Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise! We are starting off with some good news for a change — and, potentially, the end of one of the Trump Justice Department’s egregious overreach campaigns. For now.
This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
Republicans running for governor across the country are backing away from abortion bans they once endorsed.
For transparency reasons, I like peeling back the curtain on any changes we make to Morning Memo — but doing so always runs the risk of creating some confusion. So let me be really clear upfront: The change I’m about to mention doesn’t require you to do anything differently on your end.
Beginning next week, we’re going to be using a new email provider to send out Morning Memo each day. If you already receive Morning Memo by email, it will still come to you the same as usual, but it will come directly from TPM instead of from Substack. It might look a tad different in your inbox — and the email itself will look more like TPM — so I wanted you to be aware in advance.
You’ll still be able to read Morning Memo in the email version or on Substack or at TPM. Your choice.
We’re making this change because in this deeply fractured media world, we’re trying to build out the TPM ecosystem and not be overly reliant on outside platforms. Better to live and die on our own merits than be subject to the vagaries of third parties.
OK, let’s get to today’s news.
As I feared, the developing story on the Trump DOJ targeting actual ballots in Los Angeles County is creating some confusion.
I tried in yesterday’s Morning Memo to make clear that this was different in kind and degree from the Trump administration’s previous efforts to purge voter rolls in advance of the election. But the reactions I’ve seen since, both to what I wrote and in the larger coverage, suggest that’s still not coming across entirely clearly.
Ironically, the Trump DOJ turns out to be helpful in this regard because it’s now admitted to NBC News that this is in fact different from a purge of voter rolls: “A DOJ spokesperson said the department is asking California to sequester ballots, not change their voter list.”
Now, the Trump DOJ has its own reasons for making that distinction, among them trying to get around the federal statute that bars the mass purging of voter rolls in the 90 days before the election. But in this instance what the Trump DOJ is saying also happens to be true — and the truth is even more damning. Its election interference is no longer hypothetical; it’s happening now while real ballots are being cast.
Once you make the category distinction between voter rolls and actual ballots already cast or soon to be cast, the seriousness of the threat from the federal government becomes a lot more obvious. The Trump DOJ is demanding that a specific batch of ballots be sequestered and not counted until citizenship is confirmed — an additional step in the tabulation process not provided for by law and which experts say would lead to a rushed and sloppy process that likely to disenfranchise legal voters.
The threat is serious even if the Trump DOJ is unable to cite any lawful authority for its demand to California and even if there is no legal basis for it to order states to sequester ballots of people the Trump DOJ claims to have identified as “likely noncitizen voters.”
With that framework in mind, let’s run through the latest developments and the big questions still outstanding …
This morning, the UCLA Voting Rights Project, on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and a Los Angeles resident, sought a temporary restraining order to preempt the Trump DOJ’s actions in California.
The requested TRO, filed in an existing case in D.C. against Attorney General Todd Blanche and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, seeks to block the Trump DOJ from coercing California officials into using its purported list of “likely noncitizen voters” to withhold ballots from voters or to segregate and not count ballots already cast.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan did not immediately scheduled a hearing on the TRO but set a deadline of 5 p.m. ET Friday for the parties to file a proposed briefing schedule.
The big outstanding questions include:
If you know of similar efforts by the Trump DOJ in other states, please get in touch with me via the encrypted methods here.
UCLA election law expert Rick Hasen, in a not-so-succinct headline: “DOJ’s Threat Letter to California Voting Officials with a 48-Hour Deadline is Amateurish Political Theater Aimed at Sowing Chaos, Not to Mention a Demand That Likely Violates Federal Law and Election Security Practices”
The one-two punch of retributive investigations of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) by both the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice is looking worse the more that comes out:
Trump: "In my opinion, leakers should be shot. In the old days we used to shoot leakers."
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-10-14T21:35:22.772Z
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“Democrats have been way too timid and modest in their expectations in the past. There’s a real chance for something big happening with this election, and I’m kind of old. So why not see if you can if there’s anything you can do to help?”
That’s a quote from Steve Pajcic, who was a politician himself decades ago and appears to have made a bundle of money over the years and has become a fairly prodigious philanthropist. There’s a Times write-up of him today — that’s where the quote comes from — and it’s about his and his children’s decision to drop about $7 million late dollars in the longshot quartet of southeastern Senate contests in Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi and the no-longer-so-long-shot race in Kansas.
Back in August I did a write-up on a deep dive on polling error put together by Republican consultant/pollster Pat Ruffini. When it comes to Ruffini’s work, I have a funny mix of assumptions and impulses. Ruffini’s a data guy and not a bullshitter. His numbers and analyses are real and solid. He’s also a Republican partisan. So he’s not above looking for the most favorable possibilities in the numbers. And I think it’s fair to say the series he’s done on this is generally aimed at Republicans and trying to send the message, “It might be okay” or “It’s not as bad as it looks.” At the same time, I am eager for it to be as bad for Republicans or worse than it looks.
Take that for what you will. Just a little truth in advertising and transparency for all involved. Ruffini just did a follow-up on this deep dive where, amazingly, there’s a new reason to think it might not be as bad for Republicans as it looks! Again, though, Ruffini’s a smart guy with a lot of data up his sleeves and he might be right.
As Donald Trump tried to overturn the election in 2020, John Eastman was everywhere — filing lawsuits challenging the results in public and, behind the scenes, drafting legal memos laying out how the president could sow maximum chaos and create an opening to toss out swing states’ votes. It all culminated in Jan. 6, at which Eastman spoke. His audience later stormed the Capitol, attempting to block the certification of the election.
For his role in it all, Eastman was disbarred in California. “Eastman’s actions were
carried out with deceit or dishonesty, as he was aware that his plan was unlawful and lacked any factual or legal support,” a judge on California’s state bar court wrote in 2024.
It may seem odd, in this time of retribution and Jan. 6 revisionism, that Eastman remains disbarred. But the California State Bar’s decision is one Trump has no ability to reverse.
So, Eastman has looked elsewhere, taking the unusual step of asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate his law license. In that effort, he got quite a bit of help this week in the form of two amici briefs, asking the Court to consider his case.
The first, compiled by the America First Policy Institute, was signed by a rogues’ gallery of other Jan. 6 lawyers, including Cleta Mitchell, Sidney Powell, Jena Ellis, Christina Bobb and, of course, Ed Martin.
“This case presents an important question for this Court concerning the growing practice of ‘barfare’ — the use of professional discipline as a political weapon against lawyers who represent controversial clients and advance challenging, novel legal arguments, particularly with respect to election integrity,” the lawyers write. It’s a topic — the ability to make wacky arguments in the name of “election integrity” — in which many of the signees have some personal interest.
Of course, Eastman’s arguments weren’t just wacky. They were premised on conspiracy theories, attempts to cite the appearance of a dispute over the election results where no true dispute existed in order to throw out millions of Americans’ votes.
The second brief comes from two senators, Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT). Both figures loomed large in the Jan. 6 planning conducted by Eastman and another Jan. 6 ideas man, Ken Chesebro: they hoped Cruz and Lee would aide their alternate elector scheme once it reached Congress.
Should the Supreme Court choose to take this case up, it will provide a look at how, five years later, the justices are thinking about the nonsense claims and conspiracy theories Eastman tried to bring before judges and, ultimately, Congress.
The easier route for the Court, however, would be to refuse to consider it, leaving Eastman disbarred.
Another election, another effort by Russia to help Trump. This time, however, it’s all out in the open, and the terms of the deal are becoming clear.
“According to sources who spoke to WBTV on the condition of anonymity, the text thread between some Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers includes a competition over who can pull over the most black drivers. There are also numerous uses of the ‘n-word’ related to use of force and discharging firearms at black residents.”
— WBTV3
I was waiting to hear how White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia would explain how and why she claimed she’d taken the bar exam in China despite that not being completely possible. She’s still mainly refusing to answer this question. But the Journal reports that Zacharia sat for the bar exam in California in 2011 but didn’t pass. (In fairness, many people don’t pass on their first try. California is known as a challenging bar exam.) The Times meanwhile got a moment of phone time with her on a tarmac in Arizona and asked her about taking the bar exam in China.
It was all a misunderstanding, apparently.
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Kimberly Guilfoyle, the recently defenestrated and soon-to-be-former Ambassador to Greece, has that stench about her of third-string corruption, the type that is hated by the righteous and sneered at by the corrupt. In Trumpworld setting up your own bribery-faucet meme coin and making billions is a baller move. Begging a MAGA-adjacent huckster to settle your Amex bill on the strength of once being Don Jr’s fiancée is sad. “Steal a little and they throw ya in jail / Steal a lot and they make you king …” But we seem quite suddenly to be seeing MAGA world become quite leaky. That’s not what we’re used to — what we’re used to is mammoth kinds of Trump and MAGA corruption more or less in plain sight. But now various MAGA capos are accusing each other, or dropping dimes on each other, as the reality of a possible Blue Wave or more comes into view.
Another only-in-MAGA corruption story hit this afternoon. Or, I guess, alleged corruption story since it’s not altogether clear which player in the story is the crook or more of a crook.
President Trump made one key motivation of his imperialistic ambitions in Greenland clear in a Truth Social post early this morning, claiming that a “massive oil, gas and mineral exploration” was set to begin in “our new and beautiful Greenland!”
He is referencing the paltry-for-the-U.S. security deal that he was able to eke out of Greenland and Denmark last month, which Trump has hailed as some sort of victory for his longtime vision of the U.S. taking Greenland under its control. In reality, Denmark, the U.S. and Greenland signed an agreement in September that allows the U.S. to expand its military presence on the semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. It appears as though the deal has, for now, quieted Trump’s broader ambitions to take the island by force.
The deal does not give the U.S. any new mining or drilling rights and Greenland banned all future oil drilling back in 2021. Greenland officials have already combatted Trump’s statement, according to CNN:
While Greenland’s deputy mining minister Jørgen Hammeken-Holm acknowledged that “there are activities by US companies,” he told CNN that “we are very far away from ‘massive’ exploration.”
“There are many smaller explorations underway but these could take years to become operational,” he added, echoing researchers who have pointed out the difficulties and enormous expense involved in extracting resources from Greenland.
I haven’t really seen anyone mention this in their coverage so I wanted to elevate some reporting I did a few months back about a Trump-linked Dr. Phil drilling project that is in the works in Greenland — and almost certainly what Trump is referring to here (Reuters does mention the project in passing in its coverage of Trump’s remarks). The connection becomes more explicit in this line of Trump’s Truth Social post:
There are Experts that are saying that the amount of easily available Oil is far greater than that of almost any land, anywhere in the World and, even more importantly, from a Security Purpose in the Defense and Offense of both the United States of America, and Europe, is second to none.
Trump is likely referring to the project that a Texas-based firm, Greenland Energy, is trying to embark on in Greenland’s remote Nunap Qeqqa, or Jameson Land. Greenland Energy executives have claimed they have reason to believe that $1 trillion worth of crude oil may lie beneath the surface of Jameson Land.
Reports surfaced in August suggesting the company was readying resources to begin drilling in the region, even though it did not yet have permission from local officials or the Greenland government to do so. The government is currently still reviewing whether Greenland Energy has the right to drill in the area due to its partnership with a UK company that secured the rights to drill in Jameson Land before the 2021 ban.
I wrote about the whole thing extensively here. But in essence, the Texas-based Greenland Energy project had Trump’s finger-prints all over it before he made things so explicit in this post. Executives for the company have mentioned “disruptions to key shipping corridors, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz” as a motivating factor for embarking on the project and Dr. Phil’s media company has partnered with Greenland Energy to make a docu-series about the drilling venture.
Add to the fact that Greenland Energy personnel have close and obvious ties to Trump and his hegemonic salivating over Greenland, per my piece back in August:
Greenland Energy announced in June that it had added Carol Craig to the company’s board of directors. Craig runs a space exploration and defense company that is heavily involved in Trump’s “Golden Dome” project, the missile defense plan that Trump has used as a basis for his ongoing argument that the “ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” for the U.S. (It’s worth noting that the chair of Greenland Energy’s board, Larry Swets, is reportedly known to have the president’s ear and has said publicly that the drilling project is “not related to American annexation,” per The Guardian.)
From: Dr. Phil and a Texas Oil Firm Go to Greenland With a Suspicious Agenda. Signs Point to Trump’s Imperialist Visions.
By Nicole LaFond | 08.10.26 | 5:07 pm
The signs were all there before Trump shouted about them on Truth Social just after midnight last night.
— Nicole LaFond
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Committee on Rules and Administration Ranking Member Alex Padilla (D-CA) announced Senate Democrats recruited and trained more than 100 staffers to monitor voting and ballot counting during the upcoming midterm elections.
The official congressional election observers will be deployed to polling sites across nine states with closely contested Senate races in November, Schumer and Padilla told reporters on Wednesday.
More than a year after President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard into Washington D.C. on a broad crime-deterrence mission, the once unthinkable scene of armed soldiers patrolling American streets has become the daily backdrop. A panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday delved into how long that would continue.
In a major escalation of its multi-prong attempts to interfere in the midterm elections, the Trump DOJ has given California 48 hours to take steps to prevent an unknown number of alleged noncitizen voters in Los Angeles County from voting — or face legal action, Reuters exclusively reports.
This new Trump DOJ initiative is different from its earlier, largely unsuccessful efforts to obtain voter information from various states. Instead, it is now demanding that Los Angeles County take affirmative steps to prevent the counting of ballots cast by people on a list provided by DOJ who it alleges are “likely noncitizen voters” who received mail-in ballots.
The Trump DOJ’s demands came in the form of a threat letter Tuesday to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber from acting Deputy Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter — an extraordinary intervention by the department’s No. 2 official.
The existence of the letter was confirmed by the Justice Department. It’s not clear how DOJ came up with its list, which was provided to Los Angeles County on a “password-protected thumb drive.” Past attempts by the Trump administration to identify noncitizens who are allegedly registered to vote have been deeply flawed and wildly inaccurate.
In the letter, McCotter sets an arbitrary 48-hour deadline for California to review the DOJ list, but the more alarming development is what other steps McCotter demands that California take, according to Reuters:
These are the most aggressive steps the Trump administration has taken in its jihad against mythical noncitizen voting, which it greatly exaggerates as a pretext for the federal takeover of elections, the delegitimization of free and fair elections, and the disregard of election results that it disfavors.
“Allowing noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes,” McCotter wrote in the letter, echoing one element of the Trump administration’s long-running disinformation campaign. McCotter threatened to seek emergency relief in court if California does not comply with his demands.
The latest move — challenging entire batches of ballots and threatening to go to court unless Los Angeles County undertakes specific steps in its handling of the election — comes as the election in California is already underway. Mail-in ballots were sent out to every voter in the state beginning on Oct. 5, the same day that ballot drop-off centers opened statewide.
This is the kind of Trump administration interference that election officials nationwide have been dreading and planning for this entire election cycle. The executive branch has no constitutional role in the conduct of federal elections, which is delegated to the states.
It’s not yet clear if the Trump DOJ sent similar demand letters to election officials in other states.
In another blow to President Trump’s U.S. attorneys scheme in blue states, a federal judge appears poised to disqualify Bill Essayli as the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Bloomberg reports.
Essayli was already disqualified by the court from serving as acting U.S. attorney, but the Trump DOJ tried to sidestep that ruling by making Essayli the first assistant U.S. attorney — with all the powers to run the office.
But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a similar case in Nevada, ruled that first assistants assume the power of the U.S. attorney only if they were already installed when the office was vacated.
D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is stumbling all over herself to get in on the targeting of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) by the Trump administration.
The day after DHS’ Homeland Security Investigations executed a search warrant on Omar’s D.C. home in a what appears to be a bogus investigation into how her late father obtained naturalized U.S. citizenship, Pirro went on Fox News to declare that Omar is under separate DOJ investigation over her financial disclosure forms.
The public announcement of a criminal investigation by Pirro would be highly irregular at any time, but especially coming just three weeks before the election, further cementing the politicized nature of the Trump administration’s targeting of Omar … as if there was any doubt.
In the immigration investigation, family members of Omar have been issued grand jury subpoenas, the NYT reports.
You can be forgiven for thinking that the Trump DOJ had relented after six months and began sharing evidence with Minnesota in the three ICE shootings during Operation Metro Surge. Hennepin County prosecutor Mary Moriarty held a press conference in July announcing the evidence-sharing agreement that had been reached with DOJ.
But in new court filings yesterday, Minnesota officials, including Moriarty, revealed that the Trump DOJ ceased cooperating again after her press conference. And the impression they leave is that the agreement, which was struck with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis and led to an initial round of evidence sharing, was quickly scotched by Main Justice after news of it broke.
In her declaration, Moriarty says that she spoke with U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen on Sept. 10, “who told me, in sum and substance, that evidence sharing from the USAO as agreed to in the June 26 letter would be on pause indefinitely ‘in light of challenges with D.C.’”
The new revelations come in a federal lawsuit that Minnesota filed in D.C. seeking to obtain evidence gathered by DHS and DOJ in the shootings of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. Minnesota has already charged ICE agent Christian Castro in the Sosa-Celis shooting.
In Houston, the district attorney is considering charging an ICE agent who allegedly ran his vehicle over a Mexican national Saturday with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. ICE’s claim that the man ran in front of the ICE agent’s vehicle is undermined by security camera footage showing the car veering toward the fleeing man. One of his legs was broken, not both, as previously reported.
WOW. Kristi Noem and Elon Musk, among others, "chose to turn the power of the federal government against a singular employee with an impeccable record of public service. … The attacks against Ms. Comans were based entirely on false information" and many officials "knew [they] were untrue."
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) 2026-10-13T18:24:07.535Z
All the credit to the WSJ for the devastating series of stories that led to the forced resignation of Kimberly Guilfoyle as U.S. ambassador to Greece. In surveying the aftermath of its work, the newspaper had a few more gems to drop about Guilfoyle’s final days:
Bad self portraits (the lyrics from the Lake Street Dive song are unbelievably on point): Guilfoyle decorated the official ambassadorial residence with large self-portraits.
AI did it: After the second major WSJ story, which relied on text messages showing her soliciting a major GOP donor to pay off her $100,000 Amex bill, Guilfoyle told White House officials that the text messages were AI-generated. “The officials didn’t believe her claims,” according to the WSJ.
Did she find out at the same time we did? This account raises the possibility that Guilfoyle found out that she was being asked to resign when it was announced by the White House, although that is not the only plausible interpretation:
During a Tuesday-morning prep session for his new press secretary Katie Zacharia’s first briefing at the White House, the president instructed Zacharia to tell the world that he was asking Guilfoyle to resign, people familiar with the matter said. Trump didn’t speak directly to Guilfoyle before making the decision, one of the people said.
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This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for their free weekly newsletter to get the latest.
Since being released early from prison in June, former Colorado election clerk Tina Peters has been granted extraordinary access to the halls of power in Washington.
Peters said she has traveled to Washington seven times, visited the White House at least twice, and met with senior officials at the Justice and Commerce departments — remarkable access for someone on parole after a 2024 felony conviction for tampering with voting machines in an attempt to show that the 2020 election was rigged against President Donald Trump.
She’s a high-profile example of a group of Trump supporters and conservative activists trying to lay out a roadmap for the president to follow. They are urging him to take more extreme steps to try and influence the outcome of an election that many polls suggest could end Republican control of Congress. But as the election closes in, the activists are now voicing increasing concerns that the president and his administration aren’t going to act on their ideas.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) and Rep. Mike Collins (R) held their second debate in the Georgia Senate race Tuesday, and many of the themes of the first reemerged. Ossoff turned over the many ways in which, even within the context of today’s Republican Party, Collins’ radicalism is on the surface. Collins struggled to return a blow, or to distance himself from the unpopular president.
Who won in 2020?
One of the moderators, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein, noted that Collins said Trump “won” the 2020 election as recently as June. Does he still beleive that?
Collins dodged, saying that “Joe Biden went into office” before pivoting to criticizing his presidency.
Ten minutes later, Ossoff returned to the question. “You didn’t answer earlier. Answer now. Did Donald Trump win the 2020 election?”
“They know my views on that,” Collins replied. “There was a lot of doubt in that election.”
Fifteen minutes after that, Ossoff returned to it a third time. “You still haven’t answered tonight whether you believe Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election,” he said. “Here’s your third chance. Did Donald Trump really win the 2020 election? You want to answer, Mike?”
“I have said numerous times that Joe Biden was the president in 2021,” Collins said.
“Not what I asked,” Ossoff replied.
OSSOFF: You didn't answer earlier. Answer now. Did Donald Trump win the 2020 election?MIKE COLLINS: You know, the 2020 election. Everybody has seen my views on thatOSSOFF: What are they?COLLINS: There was a lot of doubt in that election OSSOFF: I didn't hear an answer
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-14T00:25:10.294Z
What’s up with all the white nationalists around Collins?
Collins’ white nationalism problem was again a theme of this debate.
Moderator Faith Jessie of Atlanta news station 11 Alive reminded Collins of Ossoff’s line last week — that he had “hired half the Third Reich” — and asked for his response. “Are you a white nationalist?” Jessie asked. “And what do you say to Black Georgians who question whether you will represent them equally?”
“I condemn any sort a hate speech,” he said. “Antisemitism, hate of any kind. It’s abhorrent. And I’ve fired people when things happen, fired them,” he added, a possible reference to his former chief of staff, who bragged of his efforts trying to get a Holocaust denier out of prison.
He then went on to suggest a link between people who feel “forgotten” and rising antisemitism. “We do have a problem with antisemitism and war and hate around the world,” he said. “These young people feel like they’ve forgotten and they’re just lashing out. And this hate speech has got to stop and we’ve got to educate them.”
Mike Collins makes apologies for white nationalists like his son in law: "These people feel like they've been forgotten. And they're just lashing out."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-14T00:17:57.415Z
About those Pinochet jokes …
Ossoff asked Collins about a joke he repeatedly made online, suggesting immigrants to the U.S. be tossed from helicopters — an allusion to extrajudicial killings carried out by right-wing Latin American dictators, including Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, a meme that the very online right loves to invoke.
“Mike Collins called for killing immigrants by throwing them to their deaths out of helicopters,” Ossoff said. “I’d like to hear if Mike Collins stands by that statement. Do you still believe in the extrajudicial killing of immigrants?”
Collins did not answer the question and pivoted to talking about the Laken Riley Act and border enforcement.
OSSOFF: Mike Collins called for killing immigrants by throwing them to their deaths out of helicopters. I'd like to hear if Mike Collins stands by that statement. Do you still believe in the extrajudicial killing of immigrants?MIKE COLLINS: *changes topic*
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-14T00:12:17.176Z
Since I was revising the post below as I got more information, here’s the latest on White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia’s apparent claim to have taken the bar exam in China.
Judd Legum revealed yesterday that notwithstanding Trump’s and Zacharia’s claim that she was an attorney, it doesn’t appear that she ever took or passed the bar in the U.S. Today reporters pressed her on whether this was true. Had she passed the bar? In what state? Zacharia responded that she took it “when I moved to China.” Reporters took that, understandably, to mean that she took the Chinese bar exam when she lived there between 2011 and 2013. The Washington Post reported, for instance, that Zacharia “said she had passed a bar exam in China, a country where noncitizens aren’t allowed to practice in courtrooms.” But it’s more than that. Foreign nationals are not allowed to take the Chinese bar exam or practice law in China under any circumstances. Her LinkedIn bio says she worked at a Chinese law firm, Zhong Lun, while living in China. And that is possible. I assume it’s true. Foreigners can work at Chinese law firms but only for the purpose of advising on the law in the countries in which they are licensed to practice law. They are specifically barred from advising clients on Chinese law. I don’t know whether not having passed the bar in the U.S. would have been an issue on that front or not. Bottom line: In her first day on the job Zacharia gave everyone the impression that she took the bar exam in China. But that’s not true. Because she would not have been allowed to.
As I noted in the earlier post, new Press Secretary Katie Zacharia claims she passed the bar exam in China and to thus be an “attorney” despite never having passed the bar in the U.S. A Post article said that foreign nationals aren’t allowed to appear in Chinese courts. And I took that to mean that perhaps you could take the bar exam but not appear in court. (Many U.S. attorneys never appear in court. That’s only one part of practicing law.) But it looks more stringent than that. And it looks like Zacharia’s claim is likely false. It’s difficult to confirm a technical point like this about a foreign country. But numerous websites which provide information about practicing law in China say that foreign nationals can’t take the bar exam under any circumstances. Starting in 2021 there appears to have been a pilot program which would allow foreign national to take the patent bar. But even that required foreigners to have permanent residence which is apparently quite difficult to get. Foreign lawyers can work in Chinese law firms, but only to provide guidance about the law in the countries in which they are licensed to practice. (She appears to have worked in that capacity.) They’re specifically barred from interpreting Chinese law or acting in the capacity of a Chinese lawyer. So it’s pretty tight.
Again, maybe there’s some technicality that made this possible for her which doesn’t come up in any of the explanations I’ve found. But it seems like a pretty across-the-board ban.
Perhaps Zacharia was being cagey. She was asked at her appearance today where she’d passed the bar, in what state. She responded, “When I moved to China.” Reporters understandably took that to mean that she took the Chinese bar exam. But perhaps she was trying to hoodwink them.
More to come.
Late Update: This just-published article in the South China Morning Post says definitively that at the time Zacharia claims to have passed the bar in China foreign nationals were barred from taking the bar exam.
Eligibility rules for China’s national judicial examination in 2011, when Zacharia reportedly began working in Beijing, required candidates to hold Chinese nationality.
Foreign nationals were therefore ineligible to take the examination, a step towards qualification to practise mainland Chinese law.
Employment at a Chinese law firm does not, by itself, establish that someone holds a licence to practise Chinese law. SCMP has asked Zhong Lun to clarify Zacharia’s role and qualifications. The firm did not immediately respond.
President Trump stood by his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem while she weathered the blanketgate news cycle (when she reportedly screamed at a Coast Guard pilot after her blankie went missing); as she faced affair allegations; as she fashioned herself into the face of his administration’s ruthless immigration crackdown with her social media cosplaying; throughout the entire, disastrous Minneapolis operation.
It wasn’t until reports surfaced suggesting she had inappropriately doled out contracts to friends and spent millions of the department’s budget on advertisements that mostly featured her riding horseback near American landmarks — and Republicans began asking questions about it — that Trump pulled the rug out from under her. During a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee back in March, Noem claimed Trump had signed off on the ads — the death knell to her career atop the agency carrying out the most barbaric aspects of Trump’s second term agenda.
While former Fox News darling-turned Trump family member-turned ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle officially accepted her ousting from Trump world in a post on Twitter Tuesday afternoon, her tale is similar. She faced the president’s wrath only because she did not hide her corruption well enough.
Allegations about Guilfoyle’s conduct while serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Greece — a position she was given around the time Don Jr. broke off their engagement and moved on to a Miami socialite — began surfacing in the Wall Street Journal in September. The reported conduct included allegedly threatening a Greek official, reportedly trying to bribe a Trump donor with influence in exchange for paying a credit card bill, and allegedly accepting improper gifts. Guilfoyle has denied the allegations and continued to deny them as she announced she’d leave the post Tuesday. But Trump began hinting on Monday that the hammer might soon drop. That’s potentially because the latest reporting from the WSJ on the Guilfoyle allegations included damning quotes from Guilfoyle doing the corruption, on a recording.
“Well, we’re looking at it,” Trump told reporters Monday when asked about the allegations. “We’re not happy.”
By Tuesday morning, Trump’s new press secretary confirmed her departure during the White House press briefing, and Guilfoyle posted a long message on X about her devotion to Trump world — despite the brutal and public sacking.
Serving as the United States Ambassador to Greece has been the honor of a lifetime. I will forever be grateful to President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for entrusting me with the extraordinary privilege of representing the greatest country in the history of…
— Kimberly Guilfoyle (@kimguilfoyle) October 13, 2026
Elon Musk is dumping heaps of money into the midterms and the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc. waited til the final stretch of the election to make its big ad spending push. But does any of it actually matter?
On this week’s episode of The Polltober Show, Kate and Josh break down the spending disparity between the parties, and dig in to why Democrats might be better positioned than they appear. Plus, they talk through an exclusive memo with new House and Senate odds.
If you want your question answered next week, drop it on the YouTube comments on the latest episode of the TPM Show or the Polltober Show itself. And don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube page for all of our Polltober episodes, livestreams, and other original content!
I couldn’t think what to say about this beyond simply reposting the first two grafs of this Washington Post article …
The White House on Tuesday scrambled to answer questions about the legal credentials of President Donald Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, who made a brief and halting debut in the briefing room and later said she had passed a bar exam in China, a country where noncitizens aren’t allowed to practice in courtrooms.
Trump called Zacharia “an attorney” in his Friday announcement of her appointment, and her LinkedIn profile says she served as general counsel for Fix California, a nonprofit founded by Ric Grenell, a high-profile Trump adviser. Asked Tuesday where she had been admitted to the bar, Zacharia said China — not a U.S. state or D.C., where one would need to have been admitted to practice law in the United States.
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