A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
A Decapitation Event
It was a surreal juxtaposition. On the Hill, Kash Patel – the dangerously unqualified avowed enemy of the FBI – was going through the motions of a Senate confirmation hearing to lead the bureau, while the Trump White House was proceeding right along with an illegal purge of the FBI’s leadership ranks.
It followed a similar pattern to what is happening at the Justice Department overall. While Attorney General-nominee Pam Bondi awaits Senate confirmation, the Trump White House is proceeding to hobble the Justice Department by illegally firing the career prosecutors who handled the criminal cases against Donald Trump and by retaliating against other elements within the department.
In both cases the nominees disclaimed any knowledge of the purges. Their lack of knowledge was not evidence of their perfidy but of their irrelevance. The Justice Department and the FBI will be controlled by the Trump White House, and whoever is installed in leadership positions will be figureheads acting on orders from above. This not normal.
In the span of 10 days, President Trump has succeeded in crushing two of the most important institutions in the federal government for upholding and defending the rule of law. The FBI and DOJ purges, as with the other illegal firings across government, are ousting career civil servants in violation of the civil service laws that were implemented specifically to protect the functioning of government from rampant politicization and abuse. Your occasional reminder that the only political position at the FBI is the directorship (which has never been held by a Democrat).
The purges will give rise to dozens of lawsuits by government workers and their advocates, and they may ultimately prevail, but not before having their lives upended, their careers derailed, and exhausting themselves emotionally and financially.
With the Department of Justice now compromised, who is there to enforce the laws that the Trump White House and its minions throughout government are violating with impunity every day? The Supreme Court’s historically bad immunity decision only covers the president. For everyone else, there was still the Justice Department. Until now.
Instead Of Aviation Safety, How About Some Racism?
President Trump’s racist and misogynistic blame-casting for the midair collision over the Potomac threatens one of the federal government’s most laudable achievements: a regulatory framework that has yielded a sterling record of airline safety.
Commercial aviation, as much as we take it for granted, is one of most complicated human endeavors, technically and logistically. We take it for granted precisely because the existing framework has an exemplary record of learning from its mistakes. Much like the intricate dance of aircraft at a busy airport, the interplay among the FAA, NTSB, and aviation industry is often tension-filled and not always elegant. But it has, sometimes despite itself, produced a system the makes constant safety improvements packed with redundancies and failsafes.
Aviation safety sits at the pinnacle of what we think of as the “good” provided by government. Trump is already taking a sledgehammer to that framework with his false public denunciations and emphasis on assigning quick and baseless blame.
Keep in mind that all of the good people at the federal level involved in rescue and recovery, accident investigation and reconstruction, and correcting what went wrong are subject to the same abusive purges and retaliation Trump is conducting across government. They aren’t safe either.
Falling On Their Swords
By any measure, the people in government trying to thwart the Trump lawlessness are conducting themselves heroically:
- “The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.”–WaPo
- The Trump administration’s purge of dozens of senior officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development encountered resistance … when the career employee who carried out the original directive rescinded it, calling the purge an “illegal” violation of “due process.” The official was then promptly placed on administrative leave …”–WaPo
Trump II Clown Show
- TPM’s Josh Kovensky: OPM’s Top Lawyer Is A ‘Raging Misogynist’ With A Plan To Break The Civil Service
- The order implementing the Trump administration’s disastrous spending freeze was drafted by Clarence Thomas-whisperer Mark Paoletta, who is now the general counsel at OMB, the NYT reports.
The Corruption Is Rampant
CBS’ parent company is in talks with Donald Trump to settle his bogus lawsuit over how 60 Minutes edited an interview with his then-opponent Kamala Harris.
Open For Business
Bloomberg: Sam Bankman-Fried’s Parents Explore Seeking Trump Pardon for Son
NPR And PBS Are Next On The MAGA Target List
Trump’s new chairman of the FCC has ordered what could be a crippling investigation into the two major public broadcasting networks, alleging that airing the fact of their underwriting sponsorships constitutes prohibited commercial advertising.
‘TragiFunny’
I want to end the week with a brief remembrance of an old friend of mine who died unexpectedly Sunday.
I’d known Paul Johnson for more than 40 years, a 25-year stretch of which we were brothers-in-law. He was a doting uncle to my two kids. He was better known by the sobriquet he later adopted: the portmanteau Pableaux, under which he did his public-facing work as a writer, photographer, and creative spirit. I still called him Paul.
He made a Morning Memo cameo a couple of Thanksgivings ago when I shared with you his recipe for turkey and andouille gumbo.
I’ve not encountered as swift a mind or as clever a wit. When he got rolling with a sharp audience, he had the speed and abandon of Robin Williams. The best times with him were when the laughter dissolved into tears and the tears into laughter. He had an enormous circle of admirers. May you live a life that earns the quality of encomiums in death that Paul did.
In one of my last exchanges with him, I was recovering from injuries I’d sustained in a fatal sailing accident and was using dark humor to cope. Paul texted back “TragiFunny.” It’s been a hard week on many levels to find the funny in the tragedy.
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