I HAM LEGEND

Donald Trump’s authoritarian stampede is running into a problem. What’s that thing called again? Oh yeah… the rule of law.

• Grand juries will indict a ham sandwich, the saying goes. But not in Washington D.C. — when the accused is a guy who threw that sandwich at one of President Donald Trump’s infamous federal agents, whose presence is much-hated by the locals in our nation’s capital. A grand jury refused today to return a felony charge against Sean Dunn, 37, who was filmed hurling a hoagie at a Fed earlier this month. The incident sent Trump’s top aides into fits, prompting an armed raid of the sandwich slinger’s apartment. The denial is a stunning rebuke for Trump and his crackdown on Washington, because this kind of thing almost never happens.

• “Evidently, you can’t get an indictment for throwing a ham sandwich in defense of democracy!” legal analyst Norm Eisen told Crooked’s Jon Favreau in a Substack live interview. “It's the only kosher ham sandwich in the history of democracy. What you’re seeing is the rule of law system working the way it should.”

• Factcheck: It wasn’t really a ham sandwich; it was salami. But the broader point still holds: This kind of pushback is super rare. In Trump’s America, however, it’s becoming more common.

• Federal prosecutors also tried and failed three times (!!!) to secure a felony charge against a D.C. woman accused of assaulting an FBI agent. It also happened in Los Angeles, with defendants who were protesting Trump’s anti-immigration policies, according to the LA Times. Prosecutors need grand jury approval to secure charges that could result in more than a year in prison, but they can still file misdemeanor charges on their own.

It’s not just rowdy grand juries. Some judges aren’t putting up Trump’s shit either.

• An arrest in Northeast D.C. was preceded by the “most illegal search I’ve seen in my life,” one judge said earlier this month, the Washington Post reported. She described another arrest as lacking “basic human dignity.” A different judge criticized Trump’s law enforcement for arresting a delivery driver outside a coffee shop: “This is not consistent with what I understand the United States of America to be,” she told the driver in court. “You should be treated with basic human dignity. We don’t have a secret police.”

• Even judges appointed by Trump are calling him out. On Tuesday, District Court Judge Thomas Cullen dismissed the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against literally all of Maryland’s judges (which had arisen from a legal fight over the government’s ability to deport immigrants). “This concerted effort by the executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate,” Cullen wrote in his ruling.

• And the slapdowns keep coming. Salvadoran native Kilmar Ábrego Garcia can’t be deported until October at the earliest, one judge ruled. The Education Department has to restore nearly $7 billion in frozen grants, another said. Last week, Trump’s team was ordered to close the Alligator Alcatraz detention center — and it’s likely to be empty within days.

All this pushback poses a fundamental question to this administration: Will you have mayo with that salami sando, Mr. President?

Call out: Do you work for a public university? Is your school being affected by the Trump administration? I’d love to hear from you! Reach out to me on Signal at mattberg.33 and email at [email protected].

MINNEAPOLIS ON MY MIND

It’s a dark day in Minneapolis, where a shooter killed two children and injured 17 other people by firing a rifle through the windows of a Catholic church while students were attending Mass this morning.

The suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. The alleged shooter, believed to be in their early 20s, posted a video on their YouTube page this morning showing guns, ammunition, and a hand-written manifesto. One of the guns had markings on it, many of which appeared linked to right-wing extremism.

Those who died were ages 8 and 10. There were 14 other children among the wounded.

Authorities are investigating the attack as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics, according to FBI Director Kash Patel.

WHAT ELSE?

The FDA approved the next round of Covid-19 shots for the fall… but not for everyone. They’re now approved for older adults and people with medical conditions that put them at risk of severe illness. Doctors can still prescribe the vaccines off-label to other people, but that will make them harder to get for many people who used to get the shot in their pharmacy. The approval will now go to the CDC’s vaccine advisory board, which HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy overhauled with a bunch of anti-vaxxers. Gee, thanks, Herr Doktor Brainwürm!

DHS is barring states and aid groups that receive federal funds from helping undocumented immigrants, according to the Washington Post. This comes as Trump officials placed dozens of FEMA employees on leave after signing an open letter criticizing the administration’s disaster response, including people who worked on the response to the deadly flood in Texas last month. Call me old fashioned, but I think we should help people survive natural disasters, regardless of their politics or where they’re from.

The Department of Transportation is planning to take control of Washington, D.C.’s Union Station. Look, I live down the road from Union Station, and it’s not perfect, but as train stations go, it’s a reasonably clean and safe place. In fact, the interior is downright beautiful. One couple recently got married in Union Station, “the most gorgeous train station they could find.” A lot of this Trumpworld bluster is waaaaay overblown.

On that note: Donald Trump did say he wants to clean up D.C. — and now the National Guard is literally picking up trash. The more than 2,200 troops sent to patrol the capital can now be seen donning neon orange protective vests, picking up cigarette butts and other litter. “I think it’s nice, as a D.C. resident,” one Guard member said. “But there are different things we could be doing.” Declaring an emergency and then sending in the troops to clean up garbage is definitely one way to use taxpayer dollars!

The Trump administration threatened to pull federal funding for sexual education programs if states mention transgender people in their curriculums. This is just another despicable example of Trump’s team trying to ignore the existence of a whole group of people.

MAGAworld is up in arms after Trump said he’d be cool with 600,000 Chinese students coming to the United States. “I just don’t understand it for the life of me,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham guffawed. “There should be no foreign students here for the moment,” MAGA Godfather Steve Bannon said. It’s unclear if Trump is actually changing policy, and no one is sure where the hell he got the 600,000 number, either.

Denmark summoned three Americans with close ties to Trump, over allegations that they were conducting “covert influence operations” in Greenland. “We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland,” Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Denmark’s foreign minister, said in a statement. “Any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the kingdom will of course be unacceptable.” Are we really sending spies to Greenland? How did things get so weird???

The Barrel has been broken. Rustic dining chain Cracker Barrel reverted back to its old logo in response to a right-wing freakout about the restaurant’s famous “old timer” logo supposedly getting canceled. The White House, of course, is taking credit, claiming that Trump spoke with the chain’s executives. Seriously, how does he have the time for all this bullshit?

Light at the End of the Email…

The decorated U.S. Army veteran who burned an American flag near the White House last week in protest against Donald Trump’s D.C. takeover is speaking out: “I had fought for this flag, my friends died for this flag, and … he’s not allowed to make these illegal rules and laws just because he’s the president,” Jay Carey told the Washington Post.

About one-third of 25-year-olds have an investment account, up sixfold since 2015, according to new research. I guess the kids are gonna be alright!

Thousands of people engaged in a massive tomato fight at a Spanish festival. One clip shows a man in sunglasses making a snow angel (tomato angel?) on the ground, while he wears a soaked white t-shirt and shorts. America could really use some of this whimsy right now!