A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Once a Reality TV Star, Always a Reality TV Star
The Apprentice isn’t the only, or even the best, prism with which to view Donald Trump’s approach to politics, but it is an essential one.
Trump is always putting on a show in which he will always be, if not the hero, then at least the strong protagonist, and he needs villains. Lots and lots of villains to vanquish. But not just any villains. He needs villains whose defeat touches the deepest, darkest parts of the American psyche. And so the villains he picks often wind up being people of color, women and foreigners, and what they may lack in actual villainy he makes up for by casting them as derangedly violent or sexually deviant or otherwise sinister in comic book ways.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — a Black woman — fits the bill for Trump, and it appears that she will have a recurring role in Trump’s rogue gallery.
Yesterday, in a made-for-Fox-News stunt, heavily armed federal immigration agents swept through Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park in a dramatic but mostly ineffectual set-piece that seemed designed more to antagonize locals than to serve any legitimate law enforcement purpose. On cue, Bass rushed to the park and later denounced the maneuver at a press conference. “What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation,” Bass lamented.
Calling it a stunt doesn’t make it any less threatening or alarming, but it does suggest a need to be self-aware about getting caught up in the Trump-created drama and playing to the type he has cast. That’s easier for the rest of us than for local elected Democrats or others unwillingly caught in one of Trump’s reality TV episodes, especially those who are powerless and vulnerable.
The president of the Los Angeles City Council, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, understood the game, noting wryly: “If you want to film in L.A., you should apply for a film permit like everybody else.”
In preserving your self-awareness, it helps to remember your audience. Trump is playing to his own with a well-worn script that has the rough contours of a pro-wrestling bit. Leading the “raid” of the park was Gregory Bovino, a Customs and Border Protection official who played the boastful tough guy with a puffed-out chest.
“Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon,” Bovino told a Fox News reporter. “We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”
And then there is the right-wing propaganda machine. It gobbles up the Trump-generated content and eggs it on, as here where a host questions Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin about why Bass hasn’t been arrested:
Of course, the Trump administration already arrested Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) when she attempted to conduct oversight at a detention facility in New Jersey. Like Bass, McIver is a Black woman.
It’s Only Going to Get Worse From Here
Garrett Graff, on the One, Big Beautiful Bill and its insane funding level for immigration enforcement: “As someone who has covered federal law enforcement for the last two decades and has spent recent years writing both about the state of democracy today and authoring history books about the fall of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, it’s hard not to look at the new legislation and fear, most of all, how we’re turbo-charging an increasingly lawless regime of immigration enforcement and adding superpowers to America’s newly masked secret police.”
Abrego Garcia Case Slogs On
My report from court yesterday on the U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis efforts to pin down the Trump administration on what it intends to do next to Kilmar Abrego Garcia. She ordered the Trump administration to produce a witness of its choice for a hearing Thursday.
An Important Development
El Salvador told a United Nations body that the detainees shipped to CECOT by the Trump administration remain the “jurisdiction and legal responsibility” of the United States. Lawyers for the detainees filed a UN document, which reported El Salvador’s position, in the original Alien Enemies Act case in DC.
Trump-Targeted Judge Loses First Round on Immunity
Wisconsin state judge Hannah Dugan lost her motion to dismiss the criminal charges against her for allegedly interfering with an immigration enforcement operation in her courthouse. She can appeal the magistrate’s ruling to a district judge.
Good Read
Jason Zengerle: The Ruthless Ambition of Stephen Miller
ICYMI
Michael Feinberg, the senior FBI agent targeted by the Trump administration for his personal friendship with Peter Strzok, recounts his decision to resign after learning from his supervisor that his career would be intentionally stalled.
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