The U.S. attorney in Chicago just subpoenaed a fundraising firm — co-owned, it turns out, by the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, the man who oversaw Trump’s hush money trial and the felony conviction that’s been an open wound in this administration’s relationship with the judiciary ever since. Nobody subpoenaed the judge. Nobody could, not for a verdict. But a company his daughter helps run is a different animal entirely, and apparently a fair target.

I’ve spent the last few days watching this administration work the DOJ sideways rather than head-on — dropping fraud cases against sympathetic defendants, dismissing a threats case days before trial, nominating a Project 2025 co-author to review the one case everyone in Washington already knows the ending of. Always the same motion: pressure applied at an angle, plausible deniability built into the org chart before anyone even asks. This is the first time in a while I’ve watched that motion point at someone the administration doesn’t like, instead of someone it does.

Whether there’s anything real in the firm’s finances, I have no idea, and neither does anyone reporting this yet. That’s almost beside the point. The message lands regardless of what the subpoena finds: judges have families, families have businesses, businesses have paper trails, and paper trails can always be requested. It’s a chilling effect that doesn’t require a single document to actually incriminate anyone — just the knowledge that someone was looking.

Meanwhile in Big Bend, the border wall creeps forward over the objections of environmentalists, sheriffs, and state officials alike. Some fights you can see coming from a long way off.

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