Khaya Himmelman has the story here.
Dem-Backed Judge Will Win Wisconsin Supreme Court, Expanding Its Liberal Majority
Chris Taylor, the Democratic-backed candidate for Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court, is projected to defeat Maria Lazar, the Republican-backed candidate, expanding the Court’s liberal majority, per the Associated Press. Taylor’s win represents the fourth straight victory for Democratic-backed candidates in the state’s high court elections.
Continue reading “Dem-Backed Judge Will Win Wisconsin Supreme Court, Expanding Its Liberal Majority”Trump Punts Disaster for ‘Two Weeks’
Trump on Truth Social, 6:32 p.m. ET, with the climb-down, describing what he claims will amount to a “double sided CEASEFIRE!”:
Continue reading “Trump Punts Disaster for ‘Two Weeks’”Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks.
This Is What We Were Talking About, Say Dems Who Trump Threatened to Hang
*Post-publishing update: He changed his mind.
Invoking the 25th?
Some Democratic members of Congress are doing what they can to sound the alarm about an unhinged president threatening to make good on his social media promise that “a whole civilization will die tonight,” including urging Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and calling for impeachment.
Continue reading “This Is What We Were Talking About, Say Dems Who Trump Threatened to Hang”Abrego Garcia Case Goes Off the Rails Yet Again
I try not to burden you with procedural minutiae in the key Trump II cases, but an unexpectedly strange 30-minute status conference ended a short time ago in the Abrego Garcia II civil case. What would normally be a snoozy housekeeping matter — in this instance, to set a briefing schedule on the Trump administration’s renewed bid to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia – went off the rails a bit.
Continue reading “Abrego Garcia Case Goes Off the Rails Yet Again”‘WAR CRIME ALERT!!’ MAGAworld Is Split Over Trump’s Threat To Destroy Iran’s ‘Whole Civilization’
President Donald Trump’s latest escalation of threats against Iran has further exposed growing rifts on the far-right. On Tuesday morning, Trump used his Truth Social platform to suggest he will launch a devastating attack against Iran this evening unless the country makes a deal with him.
Continue reading “‘WAR CRIME ALERT!!’ MAGAworld Is Split Over Trump’s Threat To Destroy Iran’s ‘Whole Civilization’”Tactical Victories, Strategic Calamities—Another Day in Trump’s Iran War
Here are a few additional thoughts about the state of the war between the U.S. (and Israel) and Iran.
First, we had news from Reuters over the weekend that the U.S. and Iran might be on the brink of a ceasefire agreement, maybe as soon as Monday. It now seems like that was yet another example of a mix of over-optimism from broker countries trying to bring the sides together and, even more, the White House trying yet again to force a quick-to-fade market bounce. Yesterday afternoon I saw this piece in Haaretz which says that Pakistan (a lead country trying to broker a deal between the two sides) believes that Iran is now under the effective control of the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, that this commander thinks Iran is winning and that he’s not willing to compromise on Iran’s key demands or accede to the United States’. It also notes that Pakistan thinks the U.S. is more eager for a deal than Iran.
I don’t think you need to be Pakistan to see that last point. Everything President Trump does sends that message. Now, in the wake of the Trump’s threat to “end” Iranian civilization tonight, Iran has reportedly cut off participation in ceasefire talks with the U.S..
A few moments ago I saw this snippet in the Times:
Continue reading “Tactical Victories, Strategic Calamities—Another Day in Trump’s Iran War”VIDEO: David Kurtz and Brian Beutler on What a Real Opposition Party Could Look Like
We’re over a decade into the Trump era. To assess the damage his two terms have wrought and how, exactly, we got here, TPM’s David Kurtz was joined on Substack Live by friend of TPM and charter member of our DC bureau, Brian Beutler, who now writes the Off Message newsletter.
In a wide-ranging conversation, David and Brian discussed Trump’s propaganda campaign around his war in Iran; how the Democrats could act as a true opposition party; and what the U.S. could look like come Jan. 2027 or 2029 depending on how the next two rounds of federal elections shake out.
Check out their full live below.
Continue reading “VIDEO: David Kurtz and Brian Beutler on What a Real Opposition Party Could Look Like”Trump: ‘A Whole Civilization Will Die Tonight’ … Maybe
Go Big or Go TACO
I long ago moved away from leading Morning Memo with crazy shit Trump says, but over the last 48 hours he’s become so unhinged, erratic, and cartoonishly bombastic about an ongoing regional war in one of the cradles of civilization that it feels worth noting for posterity’s sake.
This morning’s social media effusion has all the elements of the late-stage Trump: violent, over the top, ignorant, wishful … while still leaving himself plenty of room to TACO:
A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!
The arbitrary deadline of tonight to reach some kind of deal that let’s him stand down on Iran, which doesn’t seem particularly interested in a deal, is a set-piece of Trump’s own making. Most of his rhetoric over the past few days has been puffery to make the risk of failing to bail him out look intolerable to the Iranians. But if Americans can see through the smokescreen, surely the Iranians know what’s up.
It’s hard to get past the civilization-destroying threats by an imperial superpower, but once you do, most of the rest of the social media post reads like the tongue-in-cheek cliffhangers at the end of Rocky and Bullwinkle, which were themselves spoofs of older forms of broadcast entertainment. Ever the narcissist, Trump is the announcer and would-be hero: “Tune in tonight to see if I will destroy the world … or NOT!”
Tilting at Windmills
During his press conference yesterday, President Trump threatened jail for the unnamed reporter who leaked news of the missing U.S. airman downed over Iran unless they divulge the source of the leak — except that no one quite seems to know what Trump was talking about. The news of the downed aircraft that carries a crew of two was widely reported, as was the rescue of the pilot. The inference that the second airman remained missing wasn’t hard to make. The White House did not respond to a New York Times question about which news outlet Trump was referring to.
The Hubris
I am as susceptible as anyone to a good rescue story, especially of the leave-no-one-behind variety, but when the Christian nationalist defense secretary explicitly turns a downed airman’s Easter weekend rescue into the passion play, it’s gross:
Good Read
TPM contributing writer Sarah Posner: Trump’s Evangelical Leaders Are Working Overtime to Spin the Iran War
Quote of the Day
“The United States is unpredictable. It’s not a reliable partner anymore for the Western world.”—Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of the Bundestag from Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union party
ICYMI
Trump DOJ Watch: Only the Best People
- NY Mag traces the mind-blowing path of former FBI agent Jared Wise from Jan. 6 defendant still on trial when Trump re-took office to working as a senior adviser in the office of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and assigned to the so-called Weaponization Working Group.
- A WSJ profile skewers Robert Keenan, 60, as “one of the longest-tenured and least-productive federal prosecutors” in Orange County, California, who was repeatedly passed over for promotions and “still handling low-level cases typically reserved for first-year federal prosecutors” when suddenly the Trump DOJ elevated him into a “key courtroom warrior” and “go-to guy.”
Big Oops …
The Blaze has fired reporter Steve Baker, the author of the story it had to retract that falsely identified a former Capitol Police officer as the Jan. 6 pipe-bomber.
A Thankless Task
A deserving profile of the indefatigable Aaron Rupar, whose 24/7 work clipping Trump’s public comments is an invaluable public service.
Dugan Conviction Upheld
The trial judge in the federal criminal case against Wisconsin state judge Hannah Dugan — convicted of obstructing a DHS proceeding by interfering in the courthouse arrest of an undocumented immigrant — denied her post-conviction motions for acquittal.
2026 Ephemera
Senate Republicans’ main super PAC — the Senate Leadership Fund — revealed its view of the midterms map, as it unveiled a $350 million plan to hold its majority. It’s focused on:
- defending five seats: Alaska, Iowa Maine, North Carolina*, and Ohio
- targeting three Democratic seats: Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire*
*open seats
Gonzalez’s Pattern of Preying on Staff
Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX) has already decided not to seek re-election after being exposed for having an affair with a former staffer who later took her own life. Now hundreds of text messages obtained by the San Antonio Express-News show him allegedly propositioning a campaign staffer four years earlier, during his 2020 campaign.
“He obviously pursued, pursued, pursued her like he did with me,” the former campaign staffer told the Express-News, referring to the later affair. “I never took him serious. … It wasn’t until this poor girl died that I thought, ‘No, this guy is pure evil.’”
As the NYT notes, the newly revealed texts create a new bind for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), “who is dangerously close to losing what is left of his tiny majority and cannot afford the resignation of another Republican.”
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Trump Doubles Down on Threats to Blow Up Iran’s Infrastructure on Tuesday
A day after dropping the f-bomb on Truth Social in an Easter Sunday post where he threatened to attack massive swaths of Iran’s infrastructure if the “Fuckin’ Strait” is not opened, President Trump doubled down on those threats from the White House podium on Monday, again threatening to bomb the country back to “the stone ages.”
Continue reading “Trump Doubles Down on Threats to Blow Up Iran’s Infrastructure on Tuesday”