How Little We Know About What Trump Is Up To in Latin America
A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.
US strikes extend to the Pacific
By its own admission, the Trump administration has expanded its illegal attacks on alleged drug trafficking boats from the Caribbean to the Pacific.
The US military carried out two strikes that we know in the Pacific, bringing the total number of attacks since the start of the campaign to nine, with a death toll of 37. The attacks in the Pacific took place in international waters, and at least one of them occurred off the coast of Colombia, according to reports.
Throughout the weeks-long campaign, almost all publicly available information about the attacks came from the notoriously unreliable Trump administration. The campaign also occurred alongside an administrative purge of journalists who usually cover the Pentagon, most of whom gave up their press credentials rather than adhere to a restrictive new media policy. What’s left to cover the Department of Defense on the ground is a mix of mostly right-wing media outlets that have agreed to sign on to the new restrictions.
The combination of fewer reliable journalists at the Pentagon and compromised media taking their place could hardly come at a worse time given the administration’s own difficulties in telling the truth. Long before Trump, the area of national security was one of the most difficult for journalists to cover, and the structure and traditions of the U.S. government placed an overwhelming respect for secrecy and security at the expense of transparency and accountability.
Even today, the campaign is being run on the basis of a secret memo from Trump’s Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, and the president has issued a secret presidential finding authorizing the CIA to conduct covert operations in and around Venezuela. Congress and the American public have been kept in the dark about the legal basis of the attacks, their ultimate goal, the broader strategy, and the end game.
Similar practices in previous administrations have created enormous historical tensions between democratic processes and military/intelligence operations. But no previous administration has launched military operations at the same time as waging a vigorous, sustained, and widespread attack on the rule of law, the constitutional order, and the professional military, as President Trump is doing.
It’s a bad combination at the wrong time… something that opponents of government secrecy, deference to the military, and extrajudicial killings had previously warned would eventually come back to bite us.
Corruption: $250 million and counting
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) warns that President Trump may be able to settle his own $250 million claim against the federal government for its criminal investigations without immediately disclosing the settlement to the public.
“Our interpretation is that even though it’s a private settlement, there’s no need to disclose it anywhere until there’s an accounting of where all the money goes at the end of the year,” Raskin told Greg Sargent.
Raskin also cites the Emoluments Clause – which proved to be a weak tool in Trump I – as a ban. any compensation of the president from the federal government other than his salary.
CONFIRMED: East Wing Demolished
After a few days of dodging and shoddy deception, the Trump administration — first through an anonymous senior official, then through President Trump himself — confirmed what photographic evidence had made undeniable: It is demolishing the entire East Wing of the White House to make way for the president’s ballroom pet project.
Facing a wave of backlash following the unannounced demolition of a third of the White House complex, Trump took to holding up models of the ballroom during an Oval Office press briefing with the NATO secretary general.
Philip Bump writes of the demolition of the East Wing:
The metaphor of Trump crushing part of the White House as he directs his bulldozers toward democracy itself is almost too obvious to note. But this is not just a symbolic parallel: both are rooted in the same indifference to what these American institutions mean to Americans and to America. Both are rooted in the fact that Trump wants to treat these things as his own and now feels empowered to do precisely that.
Also demolished: CISA
“The Trump administration has effectively closed the division of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that coordinates critical infrastructure cybersecurity improvements with state and local governments, private companies and foreign countries,” Cybersecurity Dive reports.
Wahoowhat? UVa capitulates
Under pressure from the White House, Mr. Jefferson’s University of Virginia became the first public university to reach a deal with the Trump administration, agreeing to the imposition of certain race-based policies for the sole purpose of halting ongoing federal investigations.
For the record
On Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) concluded a marathon 22-hour speech in which he warned that it was time to “sound the alarm on authoritarian control.”
He tells us he’s going to do it again
Confusion of National Guard cases
Late yesterday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear en banc a ruling that stayed a lower court order that blocked the deployment of National Guard troops to California. A total of 11 justices joined Justice Marsha Berzon’s powerful dissent, TPM’s Kate Riga reports.
To make sense of the three big National Guard cases – California, Oregon and Illinois – and the current legal status of each case, I defer to Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck, who is doing a remarkable job this morning sorting out the various moving parts.
ICYMI…
During oral arguments this week, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals was deeply skeptical of the Trump administration’s efforts to arrest and deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, with the former Columbia University student being punished for his political views.
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