davidkurtz.bsky.social
TPM editor at large + all things Morning Memo: https://morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com/
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Morning Memo, chronicling the Trump II presidency each weekday in a succinct and accessible format:
morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com
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There’s a provincial element to some of this, the frisson of a big nat'l event touching close to home, however tenuous. Remember local police being inundated in the summer of 2020 w/ complaints and tips fueled by crazy rumors and misinformation circulating on social media about Antifa invaders.
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Earlier in the week, the sheriff in Mobile County, Alabama promised it would be a busy weekend for local “orthopedic hand surgeons” if protestors break the perimeter his deputies set. The controversy over his remarks prompted him to issue a somewhat conciliatory statement.
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Elsewhere in Florida, Brevard County officials held a presser w/ the tagline: “Florida: The Anti-Riot State.” After nodding toward the right to protest, the local sheriff launched into tough guy mode with a threatening rundown of the things his deputies would do to protestors who engage in violence.
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"If you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety. And so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you."
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Taking President Trump’s lead, the GOP governors in TX and MO have activated their national guards ahead of the weekend protests. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) hasn’t activated the Florida National Guard, but he tried to embody the snarling “Make my day” ethos of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry:
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When they’re not conflating all protests with rioting, some officials have been using the tableau of street demonstrations to preen as tough guys ready to crack heads, posturing almost certainly fueled by right-wing coverage of the sporadic rioting in LA that depicts 18M people as under siege.
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Morning Memo, your daily update on the slow-rolling constitutional clash between President Trump and the judicial branch:
morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com
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That seems to be a strategic decision to avoid the harder questions of whether the courts can order POTUS to engage in negotiations with a foreign country, to demand the release from a foreign prison of someone wrongfully deported to their home country, and other stickier elements of this case.
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Notably Abrego Garcia is not yet seeking sanctions for the defying the court’s order to facilitate his return. Instead, he is focused on the administration’s defiance of the court’s discovery order by failing to produce documents and witness and raising frivolous objections and privileges.
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Abrego Garcia is seeking wide-ranging sanctions, among them the possible appointment of a special master to determine which officials are responsible and to obtain the documents withheld so far. That includes turning over the "personal devices" of key officials for in camera review by the judge:
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The move to impose sanctions comes after what was supposed to be an expedited two-week discovery sprint ordered by Xinis on April 15 turned into a nearly two-month discovery marathon:
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Among the wide-ranging sanctions Abrego Garcia is seeking is a possible court order for Attorney General Pam Bondi and other key officials to turn over their personal devices for U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland to review privately in her chambers.
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Morning Memo, chronicling the Trump II era each weekday so you check in then get on with your life:
morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com
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ornThe D.C. Circuit is still blocking Judge Boasberg’s contempt of court proceedings in the same case. Because the appeals court entered what was supposed to be a temporary administrative stay, Boasberg has been unable to move forward since April 18, a “temporary” delay of almost two months now.
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The administrative stay won’t be the last word from the 3-judge panel. They still must decide whether to freeze the order while the entire appeal proceeds, but the odds aren’t good. FWIW, there’s no reason to believe the selection of the 3 Trump appointees was anything more than random chance.
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The stay came as the Trump administration faced a deadline of today to propose to Boasberg how it would provide the due process that the Alien Enemies Act detainees at CECOT had been denied when they were removed in March.
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Yesterday, the three judges – Gregory Katsas, Neomi Rao, and Justin Walker – issued an administrative stay blocking a major order from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in the original Alien Enemies Case.
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That means they get the first bite at the apple on various emergency motions that come to the court and a chance to shape dramatically the procedural posture of some of the most important cases against the lawlessness of the Trump administration.
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Correct, trying to cut off contempt proceedings. Judge could still sanction govt for its conduct prior to the return of Abrego Garcia
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Morning Memo, for free each weekday in your inbox:
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That kind of indiscriminate enforcement action has had the effect of sweeping up documented and undocumented, citizen and noncitizen, workers and criminals in a Kafkaesque crackdown that was sure to enflame tensions in immigrant and minority communities that were hardest hit.
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"Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores."
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And so it was that ICE officials found themselves being berated by Miller in late May that their arrest numbers weren’t high enough and the rhetorical focus on the worst of the worst needed to shift on the ground to focus on all undocumented immigrants, the WSJ reports:
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It falls to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to keep all the plates spinning, a role he happily embraces, but which comes with the inherent challenge of putting the “mass” in mass deportations.
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For more analysis and the rest of the weekend's blitz of major new, Morning Memo has you covered:
morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com
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Two things to keep eye on:
1. The President’s memo was concerningly open-ended. It didn’t specify Los Angeles or California; it applies anywhere.
2. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made a big deal about a detachment of 500 active-duty Marines being ready to provide backup to the National Guard.
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It’s too early to say whether this particular incident will be the defining episode of the erosion of the line between the military and domestic law enforcement. But it’s understandable why everyone has a hair trigger about Trump sending in the National Guard over the objections of Gov Gavin Newsom.
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There was an extremely high risk that if Trump were re-elected he would provoke civil unrest in order to use it as a pretext for lawless actions he was already determined to take.
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"The chief of Justice Department’s criminal division in Nashville resigned over the decision to charge Abrego Garcia, people briefed on the matter said."
www.cnn.com/2025/06/06/p...
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Almost comically, the Trump DOJ swaggers in to court to tell Juge Xinis that it has now complied with her order and will move to dismiss the case and asks her to pause deadlines, gliding right past her ongoing contempt of court inquiry into the govt's conduct.
talkingpointsmemo.com/news/just-in...
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The underlying issue in the deportation case was about the lack of due process, which Abrego Garcia was entitled to in immigration proceedings and is now entitled to in the criminal proceedings, and which wasn’t available in indefinite, uncharged detention in El Salvador.
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In short, the Trump administration – in a case that drew international attention for how it screwed up – is throwing everything at Abrego Garcia. Of course, it can be true that both the Trump administration and Abrego Garcia engaged in lawless behavior. The fact of one doesn’t excuse the other.
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The pretrial detention motion also introduces new uncharged allegations of “solicitation of child pornography” to demonstrate that Abrego Garcia is a threat to the community. It also repeats an allegation that Abrego Garcia “participated in the murder of a rival gang member’s mother in El Salvador.”
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The gov't goes hard at Abrego Garcia in a pretrial detention motion, highlighting the allegations in the indictment that in addition to transporting undocumented immigrants, Abrego Garcia abused women migrants and trafficked firearms and narcotics.
talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/just-...
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“Among those allegedly transported were members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, sources familiar with the investigation said," ABC News reports.
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One more face-saving element of these latest developments: After the Trump admin's smear campaign repeatedly accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang, which a federal judge has concluded was based on flimsy evidence, it's taking one last shot at the MS-13 angle ...
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That investigation appears to have yielded a sealed federal two-count indictment of Abrego Garcia last month in Tennessee accusing him of hauling undocumented immigrants as part of decade-long conspiracy, ABC News is now reporting.
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As part of the Trump admin smear campaign against Abrego Garcia, DHS had trumpeted a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop yielded no charges against him. ABC News reported last month that the Trump DOJ had begun investigating the traffic stop, including interviewing the alleged owner of the vehicle.
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Morning Memo, chronicling the depredations of the Trump II presidency:
morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com
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This case is at or near the boiling point. All of these measures to give the detainees due process came AFTER the Trump admin violated the judge's order by deporting them in the first place. This was the gov't chance to cure that violation. It's blown it. Stay tuned for what the judge orders next.
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The incensed judge has already called out the Trump DOJ for claiming he forced them into this predicament. It floated this solution as an alternative to bringing the detainees back to the U.S.. He took them up on it, but explicitly said the administration could always being them back stateside.