Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
To some extent, every new excess by the Trump administration is unsurprising to us, the writers and editors of Talking Points Memo, and, I imagine, to you, our readers. These guys told us what they were going to do, after all. It sounded authoritarian. Trump’s own former military leaders said he was “fascist.” But given that priming, we heavy consumers of news can, I think, sometimes lose track of how far the Trump administration has gone, even by its own standards.
Nicole on Thursday flagged an interview with CNBC during which FCC director Brendan Carr outlined his belief that both his agency and the “media ecosystem” overall are in the midst of a “massive shift” given the “permission structure that President Trump’s election has provided.”
“And I would simply say we’re not done yet with seeing the consequences of that,” Carr said.
“Will you only be pleased when none of these comedians have a show on broadcast television?” CNBC anchor David Faber asked.
“No, it’s not any particular show or any particular person,” Carr replied. “It’s just we’re in the midst of a very disruptive moment right now, and I just, frankly, expect that we’re going to continue to see changes in the media ecosystem.”
Carr and the rest of the Trump administration have tried to get a lot of mileage out of the whole idea that the 2024 election represented a substantiation of an American cultural “vibe shift” post-COVID (though Carr’s talk of a new, Trumpian “permission structure” is a particularly chilling way to articulate that idea).
But setting aside that Trump’s electoral victory was, in the end, not that large, are Trump’s leaders in government still doing what they understood themselves to have won permission to do?
“This was all in Project 2025, btw,” an actor from “Glee” tweeted, and Carr at 11:43 p.m. replied with that GIF of Jack Nicholson nodding with an ecstatic, unhinged look, a seeming affirmation that, yes, this was all the plan.
But was it? Carr, in fact, wrote the FCC chapter of Project 2025. There was nothing about revoking broadcast licenses or using the “Equal Time” rule in creative ways, as he has threatened to do with “The View,” a program that is seemingly his next ABC-broadcast target. “The FCC should promote freedom of speech,” his chapter of Project 2025 began.
That’s an ideal his party is now seemingly somewhat confused about. Early this week, Pam Bondi got in trouble for trying to distinguish anti-Charlie Kirk “hate speech” from “free speech.” “An FCC license, it’s not a right. It really is a privilege,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Semafor on Thursday. “Under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right. And that there should be almost no checks and balances on it. I don’t feel that way anymore,” she added. Other Republicans took the opposite side of the issue, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) of all people calling Carr’s tactics “right out of Goodfellas.”
It’s in these moments where the Trump administration and its allies lose the plot — when they do an about-face on the same ideas they bear hugged in weeks and months and years prior, casting about for enemies to punish — that the MAGA coalition frays a bit, straining under the weight of cognitive dissonance. We saw the same thing with Trump’s short-lived war on Iran and, much more so, with his aggressive insistence that there was nothing important going on with that Jeffrey Epstein guy. The cause of ending cancel culture launched a thousand MAGA-aligned influencer careers; it is the supposed raison d’être of entire MAGA-friendly publications. Now that the government they serve has turned the page on free speech, what do they do?
It’s not just the MAGA faithful. Booting a late-night host watched by millions from the air over some muddled remarks about your slain political ally is the kind of thing that gets the attention of the “normies” who have decided to tune out from the whole lurid spectacle of American democracy in 2025. (Ditto for revising childhood vaccine recommendations while confessing you’re not even totally clear what you’re voting on.)
Ten years into this, only fools predict we’ve reached the beginning of the end of Donald Trump. And that’s not what I’m saying. But moments like these are not good for Trump’s already limited base of support, and bring us toward the next chapter of America’s authoritarian experiment, whatever that chapter may be.
— John Light
Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:
A look at Republicans’ careful tinkering with their favorite legislative tool.
Indiana Republicans appear to be on the cusp of caving to Trump’s demands on redistricting.
DC officials head to Congress, attempting to push back on the portrayal of their city as a hellscape.
Let’s dig in.
Republicans Prune Parts Of The Filibuster That Don’t Help Them
The legislative filibuster helps Republicans. They can still do nominations and tax cuts with a simple majority, and it prevents them from having to execute on the policy demands of the base, many of which are massively unpopular.
But when they run into tentacles of the filibuster that thwart those goals, they — unlike Democrats — do not hesitate to end them.
On Thursday, Republicans confirmed 48 Trump nominees at once after changing the rules that previously would have required a 60-vote supermajority. Before that, in May, they revoked a California electric vehicle standard with a simple majority, ignoring the parliamentarian’s ruling that the vote was subject to the filibuster.
They also reduced the hours required for post-cloture debate to two down from 30, and followed Democrats’ lead on most nominees, lowering the threshold to a simple majority for Supreme Court ones as well.
The GOP has long painted itself as the protectors of the filibuster, and painted it as a measure of old-school rationality and tea-cooling. In reality, the party only has such reverence for the parts of the blockade that are politically beneficial. If the legislative filibuster truly hurt them, their professed veneration for Senate operations would evaporate in an instant.
— Kate Riga
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun Says a Redistricting Special Session ‘Probably Will Happen’
In the latest in the Trump administration’s redistricting pressure campaign to strong arm red states into engaging in the extremely uncommon practice of mid-cycle redistricting so Trump can rig the midterms, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun announced this week that a redistricting special session will likely be held in the next couple of months. Braun, along with other GOP members of the state legislature, had not previously indicated that he would agree to Trump’s redistricting plans, which are transparently aimed at flipping the only two Democratic seats that Indiana has in the House.
But, earlier this week, per the Indy Star, Braun told reporters a special session “probably will happen.”
“We’re going to poll our legislators, and if it’s there, we’re going to do it,” Braun said. “My feeling is it probably will happen.”
Despite the indication from Braun that a redistricting special session will likely occur, there remain a number of Indiana GOP State House members who oppose the administration’s continued efforts to pressure GOP officials into redrawing their congressional district maps. The Trump administration is trying to decrease Republicans’ chances of losing the House in 2026, a change that would not only mean the end of a Republican trifecta in D.C. but also would hand investigative and subpoena power back to Democrats.
Braun’s comments also come against the backdrop of the death of Trump ally and CEO of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk, who, before his killing, said on X that his organization would “support primary opponents for Republicans in the Indiana State Legislature who refuse to support the team and redraw the maps.”
Republicans are using Kirk’s death as a way to push forward the administration’s redistricting plans, with one Indiana Republican suggesting Kirk’s death gives the effort renewed urgency.
“They killed Charlie Kirk — the least that we can do is go through a legal process and redistrict Indiana into a nine to zero map,” U.S. Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) said. “And I sense it in this crowd, in a big way. And I sense it from supporters all over the state; that now’s not the time to back off. Now’s not the time to be nice. Now’s the time to engage in a peaceful and political way.”
— Khaya Himmelman
House GOP Continues Its Crackdown on DC Supposed Crime Problem
Three top elected officials from Washington D.C. — Mayor Muriel Bowser, Council Chair Phil Mendelson and Attorney General Brian Schwalb — were at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Thursday testifying about their oversight of the district.
Throughout the hearing, D.C. officials pushed back on House Republicans’ consistent characterization of the nation’s capital as crime-ridden (it is not) — a sentiment President Donald Trump also built his entire justification for the occupation of the district with armed federal law enforcement around.
House Republicans have also passed several of a series of bills this week attempting to overhaul D.C.’s criminal justice system and roll back home rule, without any input from the district itself or its constituents.
“We are a city under siege,” Mendelson said during Thursday’s hearing. “It is frustrating to watch this committee debate and vote on 14 bills regarding the district without a single public hearing, with no input from District officials or the public, without regard for community impact nor a shred of analysis, including legal sufficiency or fiscal impact.”
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA), a member of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters outside of the hearing room that the committee should be having hearings about the crimes happening under the Trump administration instead.
“They are flagrantly violating the law at every corner,” Subramanyam said of the Trump administration. “Instead, they’re picking on homeless people, they’re picking on people who are not committing crimes or picking on people who they disagree with and violating their constitutional rights. … We should be having a hearing on things that are a little bit more pressing with this administration because we’re an oversight committee.”
— Emine Yücel