In Our New Gilded Age, Everything Is for Sale

A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.

I struggled to find a unifying theme for the latest parade of depredations from late last week through the weekend. But when a Gilded Age name like Mellon dominates the news, it’s hard to resist the urge to portray the current moment as a billionaire on the run.

A billionaire president freed from the constraints of the law by a Supreme Court staffed by billionaires and, in the case of at least two justices, personally rewarded by a billionaire benefactor. Billionaire tech executives are circling the federal government like vultures for the opportunity to further expand and consolidate their considerable power.

The US military now has its own billionaire benefactor who contributes to pay the troops, showing that the military itself is the plaything of a billionaire.

Perhaps this is why the demolition of the East Wing of the White House resonates beyond politics. It is replaced by a stylized Gilded Age ballroom, privately funded, where a royal court of billionaires and wannabes can gather and engage in the kind of transactional governance that Trump is familiar with. Everything and everyone has a price.

Corruption: Mellon Edition

The entire US military is at risk of becoming a private military contractor after President Trump gleefully and extralegally accepted a $130 million donation from billionaire Timothy Mellon – yes, those Mellons – to partially pay troops during government shutdown.

Vanity

President Trump will likely name the ballroom he is building on the site of the demolished East Wing of the White House after him, ABC News reported, citing, among other things, a list of donors provided to him by the White House who called it “President Donald J. Trump’s Ballroom.” Trump later called the detail “fake news.”

Quote of the day

“I am the speaker and the president.”President Trump reportedly laughed privately about his domination of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and the GOP conference.

Trigger Warning

A few new books offer painful new nuggets about Donald Trump’s worst crimes:

• January 6: On the morning of January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence scribbled handwritten notes in his planner following his fateful phone call with President Trump. “You will look like a wimp,” according to Pence’s memo, obtained by Jonathan Karl, ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent, for his new book.
• Mar-a-Lago Documents: Special counsel Jack Smith’s decision to pursue the classified documents case in Florida rather than Washington is revisited in a new book by WaPo journalists Aaron Davis and Carol Leonnig. It also reveals that Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar refused to allow Smith to ask an appeals court to disqualify U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon from the case.

I want to be clear that these were difficult decisions, but not necessarily bad decisions based on the facts and the law. It’s easy to criticize decisions that resulted in poor outcomes, but that doesn’t mean the decision was wrong or that a different decision would have resulted in a different or better outcome.

A bit of counter-trolling in action?

During oral arguments in a terrorism case on Friday, two 4th Circuit Court of Appeals judges wondered aloud whether the standard used by the government to aid and abet a crime would have brushed aside President Trump’s remarks in his infamous Ellipse speech on the morning of January 6, 2021, Politico reports:

“What if a large group of people, angry at Congress, gathered on the Washington Mall, some of whom have guns, and are known to have guns, and a leader stood in front of them, right here, right in front of them, not in another country, and said, ‘Take down the streets and fight like hell.’ I’ll be there with you,’” said Judge Stephanie Thacker, an Obama appointee to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“To me it sounds the same. So if what you’re advocating is a crime, then what I just said is a crime – maybe a crime,” Thacker said.

Federal judge summons Bovino to court

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis ordered Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino to appear in court Tuesday to answer for his apparent deployment of tear gas against the crowd in alleged violation of her order.

Sami Hamdi detained by ICE

The Trump administration revoked the visa of Sami Hamdi, a British pro-Palestinian commentator who was on a speaking tour in the United States, and arrested him Sunday morning at San Francisco International Airport.

On the surface, this seems like another example of using visa revocations to engage in viewpoint discrimination, something the Trump administration has already been criticized by judges for doing in other cases.

Abrego Garcia’s torment continues…

The Trump administration informed the judge overseeing one of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s civil cases Friday that it now plans to deport him to Liberia before the end of the month. He has no ties to Liberia and the government continues to refuse to deport him to Costa Rica, a country he and his lawyers have said he will not fight. The judge in the case summoned the attorneys for a virtual conference this afternoon.

The timing of the proposed impeachment would likely render the criminal case against Abrego Garcia moot and save the government from having to defend its vindictive prosecution claim, for which it has subpoenaed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to testify.

Venezuela Watch: US strengthening continues

Among the new features:

• Some junior U.S. officers asked military lawyers, an increasingly marginalized group, for “written approval” before taking part in lawless strikes on suspected drug boats, but apparently received no such assurances, WaPo reports.
• Trump’s Pentagon is redeploying the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, where it is expected to arrive within days.
• The United States has carried out its tenth illegal strike against suspected drug trafficking boats in the region, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday.

Trump’s DOJ sends election observers

The Justice Department has long used election observers to help protect voting rights, particularly in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination, but Trump’s DOJ’s announcement Friday of where and why observers will be sent for the 2025 election has alarmed election experts that there is no legal basis for the move.

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