening mass, permanent layoffs in federal agencies — instead of the usual furloughs we would see during a government shutdown.
Additionally, the duo are using the shutdown as an excuse to cancel billions of dollars in federal funding for energy and infrastructure projects in blue states. Vought has also announced the administration put on hold $2.1 billion in federal funding for Chicago infrastructure projects and $18 billion for two major infrastructure projects in New York City since the shutdown began on Wednesday.
“The longer this goes on, the more pain will be inflicted,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told reporters on day one of the shutdown.
Some of this is merely threatened; some is real. But all of it — as it has been explicitly articulated by the White House, President Trump, Vought and some congressional Republicans — is designed to punish Democrats for not voting with Republicans on the GOP CR and instead requesting some health care measures be restored and extended in exchange for their votes. Democrats are also pushing for measures to be put into place so that the Trump White House stops impounding congressionally approved funds. But, as evidenced by the deployment of National Guard troops to blue cities under the guise of a crackdown on crime and various executive orders threatening to pull federal funds from blue cities that have sanctuary policies in place, the shutdown is just an excuse to make good on those ongoing threats.
“If [Democrats] don’t want further harm on their constituents back home, then they need to reopen the government,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday, as if the President of the United States only serves the people who voted for him.
If you still have any questions around how purposeful all of this is … Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) was on Fox News this week laying it all out.
“They’re doing it deliberately,” Lee said. “Russ Vought, The OMB Director, has been dreaming about this moment, preparing this moment, since puberty.”
But not every Republican is as giddy about the retribution rollercoaster Vought and the White House is on.
“I worry a little bit that they could be counterproductive for us politically in the long run because other things are going to require 60 votes again,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told reporters on Wednesday when asked if he is worried about Vought’s threats.
— Emine Yücel
North Carolina Dem Gov Fights Trump’s Redistricting Pressure Campaign
Democratic North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein has called out Republican-led redistricting efforts in his state — which have come about as part of the Trump administration’s larger pressure campaign on Republican-controlled state legislatures, seeking to strongarm them into engaging in mid-cycle redistricting to help the party hold the U.S. House in the midterms.
As it stands now, North Carolina’s congressional map includes four seats represented by Democrats and ten by Republicans. A redrawn map could help Republicans win in the 1st Congressional District, which is currently held by Democratic Rep. Don Davis.
According to reporting from NC Newsline, Stein described the Republican campaign to redraw the North Carolina map as “ridiculous.”
“We just redistricted for the second time last cycle. So every two years is the theory that we’re gonna redistrict, so we can maximize the political advantage to stick it to one party and enhance another party?” he said, per NC Newsline. “We cannot get into this maximalist political power worldview because it will destroy this country.”
“We have to be able to recognize, sometimes you win an election, sometimes you lose an election. When you lose, you gather your forces, you work hard, you try to convince the voters the next time,” Stein added.
It’s not the first time, even in recent memory, that Republicans in North Carolina have attempted to mess with elections in the state for political reasons. Republicans in that same state legislature attempted to strip Stein of his authority before he even came into office.
In the final days of its veto-proof supermajority, the GOP-controlled state legislature implemented legislation last year that gave the then-newly elected Republican state auditor, Dave Boliek, power over the state’s five-member state election board. This is a responsibility that is historically given to the governor, and not the state auditor.
— Khaya Himmelman
The BLS Isn’t Publishing Data During the Shutdown
It’s startling that, amid a culture within the Trump administration of manipulating data even when the government is functioning, the shutdown has brought federal data collection and publishing to a halt. At the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for instance, Friday’s crucial monthly jobs report was not published. The Trump administration has chosen to use the shutdown to obscure numbers that suggest his economic policies are crippling the U.S. economy. But ending BLS operations during a government shutdown isn’t necessarily unique to the second Trump administration and the jobs report pause is, perhaps, not as sinister as some of the other ways in which the Trump White House is weaponizing the shutdown.
In 2013, when Obama’s BLS Commissioner Erica Groshen was in charge, the bureau stopped functioning, but “left open the possibility of publishing certain data,” a Bloomberg report from the time said. Ultimately, though, the data was held up. Wells Fargo Senior Economist Michael Pugliese wrote in a recent analysis that the monthly jobs report and the inflation reports were delayed by about two weeks. “[D]ata quality for the period reflecting the shutdown was largely unaffected,” Pugliese wrote, but fewer prices were used to calculate the CPI immediately following the shutdown.
The 2019 shutdown was different. The Bureau under Trump BLS Commissioner William Beach was able to publish data because Congress had already funded the Department of Labor with one of 12 appropriations bills.
— Layla A. Jones
