A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
‘This Seems Like It May Be Contempt’
Morning Memo has been carefully tracking where the constitutional clash between President Trump and the judicial branch is most likely to reach its apex first. There’s a new leader in the clubhouse.
In what has been mostly a second-tier immigration case because it doesn’t involve the Alien Enemies Act, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy of Boston has been trying to rein in the Trump administration’s deportation of migrants to third countries without notice or a chance to raise concerns about their safety.
But that case has morphed into what is increasingly looking like a constitutional showdown, with Murphy holding an emergency hearing last night after evidence emerged that as many as a dozen migrants were flown yesterday to South Sudan without notice or hearing, in apparent violation of Murphy’s temporary order.
“Based on what I have been told, this seems like it may be contempt,” Murphy said, according to the NYT, one of the few news outlets able to cover last night’s emergency hearing.
During the hearing, the Trump administration lawyers either didn’t know or refused to divulge key information to Murphy, claiming the details of the removals – including the status of the plane and its ultimate destination – were classified.
One key but unverified piece of information emerged in the hearing, which Murphy recessed a couple of times for the Trump administration lawyers to try to obtain more details. As to one particular migrant whose initials are N.M. and is from Myanmar, a Trump DOJ lawyer said he was returned home to Myanmar, not South Sudan, the NYT reports. That contradicts the notice that N.M.’s lawyers say they were given by ICE. Sending him back to his home country would probably would not violate Murphy’s existing order.
To buy time, Murphy ordered the Trump administration “to maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return if the Court finds that such removals were unlawful.”
Ahead of another hearing in the matter set for 11 a.m. ET today, Murphy directed the government to be prepared to provide specific information about these removals. As for N.M, Murphy zeroed in on even more specific information, including which government officials were involved: “Defendants must nonetheless be prepared to address the details of his removal, including when and to where he was removed, the names of individuals personally involved in executing his removal, and any information currently in Defendants’ possession regarding his current whereabouts.”
This is the same case Morning Memo told you about Monday, which has already had a number of examples of egregious Trump administration conduct:
- In one aspect of the case involving a gay Guatemalan man deported to Mexico, the Trump DOJ canceled a deposition of a government official at the last minute and filed a notice of error that it didn’t have evidence it had previously claimed in court to have – and in the notice outed the man by name.
- Judge Murphy was forced to issue a clarification to head off the Trump administration from deporting a group of migrants – including N.M. above – to Libya.
- Judge Murphy has already ordered discovery into whether the Trump administration violated his order by flying Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo before removing them to El Salvador. The Trump administration said it wasn’t a violation of the order because the flights were conducted by the Defense Department, not the Department of Homeland Security.
DNI Weaponization: Cooking The Books On Intel
New emails obtained by the NYT erase any doubt that DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s chief of staff Joe Kent was doing political damage control when he ordered the intel officials to redo its analysis that contradicted President Trump’s claims about Tren de Aragua:
“We need to do some rewriting” and more analytic work “so this document is not used against the DNI or POTUS,” Joe Kent, the chief of staff to Ms. Gabbard, wrote in an email to a group of intelligence officials on April 3, using shorthand for Ms. Gabbard’s position and for the president of the United States.
Ho Continues To Audition For SCOTUS Nom
Judge James Ho of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has been ostentatiously auditioning for any empty seat on the Supreme Court that President Trump might get to fill, but his latest tour de force exceeds even his most obsequious previous efforts.
Ho took the comical step of tacking on a seven-page concurrence to an ordinary two-paragraph scheduling order in which he raked the Supreme Court and Chief Justice Roberts in particular. The Ho rant was prompted by the Supreme Court’s decision last week in an Alien Enemies Act case that vacated an earlier 5th Circuit order and remanded the case to it with very specific instructions on how to handle it.
Ho took a potshot at Roberts’ recent public remarks that it was part of the judiciary’s role to “check the excesses of Congress or the executive.”
“It is not the role of the judiciary to check the excesses of the other branches, any more than it’s our role to check the excesses of any other American citizen.” Ho wrote. “Judges do not roam the countryside looking for opportunities to chastise government officials for their mistakes.”
But the thrust of Ho’s concurrence was lamenting the disrespect the Supreme Court has shown President Trump, and in service of that argument he took additional shots at Presidents Clinton and Obama while provocatively suggesting that the alleged members of
Tren de Aragua are “favored litigants” getting “special treatment.”
Inside Kristi Noem’s Polygraph Operation
WSJ:
Polygraph exams have long been a routine tool used inside intelligence agencies, including DHS, as part of security clearances, job applications and certain investigations. But under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s direction, they have been used to search for leaks of information that Noem and her top deputies consider disloyal or embarrassing, according to current and former officials familiar with the practice. The information the employees are accused of leaking often isn’t classified, the people said.
Let The Record Show …
HASSAN: What is habeas corpus?
NOEM: Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country
HASSAN: That’s incorrect
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 20, 2025 at 10:16 AM
DOJ Weaponization: A Story In Three Parts
- Cuomo: After abandoning the prosecution of NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) by improbably claiming it was “election interference,” the Trump DOJ is now investigating his leading rival for the office: former Gov. Mario Cuomo (D), the NYT reports. The inquiry was reportedly begun a month ago under then-interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin in response to an old referral from House Republicans, who accused Cuomo of lying in congressional testimony about his response as governor to the COVID pandemic.
- McIver: In politically charged cases, prosecutors will often use a grand jury to provide an extra layer of accountability. Not so in interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba’s criminal case against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ). The charging documents – a bare criminal complaint on an affidavit from DHS special agent – were finally unveiled yesterday morning, after Habba and a top DOJ official had touted them for more than 12 hours on social media. Habba may still secure a grand jury indictment, but the President’s former personal lawyer and White House adviser has handled this case in a maximally politicized way.
- Police brutality: Los Angeles interim U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli’s attempt to disregard a jury verdict of guilty in a excessive force case against sheriff’s deputy Trevor Kirk ran headlong into a skeptical federal judge this week, Meghann Cuniff reports. “The government hasn’t addressed, at least from my reading of the pleadings, any issue of public interest,” U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson said. Essayli is trying to enter into a post-trial plea agreement that would reduce the felony jury conviction against Kirk to a misdemeanor.
Ed Martin: Weaponization Czar
Timothy Snyder takes on a TPM fave:
Martin, to use the historical term, is taking an ostentatious part in the ongoing attempt at what the Nazis called a Gleichschaltung of institutions: of dropping the distinction between the law and the leader, and of attempting to force everyone in public life into line with the leader’s latest statements. The reference is not accidental. Martin is on the far right, and an advocate of great replacement theory: the spurious idea that a conspiracy seeks to replace white Americans with immigrants. He had a very supportive relationship with a known American Nazi. …
The title “weaponization czar” is appropriate because Martin’s most interesting achievements thus far are, in fact, in the service of Russia. He has done more visible work for the Russian state television than for any other institution. Martin, in other words, has already been part of one weaponized legal system for some time. His American career as “weaponization czar” is a natural second step of his Russian career as apologist for both Russian and American weaponizers and authoritarians.
First At TPM: EEOC Goes All Trumpy
The Trump-appointing acting chair of the EEOC has directed staff to focus on “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination” and “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights,” TPM reports.
The Destruction: COVID Vaccines Edition
In a major shift, the newly Trumpified FDA is requiring new clinical trials before approving annual COVID vaccines for otherwise healthy people under the age of 65.
Already Too Late
A new study finds that even if global temperatures remain below the 1.5C threshold (a level we’re practically assured of exceeding), the polar icecaps will continue to rapidly melt, leading to sea level rise that will be catastrophic to coastal communities around the world.
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
