Talk About Losing the Thread

In a social media post this morning, President Trump threw all of toys in the air and declared that he still thinks the “anti-weaponization” slush fund was the way to go after all.

While ostensibly calling for Todd Blanche to be confirmed as attorney general, Trump lost the thread and resumed defending his $1.776 billion slush fund, which would siphon money to Jan. 6 rioters and other supposed victims of the Deep State:

They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them. …

I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!

The only arguable nod to the legal cases challenging the slush fund, which remain pending, is that Trump described how he “felt” and “will always feel” — not what he will do to revive the fund over which he would exert control and for which there would be no guardrails. The official Trump administration position before Congress and in court has been that the slush fund is “dead” and that no amount of public pining for it by the president should make anyone think that it’s coming back once public attention drifts elsewhere.

With Blanche’s nomination stalled not over the slush fund but over a separate provision in the same bogus “settlement agreement” that gives Trump immunity from the IRS — a giveaway potentially worth as much as $100 million from Trump in his official capacity to himself in his personal capacity — it was comical for the president to come to Blanche’s supposed rescue by reasserting the righteousness of the slush fund.

The real target of Trump’s scorn in the social media blast was Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who is the main hold up on the Blanche nomination even though the Senate Judiciary Committee Republican only asking for the barest fig leaf to camouflage the corrupt IRS immunity provision (see below). Trump’s impulsive reaction to Cornyn’s opposition is to mock him for having his political career ruined by Trump, which is amusing in its own right.

All of this came the day after Trump improbably threatened in another social media post to pull the Blanche nomination until Cornyn and fellow holdout Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) are out of office next year — a weak-handed threat that miscalculates the chances of the Senate being more friendly to Blanche after the midterms. No one is fooled.

The NYT Gets It! Cornyn’s Thin Red Line

The NYT has some real talk that ratifies yesterday’s Morning Memo on how Sen. Cornyn is actually seeking to entrench — not eliminate — the immunity President Trump got in his “settlement” with the IRS:

The red line that Mr. Cornyn has drawn is fairly thin. He and Mr. Tillis are not seeking to kill the deal that Mr. Blanche negotiated with Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, which gave the president, his family and his businesses broad immunity, potentially saving them at least $100 million in penalties and drawing accusations from Democrats of self-dealing. They are merely demanding modifications — in writing. …

Mr. Cornyn’s request is fairly modest. He wants the Justice Department to guarantee what Mr. Blanche said under oath at his confirmation hearing: that the I.R.S. immunity would apply only to Mr. Trump, two of his sons and the Trump Organization, and that it would be limited only to audits of past tax returns.

“All we’re doing is asking them to put that in writing,” Mr. Cornyn said.

It’s telling, I suppose, that the White House refuses to make even this minor accommodation and instead attacks Cornyn.

“The fact that they’re balking at putting that in writing tells me that they were hoping to get by with this settlement agreement and his testimony, and then revitalize those provisions at a later date,” Cornyn told ABC News. “And that’s, I don’t think, good faith negotiations.” 

Still, the news coverage of this collective hoodwinking has been abysmal and has allowed Cornyn to strut around like a dragon-slayer while actually giving away $100 million in potential tax liability forgiveness to Trump.

First at TPM: Judge Finds Trump Admin in Contempt

U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher of Baltimore this week held the Trump administration in contempt of court for violating two of her orders enforcing a settlement agreement in a long-running class action case over the rights of unaccompanied minors to seek asylum in the United States.

As TPM first reported, the administration has deported nearly 100 asylum seekers in violation of the court-approved settlement agreement in the case.

But Gallagher’s order gives the administration a chance to “purge” its contempt by refraining from any further unlawful deportations in violation of the agreement:

To do so, the administration will have to comply with a series of new requirements that Gallagher imposed in the same order intended to prevent more unlawful deportations of members of the settlement class, when numbers north of 70,000 people.

Mass Deportation Watch

• The 7th and 9th circuits became the latest U.S. Courts of Appeal to reject the Trump administration’s re-interpretation of a 30-year-old law and turn it into a tool of mandatory detention of undocumented immigrants without bond. The circuit courts are now split 6-2 against the Trump policy, and the Supreme Court is likely to take up the issue in its next term, Politico reports.
• A Cameroonian national with an expired visa who is a former Fulbright scholar and is now a public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University was detained by ICE this week while boarding a domestic flight as the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement efforts at airports, The Banner reports.

Judge Declines to Recuse in USA Case

A quick update on the most significant legal challenge to Trump’s corrupt U.S. attorney scheme: The outside judge assigned to hear the lawsuit against the administration by fired U.S. Attorney Roger Rogoff of Seattle has denied the Trump DOJ’s motion to recuse himself.

U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian, an Obama appointee, is the chief judge of the Eastern District of Washington, based in Spokane, and is a frequent visiting judge in Seattle. The Trump DOJ took issue with (i) how Bastian was assigned the case, arguing that the chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals should appoint an outside judge rather than the case being assigned to the usual visiting judge; and (ii) Bastian’s impartiality given his frequent work in the district.

Bastian found no legal basis for his recusal.

Morning Memo Playlists

On a random Friday in March 2024, I first dropped into Morning Memo a musical segue into the weekend that began a semi-regular feature. It’s ebbed and flowed a bit, but your response has been remarkably gratifying, especially because am I very much a musical neophyte. In response to reader requests, I’ve put together a playlist of the songs that have appeared here. I’ll keep adding to it as we go along:

I did a parallel playlist on YouTube that’s nearly the same as the Spotify playlist above, but a few tracks are available only on one or the other of the two platforms, not both.

See you back here Monday.

News? Tips? Feedback? Please let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.

We held an event Wednesday evening at a bar in Brooklyn, co-hosted by TPM and Marisa Kabas’ indy site The Handbasket. I really enjoyed it and I wanted to thank everyone who came out. We have an expanding roster of in-person events. We’ve held events in Chicago, Boston and Austin over the last year or so — usually live podcasts — and we do them more frequently in our home bases in New York and D.C., where they’re easier to put on. Please join us for one of these when we do one in your area. They’re so much fun and it’s really special to meet and spend time with members of the far-flung or sometimes close-flung TPM community.

It’s become a cliche of the politics of this moment that the one thing that unites all Americans in our polarized age is that they hate data centers. But a dimension of this occurred to me during the discussion between Marisa and I that was moderated by TPM publisher Joe Ragazzo. I hadn’t thought of it before.

The right-wing media machine is salivating over its newest anti-trans storyline, served up by Sophie Cunningham, a guard on the WNBA’s Indiana Fever. 

The Vibe Shifts Again

After the 2024 election, there was quite a bit of focus on the increasingly right-wing ecosystem of podcasts, streaming video and social media clips in which a vast number of Americans were stewing. But a fascinating New York Times analysis published this morning finds that world fraying, with right-wing influencers feuding with one another and audiences declining from early 2025 through today.

The article highlights the role that unpopular issues for Trump — the Iran war, the continually increasing cost of living — have played in making the whole thing less fun. Though the Times article does not go here, it strikes me too that Israel and Gaza have also confused this world, with various reactionary celebrities sorting themselves among those who are more antisemitic and those who are more Islamophobic and critiquing one another accordingly.

Much of this crew has tried to find an edge by continuing to criticize those with power — which now include many former ideological allies. Alex Jones, somewhat comically, called for Trump to be impeached over Iran this week. Tucker Carlson has been similarly critical of the war as he makes dark insinuations about Israel’s control of the U.S. government. Nick Fuentes has become deeply critical of Trump. And Candace Owens, famously, has spun up new narratives about how Charlie Kirk’s killing was an inside job orchestrated by Israel or fellow right-wing activists.

Part of what’s been hard for Democrats in recent years is the party is one supportive of institutions and, more broadly, the power of government to be a force for good. This can be a tough sell during a time when institutions racked up a long record of repeated failures and as many Americans see themselves backsliding. It’s a problem politicians from Chuck Schumer to Zohran Mamdani have had to contend with (and have done so with wildly different degrees of success).

But Trump has ironically now put right-wing podcasts in a similar position: Their guy runs the institutions, and he has used them to invade American cities and launch an unpopular and deepening quagmire in Iran. He refused to make public, and then only begrudgingly, sloppily and selectively released, the Epstein files. Podcaster-turned deputy FBI director-turned podcaster Dan Bongino illustrates this trajectory especially comically; he made his career boosting conspiracy theories, entered the government and declared many of his former ideas to be ill-founded; and now is attempting to establish himself, without much success, on the outside again. He “has seen his livestream views shrink by about half from their peak in 2024,” the Times writes.

Blanche Still Stuck

The latest development in the Blanche confirmation saga came midday yesterday, with Trump threatening to pull the nomination until after the midterms, when Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, the two Republicans who want more reassurances from Blanche, will be gone from the Senate, thanks in large part to Trump. “I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office,” he wrote.

• While surely a bummer for Blanche, this whole thing remains more about how the Senate functions under Trump than the future of the DOJ: Blanche can continue to serve as acting attorney general for the duration of Trump’s term.
• True to form, Trump’s attempt to exert leverage over the Senate isn’t all that logical. Whose to say he’ll have the votes for Blanche after the midterms, when the chamber stands at least a chance of falling under Democratic control?
• As David Kurtz has written, Cornyn’s demands are fairly narrow: better defining Trump’s IRS immunity under his settlement agreement, and making sure that the slush fund for his allies is “dead.” The first would still seemingly grant Trump retroactive immunity, and the second would not foreclose other ways of the DOJ paying out Trump’s allies, as it continues to do. Given all this, it is telling Trump does not want to yield and provide Cornyn and Tillis an excuse to vote “yes.”
• For procedural reasons, even if Trump does not pull the nomination, and even if Cornyn is mollified, it now looks unlikely to progress to a full Senate vote before September.

Tabs

• Tina Peters and TPM interview subject Clay Parikh have signed a document calling on the Trump administration to transition the U.S. away from ballot marking machines toward hand-marked paper ballots and for the 2026 midterm elections to not be certified until a full hand count of ballots is completed. The push was first flagged by Media Matters. In an interview about the document noted by Media Matters, Peters also said she urged Trump to fire the heads of the Election Assistance Commission, which he did.
• Emily Moreno filed a new request for a restraining order against former husband Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) yesterday, the Washington Post reports, alleging that Miller physically grabbed one of her attorneys during a hearing Tuesday. Miller faces multiple allegations of abuse and domestic violence. (Miller contends Moreno, who is the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), is lying and is herself dangerous.)

Man of the Hour

Whichever AI enthusiast at the State Department is behind this headline: “US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference”

From the Reuters report:

The state ‌department said it took “full responsibility” ‌for the confusion caused and that the map had been produced by a team member who hastily changed ‌the slide deck before the event.

Are We at War?

Still at war.

Correction: This article originally erroneously stated that Tina Peters was advocating to transition away from, not toward increased use of, paper ballots.

The increasingly acrimonious Senate primary between Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and public health official Abdul El-Sayed draws to a close next week, and with it, the biggest battle yet of the moderates versus progressives proxy war.

Get in Line or ‘Pay the Price’

In a scathingly-written regulatory filing posted on the Federal Communications Commission’s website on Thursday, ABC’s lawyers tore into Trump administration FCC head Brendan Carr for “attempted censorship” and accused Carr of helping President Trump in his retribution campaign against media that criticizes him.

Trump’s new Federal Reserve Board Chair Kevin Warsh took two missteps in two opposite directions during and after yesterday’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) rate decision. And it wasn’t necessarily the board’s choice to hold interest rates steady — a decision that was mostly expected given current economic conditions — that most rankled markets and economists. Rather, it was both what Warsh said, and also what he didn’t say, that put a diverse set of central bank stakeholders on alert.

When the FOMC on Wednesday issued its second rate decision since Warsh began leading the agency in May, the press release repeated information from the committee’s mid-June event.

“Productivity growth and capital investment are strong.” 

But this time, there was more evidence than before that those assertions are not necessarily being borne out in the data. 

Trump has continued to cast a resilient but stagnating economy in rosy hues, and engaged more aggressive and overt tactics to influence monetary policy at the Fed as he tries to force members of the central bank to cut interest rates. In tandem, Warsh’s pared-down approach to FOMC communications and use of the word “strong” to describe economic indicators showing weakness failed to fully reflect an economic reality which led three Fed governors to dissent from the majority decision and vote in favor of higher interest rates. 

Labor productivity increased just 0.3% in the first quarter of 2026 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number was revised down by half a percentage point. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s survey of 33 economic forecasters projected U.S. gross domestic product would grow at a 2.1% annual rate in the second quarter of 2026, and revised down their growth projections for the remainder of the year, in a survey published in May. Then on Thursday, second quarter GDP came in even lower, slowing to 1.5% according to data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Investment growth was also lower than the BEA had previously projected.

“There is still no evidence of an AI-driven productivity boom after three consecutive quarters of weak productivity growth,” Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in a brief published Thursday. 

Baker also noted that growth in AI investment, while still strong, slowed.

“The economy is soft and vulnerable,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at economic research firm Moody’s Analytics, said on X. 

The Federal Reserve Board declined to comment on which data the FOMC relied on for its statement about strong productivity growth and investment.

“It would be concerning if factual misrepresentations are getting elevated due to political convenience,” former Fed economist Skanda Amarnath, who has accused Warsh of political puppetry in past interviews with TPM, said on X.

There are still positive aspects of the economy. Unemployment has not spiked. Forecasters surveyed by the Philadelphia Fed revised their annual GDP growth projections upward beginning in 2028. And investment growth still represents a positive contribution to overall GDP growth.

On Wall Street, markets responded negatively to Warsh’s refusal not only to speak about what the Fed might do in the future, but to even acknowledge what kinds of economic conditions might warrant a future rate hike. A Thursday BEA release on personal consumption expenditures, measuring the price people in the U.S. pay for things, showed price inflation well above the Fed’s 2% target and the Iran War has spiked the cost of energy, among other goods and services.

“If inflation continues to be elevated through the forecast period, interest rates could well be part of that solution, but I wouldn’t say it’s in isolation,” Warsh said during a Wednesday press conference. 

He went on to leave the door open regarding whether the Fed’s 2% inflation target will remain after January, when a series of expert-staffed committees established by Warsh to initiate his stated goal of central bank “regime change” return with their findings.

“In Warsh’s press conference, he once again failed to specify how he intended to achieve his stridently asserted inflation resolve,” Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan, reportedly said in a note.

Investor concerns about inflation sent the 30-year treasury bond to its highest yield in 19 years.

“[Warsh] also cast doubt on whether PCE inflation will remain the Fed’s inflation target in the medium run,” Feroli said in his note. “Both of these points raise questions about the new chair’s credibility in delivering lower inflation.”

I saw this tweet and it struck me as one of the more powerful indicators of the need to untether ideology from “fight” in intra-Democratic battles. The party is very united on fight, very divided on ideology. So you unite on “fight,” let different constituencies/states find their center of gravity on ideology.

Here in the U.S., we’re looking at the Iran War in terms of whether the U.S. should have started it in the first place, how it’s affecting oil prices, how it’s going to affect the midterms and a bunch of other things. But there’s another way to look at it, which is that Iran is putting on a global performance of standing head to head with the full might of the U.S. military and pulling it off. By their actions, we can see pretty clearly that the Iranian government does not fear Donald Trump. They’re not acting scared. If anything, they’re upping the rate of their provocations, as the state of war and effective stalemate transitions to a new normal of sorts.

It is fair to say that this is not actually the full might of the U.S. military in a theoretical sense. The president could order the U.S. military to mount a full scale ground invasion of Iran, occupy the country, dismantle the state’s system of command, control and repression. Those things are very likely possible, albeit at vast cost. But the real test of a military is not what it can do in some theoretical sense, the precise armaments it has and so forth but what the country which controls that military is able and/or willing to do in a specific economic, geopolitical, and political context. And the U.S. is clearly not willing to do those things. So in a practical sense — not the abstract power and capabilities of the U.S. military but the country’s ability to do those things — this is the full force of the U.S. military.