Podcast Schedule Switcheroo
Due to scheduling conflicts, The Josh Marshall Podcast will be out tomorrow, Thursday, March 26, instead of our usual Wednesday drop.
We hope to see you all tonight for our members’ happy hour in NYC!
EDITORS’ BLOG
Notes on Trump II, Month 3. How Long Do We Have to Keep Lifting? So Long.
Member Newsletter
Member Newsletter
A few days ago a friend told me that Chuck Schumer thinks he’s a minority leader but he’s actually an opposition leader. Or rather that’s the position into which history has placed him — and he doesn’t realize it or he doesn’t grasp the difference or he’s simply not able to be the latter thing. There are lots of ways to explain the disconnect or incapacity. But I thought this was a pretty good one.
Last night, in this vein, I suddenly realized there’s a backed-up line of incapacity, a traffic jam of it.
I watched the reaction to President Trump’s latest salvo, an executive order purporting to upend key elements of election administration in the United States. People have to prove citizenship to register to vote, it says. No states can accept votes by mail after Election Day — and much more. The country’s most prestigious news organizations rushed to report these as fait accomplis. The Times announced that, henceforth, Americans would have to provide proof of citizenship to vote. The Post was more or less the same.
Rising
Democrat James Malone just pulled off a narrow victory in a Pennsylvania state Senate special election in a bright red district where Trump won resoundingly with 57% of the vote last November. The 36th district hasn’t elected a Democrat since it moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster County in 1979, according to Lancaster Online. Malone made Musk and recent events in Washington, DC a central part of his campaign.
A Hostile Northern Border
Let me take a moment to flag your attention to the stunning deterioration of U.S. relations with Canada. Yes, you know about the tariff fight and the fact that the U.S. national anthem gets routinely booed at NHL hockey games. But a few additional points. The Canadian Liberals were on track for a massive drubbing in an election that had to happen soon. It’s not even really ideological. The Liberals had been in power for a decade. They’ve seen the country through the pandemic and it’s aftermath. All those parties are unpopular. Ask Joe Biden. They were behind by like 25 points. Now eight weeks later, solely and entirely because of a wave of defensive (in both senses of the term) nationalism driven by Donald Trump, the Liberals look on track to win an outright majority.
Defending the country against the United States is now the sole issue in Canadian politics.
Read MoreAnd There’s More
As I mentioned in last night’s post, security against malign actors isn’t the only or probably even the worst part of what we can now call the Signal scandal. Using Signal, in their case, is really an effort to conceal activity from the US government – with all that entails. But I’ve learned there’s another level of the scandal: the DOD recently sent around an “OPSEC SPECIAL BULLETIN” specifically warning about a new Signal exploit using a phishing-like strategy to add ‘linked devices’ to Signal communications and thus listen in on encrypted messages. The bulletin specifically notes the use by “Russian professional hacking groups.”
SignalGate Is Bad; But OPSEC Isn’t Even the Worst Part Of It
I haven’t had time to comment on the Jeff Goldberg story about the war cabinet planning a military campaign on the Signal app. So a few brief thoughts.
To state the obvious, in any normal administration Hegseth and Waltz at a minimum would be gone by the end of the day. So let me stipulate to all the outrageousness. But I want to focus your attention on the fact that information security is not the only, perhaps not even the main issue.
Note that no one in the chat is saying, “Hey, we sure it’s cool to be talking about this on Signal?” Or, “Should we be worried this is an insecure channel?” That and the simple logic of the matter tells us this is commonplace in the new administration. You think Mike Waltz got fat fingers and accidentally added Goldberg on the first time out? Not likely.
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While Bozell’s career in American issues has been high-profile, his past foray into South African politics is less well known.
podcast
Ep. 365: The Costs Of Not Shutting Down
Kate and Josh discuss fallout from Senate Democrats’ decision to vote for the Republican continuing resolution as well as the ongoing menacing of Washington D.C.
listenIn case You Missed It
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Demolishing The Dept. Of Education Dumps Fuel On A Public Ed Crisis Already Underway
Schools are already facing significant financial pressures, many created by Trump-backed policies separate from the assault on DOE.