A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
The Destruction: Civil Rights Edition
If you know, you know.
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has for nearly seven decades been at the forefront of some of the department’s most historically significant work. As a backstop to disenfranchised Americans in the South and minorities nationwide, the Civil Right Division has long been at the vanguard of protecting the rights of “the most vulnerable members of our society,” as it still says on its website.
Reporting in recent days had indicated that a purge of top lawyers in the division was underway, and now there is a full-scale exodus from the division as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon wrenches it from its traditional functions mandated by Congress toward propping up the policies of President Trump:
Since being sworn in this month, civil rights director Harmeet K. Dhillon has redirected her staff to focus on combating antisemitism, the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports and what Trump and his allies have described as anti-Christian bias and the Democrats’ “woke ideology.”
Approximately half of the division’s approximately 380 attorneys have either left or are planning to leave, the NYT reports.
The voting section has come in for especially harsh treatment from the new administration. The Guardian reports that all of the senior managers in the section have been removed and most notably that all active cases have been ordered dismissed.
Dhillon elaborated on her new mission in an appearance over the weekend on Glenn Beck’s podcast, a choice of venue that as former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance noted, “is enough to raise the hairs on the back of the neck of anyone who understands the Justice Department’s non-political mission.”
Jon Greenbaum, a former Civil Rights Division attorney 20 years ago, recounted some of what he’s heard from inside the department and concludes: “This is what we are faced with for the next three and three-quarter years in the Civil Rights Division and the executive branch as a whole: federal agencies that follow the dictates of one person and his friends while largely ignoring their Congressionally mandated responsibilities.”
Trump Judge Gets Burned By Trump
After Morning Memo led yesterday with the awakening of federal judges to the lawlessness of Donald Trump, a splendid new example emerged in the big case trying to block the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The DC Court of Appeals had intervened in the case just a couple of weeks ago, partially overturning U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s preliminary injunction and allowing layoffs to proceed at the CFPB under certain limited conditions.
It was a win for Trump administration, but as is its tendency it wasn’t content with the win. Instead, it pushed the limits of the appeals court ruling beyond recognition by quickly laying off roughly 90% of CFPB personnel while claiming to have complied with the court’s conditions.
Yesterday, after seeing the hash that the administration had made of the court order, one of the Trump appointees on the appeals court panel — Gregory Katsas — flipped and restored the part of the injunction that would block the layoffs and any future layoffs until the courts have had a chance to consider the case in full. The cherry on top was that appeals court acted after the Trump administration went back to it complaining about Judge Jackson, and it took this step on its own to revise its earlier order and reign in the renegade administration.
It turned the Trump win into a Trump loss and converted another federal judge into more of a skeptic. This comes as federal judges worry the administration may withdraw their protection by the U.S. Marshals Service.
Abrego Garcia Remains Wrongfully Imprisoned
As far as we know, Kilmar Abrego Garcia remains incarcerated in El Salvador, where he’s been since March 15 despite being mistakenly deported and a Supreme Court order that his return by facilitated by the Trump administration.
The legal case that produced the Supreme Court decision has been paused since last week for reasons that remain sealed, but it appeared to be intended to give the administration time to work on securing his release. How’s it going? Not well.
Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters yesterday: “He is not coming back to our country. President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story.”
The pause in the case is set to end tomorrow.
The Corruption: Crypto Edition
The NYT, with some strong language on Trump’s crypto firm: “World Liberty Financial has eviscerated the boundary between private enterprise and government policy in ways without precedent in modern American history.”
Good Read
A great vignette from the NYT’s Joseph Goldstein on performative right-wing politics in the age of oligarchy: a North Carolina congressman, a NYC hospital, a Super Bowl ad, and a private jet.
Totally Normal
How The Atlantic secured an interview with President Trump:
So at 10:45 on a Saturday morning in late March, we called him on his cellphone. (Don’t ask how we got his number. All we can say is that the White House staff have imperfect control over Trump’s personal communication devices.) The president was at the country club he owns in Bedminster, New Jersey. The number that flashed on his screen was an unfamiliar one, but he answered anyway. “Who’s calling?” he asked.
The Purges: Head In Sand Edition
The Trump administration has purported to dismiss the hundreds of scientific and technical experts who prepare the congressional mandated National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s flagship report on how global warming is affecting the country, the NYT reports.
DOGE Watch
- NPR: DOGE employees gain accounts on classified networks holding nuclear secrets
- TPM’s Emine Yücel: Trump Allies Prep Plan To Make DOGE Seem Like A Good, Normal, Law-Abiding Operation
- NYT: Peace Corps, Under Review by DOGE, Is Said to Plan ‘Significant’ Staff Cuts
Trump Takes Higher Ed Attacks Up Another Notch
- The Trump Education Department’s sham investigation into the University of Pennsylvania has found that it violated sex discrimination laws by allowing a transgender swimmer to compete on the women’s team and access team facilities.
- The Trump administration ratcheted up its targeting of Harvard with a new sham investigation of the Harvard Law Review “based on reports of race-based discrimination permeating the operations of the journal.”
Liberals Win In Canada
A telling footnote to the Liberal Party victory in Canada’s election is that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre lost his own seat in rural Ottawa.
An Update
Last week I recommended Radley Balko’s story on a Dallas-area lawyer who had helped out a family in which the parents are undocumented immigrants. On the day the story came out, the lawyer was fired by Fidelity National Financial, the Fortune 500 company where he was litigation counsel.
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