Trump’s Fave Snarling Spox Exits Stage Right

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

Good riddance

Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson who spread slanderous lies about Trump’s mass deportation operation and outrageous attacks on the press, is leaving the administration on her own terms.

McLaughlin was a key contributor to a particular aesthetic of Trump II: photogenic young women, often blonde, unleashing themselves on cameras on behalf of President Trump and his most abhorrent nativist policies, in a performative spectacle that rejected the very principle of transparency and public accountability.

The culminating example of McLaughlin’s dramatization of angry white women came in May, when the Trump administration dispatched a plane full of immigrants to South Sudan, in violation of an order from U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston. McLaughlin ran in front of the cameras to attack Murphy as he called an emergency hearing on the case:

The deportees sat on a tarmac in Djibouti for days as the case made its way to the Supreme Court, where the conservative six-justice majority stayed Murphy’s order due to a vigorous dissent from the three liberal justices, allowing the deportations to South Sudan to be completed.

No accountability then, and no accountability now.

In the Trump administration, where time is a flat circle, McLaughlin’s departure makes almost no sense. This does not represent a rejection of the mass deportation policy after the Minnesota debacle, the white nationalist rhetoric of DHS social media posts, or its false statements and fabricated facts. This is not a withdrawal or withdrawal.

In its strange way, it’s just the typical staff turnover after a year of a new administration – but with the Trump twist of leveraging reality TV casting prerogatives. Someone else — probably young, blond, feminine and surly — will become Trump’s preferred explosive spokesperson, dodging tough questions from the press with pro-wrestling bluster and playground taunts. Rinse and repeat.

Monitoring mass deportations

• Minnesota: State and federal authorities are investigating the alleged beating last month of a Mexican national by federal agents in a St. Paul parking lot that left him in intensive care with eight skull fractures.
• new York: An immigration judge has dropped the Trump administration’s case against Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University graduate student and pro-Palestinian protester, because the government failed to properly authenticate a key document, his lawyers say.
• All over the country: To try to prevent a repeat of Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, Democratic mayors of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Boston, Oakland and Seattle have signed executive orders aimed at restricting how and where ICE can operate in their cities, while a coalition of local Democratic prosecutors warn that they will prosecute ICE agents who break the law.

Judge: ICE cannot detain Abrego Garcia again

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland issued a new order barring ICE from again detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the wrongly deported Salvadoran national who has been relentlessly targeted by the Trump administration.

In extending his earlier injunction barring ICE from returning Abrego Garcia to custody, Xinis rejected a bad faith argument by the Trump administration that because last month it issued a deportation order against Abrego Garcia retroactive to 2019, the clock was starting again on when he could be detained and for how long.

Three anarchic boat strikes in a single day

Eleven people were killed Monday in three illegal U.S. strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, bringing the known death toll during the months-long campaign to 144 or 145 (reports vary).

About these so-called “rescues”…

I treated with considerable skepticism reports that the Pentagon had summoned the Coast Guard to rescue survivors of its illegal boat strike campaign. Given the distances and time lag, rescue efforts appear timid at best. Now, The Intercept puts some meat on the bone of at least one supposed rescue attempt and shows how inadequate and late it was:

Eight men threw themselves into these rough seas on December 30 when the United States rained down a barrage of munitions, sinking three ships. They needed immediate help; There was little chance they could survive even an hour. In announcing its strike, the U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, said it “immediately informed” the Coast Guard of the launch of search and rescue protocols to rescue the men. …

Using open source flight tracking data, Airwars and The Intercept learned that a Coast Guard aircraft did not fly to the attack site for nearly two days. A timeline provided by the Coast Guard confirmed that approximately 45 hours passed before a flight arrived in the search area.

The slow response and lack of rescue craft in the area suggested that the United States had little interest in rescuing anyone. It’s part of a pattern of what appear to be simulated rescue missions that, since mid-October, have not rescued any survivors.

Corruption: drone edition

WSJ: Eric Trump invests in ‘low cost per kill’ drone company

Corruption: Ballroom Edition

President Trump has appointed his longtime executive assistant, Chamberlain Harris — a 26-year-old with no relevant experience — to the 116-year-old Commission of Fine Arts, which will review Trump’s plan for his ballroom project. The WaPo wryly notes that the original members of the commission included Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Daniel Burnham. Trump also placed loyalists on the National Capital Planning Commission, which is also expected to review the ballroom plan.

Topic of the day

Trial canceled in the “Antifa” case in Texas

The judge in the federal terrorism trial of protesters allegedly involved in the July 4 incident at an ICE detention center in Prairieland, Texas, where a police officer was shot and killed, declared a mistrial during jury selection because a defense attorney wore a T-shirt emblazoned with images of civil rights leaders.

Back to the well on Islamophobia

As Texas Republicans try to boost their chances in the midterm elections by stoking a new wave of Islamophobia, Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development has opened a new discrimination investigation into a large housing development centered on a mosque outside Dallas.

Trump’s DOJ had already quietly closed an investigation into this development last summer, but HUD Secretary Scott Turner loudly jumped into the fray with early voting already underway ahead of the March 3 primary election, which features a hotly contested race between Republicans and the U.S. Senate.

Meanwhile, Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), a first-term Jewish member of Congress, engaged in outright anti-Muslim bigotry, posting on social media: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not difficult. »

Quote of the day

“The censorship of science and the erasure of America’s history in national parks pose direct threats to everything these amazing places and our country represent. As Americans, we deserve national parks that tell the story of both the triumphs and heartbreaks of our country. We can handle the truth.”Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources at the National Parks Conservation Association, who filed a new lawsuit in Boston federal court challenging President Trump’s March 2025 executive order to “restore truth and common sense to American history.”

Any hot tips? A juicy scuttlebutt? Any interesting ideas? Let me know. For sensitive information, use encrypted methods here.