A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Dems Push for Release of Epstein Files
Under pressure to quell the firestorm over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, last week President Donald Trump told the Justice Department to ask the courts to unseal grand jury testimony from criminal investigations of the child sex trafficker. A Florida court has already denied one DOJ request. In a filing ordered by a judge in New York, the DOJ revealed this week that the two grand juries that indicted Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell heard from just two witnesses in total — neither of them victims. The New York Epstein grand jury only heard testimony from an FBI agent who summarized his interviews with Epstein’s victims. The Maxwell grand jury heard from that same FBI agent and a New York City police detective.
All of that means that even if the DOJ were to convince the New York judge to override grand jury secrecy rules and release the transcripts, they would not be particularly informative. Although Trump has used his request to release them as evidence of his supposed transparency, now it is clear his DOJ knows they would be of limited revelatory value.
Amid this gaslighting, Trump’s allies are also attempting to create an atmosphere of conspiratorial panic about other issues to divert the public’s attention from the administration’s refusal to release the files Trump’s own supporters have long sought. Yesterday. Fox News Digital published an anonymously sourced article claiming that FBI Director Kash Patel has just “found a trove of sensitive documents related to the origins of the Trump–Russia probe buried in multiple ‘burn bags’ in a secret room inside the bureau.” Asked about it later by reporters, Trump appeared to not understand the question and meandered about his desire to release the Epstein files.
Some simple questions: If he really wants them released, why hasn’t he done so? Trump then digressed to “it’s gotta be stuff that really doesn’t hurt people unfairly” — however that’s defined, and certainly “people” here means him. He then veered to “the whole thing is a scam — it’s a scam set up by Democrats.” If that is true, why wouldn’t it benefit Trump to release all the files and prove his case? Finally, Trump offered, “it’s getting to be very old news.” If it’s actually dull and boring, what’s the harm in letting it all out in the open? When a reporter asked a substantive question about Epstein — what he thought his friend “stole” women from him for — Trump left the room.
While House Republicans beholden to Trump shut down the chamber early rather than holding a vote on releasing the Epstein files, the Senate is still in town, and Democratic lawmakers are getting creative. They are relying on a little-known 1928 law that authorizes the minority party to compel a federal agency to provide information if five members of a committee request it and it is relevant to the committee’s jurisdiction. Here, five Democratic members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee are invoking the law to force the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent has all the details.
‘Fuck the Justice Manual’: A New Trump DOJ Assault on the Rule of Law
The Justice Manual is the DOJ’s internal handbook of rules on prosecutorial conduct. According to a damning Bloomberg Law piece, Bill Essayli, Trump’s interim US Attorney in Los Angeles, said “fuck the Justice Manual” in response to questions from line attorneys about his pursuit of indictments against anti-ICE protesters. (Morning Memo has previously discussed reports of LA-based grand juries not returning indictments against protesters and prosecutors being forced to drop felony charges because of false evidence presented by arresting officers.) Bloomberg sourced the quote to four current and former prosecutors in the office.
Trump’s Tariffs in Court Again Today, With His Brazil Retribution in the News
The legal challenge to Trump’s tariffs brought by small business owners is in court again today, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. Trump has held that by declaring a national emergency, he is able to impose sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The small businesses won an injunction before the U.S. Court of International Trade this spring, arguing that Trump had exceeded his authority under the law. The appellate court stayed the injunction pending the appeal.
Legal experts tell Reuters that Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Brazil, because he is angry that his friend Jair Bolsonaro is in legal jeopardy for attempting a coup, is likely to come up in oral arguments. Daniel Esty, a professor at Yale Law School, called the Brazil tariffs “so clearly outside the bounds of the law as to be shocking.”
New Reporting Sheds More Light on Suspect Activities of DOGE Staffer ‘Big Balls’
A new report in Wired, based on documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, shows that the 19-year-old DOGE staffer Edward “Big Balls” Coristine rapidly obtained access to sensitive personal payroll, human resources, and government contracting data in the early days of Trump’s second term. Under intense pressure, federal officials made a blitz of decisions to give access to someone who would not have received it under normal channels. Coristine thus got into Small Business Administration data as well as that of the payroll system for federal employees covering about one-fifth of the federal workforce, including the Department of Justice and the FBI. The data included Social Security numbers, banking information, addresses, dates of birth, and more.
Senate Democrats, led by Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Elizabeth Warren (MA), and Ron Wyden (OR), have introduced the Pick Up After Your DOGE Act, which would require security and performance audits and fixes of federal computer systems and networks accessed by DOGE personnel.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Gets Sued…for Discrimination
FreeState Justice, a pro-LGBTQ rights legal services nonprofit, has sued the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for seeking to dismiss discrimination complaints brought on behalf of transgender workers. “The cases that the EEOC sought to abandon concerned transgender workers who had been subjected to egregious conditions in the workplace: slurs and grossly derogatory statements, graphic sexual comments and unwanted physical touching, misgendering, unfavorable shift changes, and termination after disclosing their gender identity — often in combination,” the lawsuit alleges.
Russell Vought Loses Bid to Cut $15 Billion for Medical Research Grants With a Footnote
Office of Management and Budget Director and foe of the federal government Russell Vought tried to bring down medical research with a footnote in a budget document. The footnote maintained that for the rest of this fiscal year, no funding to outside sources — that is, to scientists studying cures for diseases like cancer and diabetes at universities and other institutions — could be dispersed from the National Institutes of Health.
There was a big backlash on Capitol Hill, and also, according to the Wall Street Journal, inside the Department of Health and Human Services. “This outrageous decision to prevent NIH from spending the funding that Congress has explicitly provided for medical research must immediately be reversed — life-changing cures and patients’ prognoses hang in the balance,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said. Very shortly after that, the decision-by-footnote was reversed. If the past is any guide, though, Vought is likely to try to find other ways to accomplish his goals.
No One Is Safe From the Wrath of Laura Loomer
Pressure from the conspiracist right-wing influencer Laura Loomer has forced the resignation of Vinay Prasad, the top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration. Prasad, who attacked vaccines and masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, would seem to be acceptable to Trump’s base. But Loomer unearthed old social media posts in which he praised Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), identified as liberal, and mocked Trump — and her ire could not overcome even the support of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
What is to be done about the wreckage that Trump acolytes have made of HHS? The 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that Kennedy abruptly fired now urge setting up alternative structures outside of government to mitigate the harm to vaccine policy. In the New England Journal of Medicine, they wrote yesterday: “No viable pathway exists to fully replace the prior trusted and unbiased ACIP structure and process. Instead, the alternatives must focus on limiting the damage to vaccination policy in the United States.”
Southern Baptists Pressure Trump to End Mail-Order Distribution of Mifepristone
Led by the Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, 40 Southern Baptist leaders have sent a letter to President Trump, urging him to impede or stop the sale by mail of the FDA-approved abortion pill mifepristone. They want the FDA to require patients receiving the drug to have an ultrasound first, and to revisit its approval of the drug. Even more ominously, the letter urges Trump to “instruct the Department of Justice to enforce the Comstock Act to protect states’ rights to uphold pro-life laws.” To understand what invoking the Comstock Act actually means, read this.
Bessent Admits Big Beautiful Bill Has “Backdoor to Privatizing Social Security”
At a Breitbart event yesterday, the Treasury Secretary discussed “Trump accounts” included in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, that will give parents a one-time payment of $1,000 per child born between 2025 and 2028. Parents then can contribute as much as $5,000 per year until the child’s 18th birthday (that is, if they have that money). “I’m not sure when the distribution date should be, whether it’s 30 and you can buy a house, should it be 60,” said Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager before Trump tapped him for a Cabinet post. “But in a way, it is a backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”
More Havoc From Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill
CNN reports that the new law’s draconian cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) could imperil independent grocery stores, given “the program’s role as an economic anchor for grocery stores and communities, particularly in rural areas.”
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