In a late-night Truth, Trump claims that the Southern Poverty Law Center was part of his grand, imagined conspiracy to steal the 2020 election, and writes that his DOJ’s politicized prosecution of the non-profit is a step toward overturning his electoral defeat.
(Hat tip to law professor and election expert Rick Hasen who, like us, is not really sure what Trump is going for here beyond a kind of bête noire word cloud.)
Here’s U.S. Attorney for DC “Judge” Jeanine Pirro announcing that her office is dropping its investigation into the chair of the Federal Reserve:
Her attempt to save face here is accomplished by claiming the Fed Inspector General will take over her work. But, as various reporters have noted, Powell himself had already asked the IG to look into cost overruns. It’s not clear anything new is happening.
I mentioned this a bit earlier on Ari Melber’s show tonight when we were talking about the high-profile MAGA defections of Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan and others. I’ve seen various theories: It’s about the Iran War. It’s about AI Jesus. Yes, it’s about all those things, but as off-ramps more than causes or drivers. Trump looks like the weak horse and no one wants to bet on or be associated with the weak horse.
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We had an illustration Tuesday night of one of the most crucial questions in our current politics and the one that will determine whether civic democracy can have a rebirth in the U.S. Gerrymandering is a bane to civic democracy because it dilutes the expression of the popular will by building district lines around partisan advantage or to diminish the power of disempowered minorities. Democrats spent much of the 2010s and 2020s fighting a legal and legislative battle against gerrymandering. But the Roberts Court has chosen to legalize every manner of gerrymandering, making the current a destructive race to the bottom.
Democrats had a choice. They could express effete outrage and a meaningless devotion to broken norms and principles and agree to wage elections on a permanently tilted plane. Or they could decide to play by the rules Republicans had forced on everyone. They did just that and it was unquestionable the right decision by every measure. It really never seemed to occur to Trump Republicans that Democrats would fight on the playbook Republicans created. There’s a special comedy to this because anyone familiar with the facts on the ground knew that Republicans had already used gerrymandering much more aggressively than Democrats. So there was much more juice in the gerrymandering lemon for Democrats if and when they decided to employ tactics Republicans have been using for more than a decade. It’s worth Democrats considering how deeply Republicans had internalized the belief that Democrats would simply never respond in kind.
We have two noteworthy pieces for you this morning in TPM Cafe, both in different ways speaking to the state of the GOP.
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Talking Popes Memo: Josh and Joe are joined by Deputy Editor Nicole LaFond to figure out why Trump is feuding with the Pope, why Hegseth quoted Pulp Fiction, and what makes the MAGA brand of evangelicalism so different.
Kate and Josh discuss Swalwell’s downfall, Orbán’s ouster and Alito’s possible retirement.
The TPM Social Club is joined this week by Max Rivlin-Nadler of Hell Gate, an independent publication owned and run by journalists devoted to covering NYC.
Kate and Josh talk war and midterms from the Lone Star State (with a special bonus segment featuring the Texas Observer’s Justin Miller).
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