Letters from an American - May 9, 2025

Episode Date: May 10, 2025

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May 9, 2025. Yesterday afternoon, President Donald Trump withdrew his nomination for interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin to become U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., the top federal prosecutor in the nation's capital. A Missouri political operative with no experience as a prosecutor, Martin defended the January 6 rioters and fired the prosecutors who had worked on their cases, threatened to investigate Democrats and critics,

and hosted a notorious anti-Semite on his podcast. His nomination proved too much for Senator Tom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, who joined all the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to oppose his confirmation, deadlocking the committee and blocking the nomination. Trump announced he was moving Martin into three roles that do not require Senate confirmation. He will become the new director of the Weaponization Working Group at the Department of Justice, an Associate Deputy Attorney General, and a Pardon Attorney.

In these highly important roles, Ed will make sure we finally investigate the weaponization of our government under the Biden regime and provide much-needed justice for its victims, Trump posted on social media. To replace Martin, Trump has tapped Fox News channel host Janine Pirro, who is passionately loyal to him. He noted among her qualifications that she, "...hosted her own Fox News show,

Justice with Judge Janine, for 10 years and is currently co-host of The Five, one of the highest rated shows on television. Matt Gertz of Media Matters for America recalls that the Fox News channel took Pirro off the air after the 2020 election because of her conspiracy theory filled rants. In emails turned up in the defamation suit against the Fox News Channel for pushing the lie that voting machines had tainted the election results, her executive producer called her nuts and a reckless maniac who should

never be on live television. That lawsuit cost the Fox News Channel $787 million. A similar scenario played out earlier this week when Trump withdrew his nomination of former Fox News Channel contributor Dr. Jeanette Neswatt for Surgeon General, the officer who oversees the nation's public health professionals. Neswatt is the sister-in-law of former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, let go after he admitted a journalist to a group chat about a military strike on the Houthis in Yemen. As Anthony Clark reported in the last campaign, she had falsely misrepresented her medical education, board certifications, and military service.

Trump's replacement pick for Surgeon General, Casey Means, did not finish her residency and is not currently licensed as a doctor, but has embraced the anti-vax positions of Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including his thoroughly debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. Still, she is not extreme enough for some of

Kennedy's followers who are unhappy with the nomination. When asked yesterday why he had nominated her, Trump answered, because Bobby thought she was fantastic. I don't know her. I listened to the recommendation of Bobby. Today, Casey Means' brother, Callie, a White House advisor, went after Trump ally Laura Loomer for opposing the nomination, posting on social media that he had just received information that Laura Loomer is taking money from industry to scuttle President Trump's agenda. Loomer responded, You're so full of s***. The administration appears not to be able to attract

the caliber of federal officials to which Americans have become accustomed. Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Cash Patel, who did not have experience in law enforcement when he took the job, has drawn criticism from current and former officials in the FBI and the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, for reducing FBI briefings, traveling frequently on personal matters, and appearing repeatedly at pro-sporting events.

Yesterday, Patel showed up at a hearing for the Senate Appropriations, Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee on the FBI's spending plan for 2025, but he had not produced the plan, which by law was supposed to have been turned over more than a week ago. When Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington, called the absence of the plan absurd and asked Patel when they could expect the plan, he answered he did not have a timeline. Stacy Young, a former Department of Justice lawyer who co-founded Justice Connection, which supports current and former Department of Justice employees under pressure from the administration, told NBC's Ken Delaney,

there's a growing sense among the ranks that there's a leadership void and that the highest echelons of the Bureau are more concerned about currying favor with the president, retribution and leaks than the actual work. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, took Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem even more fully to task. At a meeting of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security yesterday, Murphy told Noem,

Your department is out of control. You are spending like you don't have a budget, he said. You are on the verge of running out of money for the fiscal year. You're on track to trigger the Anti-Deficiency Act. That means you're going to spend more money than you have been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence and it is wildly illegal. Your agency will be broke by July, over two months before the end of the fiscal year. The obsession with the border, he continued, has left the country unprotected elsewhere. To fund the border, you have illegally gutted spending for cybersecurity.

As we speak, Russian and Chinese hackers are having a field day attacking our nation. You have withdrawn funds for disaster prevention. Storms are going to kill more people in this country because of your illegal withholding of these funds. On Wednesday, Customs and Border Patrol confirmed that it had been using the communication app TeleMessage, which was a clone of Signal and which was hacked earlier this week. On Tuesday, Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, asked Attorney General Pam Bondi

to investigate the government's use of TeleMessage Archiver, which seriously threatens U.S. national security. Last night, New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport suffered another 90-second radar blackout at 3.55 a.m. On May 6, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took to social media to blame his predecessor in the Biden administration for the troubles in the airline system. Hugo Lowell of The Guardian reported today that the White House is so fed up with the turmoil around Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, it will not permit him to name his own new chief of staff after his first one resigned last month.

Tim Marchman of Wired reported yesterday that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard failed to follow basic cybersecurity protocol, reusing the same weak password on multiple accounts for years. The administration appears chaotic but far from taking the chaos in hand, President Trump appears happy to let others take the reins. As his tariffs are beginning to bite, today he suggested his worry about the economic fallout by posting, China should open up its market to USA.

Would be so good for them. Closed markets don't work anymore. Five minutes later, he posted, 80% tariff on China seems right. Up to Scott B.' The Constitution gives Congress alone the power to set tariffs. Trump sees that power for himself by declaring an emergency. Now he appears to be handing that power to Treasury Secretary Scott Besant,

likely so that he can blame Besant when things go poorly. Today in the latest legal setback for the Trump regime on immigration, a federal judge in Vermont ordered the government to release Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk from custody. Agents arrested Ozturk, a Turkish national, on March 25th, claiming that she had been engaged with associations that may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students. U.S. District Judge William Sessions III noted that the government provided no evidence for that assertion aside from a 2024 op-ed Ozterk wrote for the school newspaper,

criticizing the university's response to the crisis in Gaza. She was freed this evening and will have to pursue her case before an immigration judge. As the administration has lost repeatedly in court, officials appear to be upping the ante in their attempts to traumatize migrants and increase its power. But it remains unclear

who is calling the shots. Amy McKinnon of Politico reported today that Trump has sat for only 12 daily intelligence briefing sessions since he took office and does not read his written daily intelligence report. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that the US was preparing to send migrants to prison in Libya. On Wednesday, US District Judge Brian Murphy issued an order stopping the removal, saying such renditions would clearly violate a court order. Migrants from Asia sat on a military plane on the tarmac in Texas for hours before being taken off the plane and bused back to detention. When a reporter asked Trump if his administration was sending migrants to Libya, he answered,

I don't know. You'll have to ask Homeland Security, please. Today, immigration and customs enforcement agents arrested Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ross Baraka when he and three members of New Jersey's congressional delegation stood outside a private ICE detention facility in Newark called Delaney Hall. New Jersey's interim US Attorney, Trump loyalist Alina Habba, posted on social media that Baraka had ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center.

He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. But as Tracy Tully, Luis Ferrer-Sederny, and Alice McFadden of the New York Times reported, videos show him being arrested in a public area outside the facility. Tully, Ferre-Sederny, and McFadden report that in February, the administration signed a 15-year, $1 billion contract with GeoGroup, which operates private prisons, to expand the Delaney Hall facility dramatically as an ICE prison. New Jersey officials have argued in federal court that GeoGroup does not have the required permits to operate the expanded facility. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller

told reporters today that voters elected Trump to deport the illegals and that Marxist judges, frustrating that effort, are attacking democracy. In fact, Trump convinced many voters that he would deport only violent criminals and they are now aghast at the scenes unfolding as masked agents grab women and children from their cars and sweep up U.S. citizens. In the bulwark today, Adrian Carrasquillo explained how podcasters, sports YouTubers, and comedians, including Joe Rogan, have brought the rendition of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador onto the radar screen of Trump voters.

Americans now disapprove of Trump's immigration policies by 53% to 46%. Miller made an even bigger power grab when he said, we're actively looking at suspending the writ of habeas corpus, a legal change that essentially establishes martial law by permitting the government to arrest people and hold them without charges or a trial. Legal analyst Steve Vladeck explains that Miller's justification for such a suspension

is dead wrong and suggests Miller's threat appears to be designed to put more pressure on the courts. But in this chaotic administration, it seems worth asking who the we is in Miller's statement. In the group chat about striking the Houthis, when administration officials were discussing, without the presence of either the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the president himself, what was the best course of action? It was Miller who ultimately decided to launch a strike simply by announcing what he claimed were Trump's wishes. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson.

It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.