The Sheriff in Bexar County (San Antonio) Texas has certified that the 50 migrants Ron DeSantis’ team hoodwinked into being sent to Martha’s Vineyard were the victims of a crime. “Based upon the claims of migrants being transported from Bexar County under false pretenses, we are investigating this case as possible Unlawful Restraint.”

I got this interesting email from TPM Reader CN. I disagree with it. And I think it illustrates a kind of self-reinforcing way people think about politics and particularly the Democratic Party. But I wanted to share it with you because I wanted you to be able to make your own judgment. CN’s note comes with the subject line: “You’re wrong and Bernie’s right, Josh.” This is a reference to my post yesterday disagreeing with Bernie Sanders’ argument that Democrats shouldn’t center the final weeks of the campaign on abortion but rather economics and economic justice. As I said in that post, my argument isn’t trying to settle the general direction or focus of the Democratic Party. That’s never going to be one thing. It’s about what makes sense over the next three weeks.

Here’s CN’s response …

Ken Klippenstein has a piece in The Intercept about the Saudi-driven OPEC production cut as the “October Surprise” of the 2022 election cycle — one not simply aimed at maximizing domestic profits and assisting Russia in its war on Ukraine but specifically aimed at bringing Trump and his MAGA-infused GOP back to power. I think he’s right. I do notice though that the experts he quotes making this argument are longtime critics of U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia. So they are people inclined to see events through a Saudi-hostile lens.

This is frequently a difficulty in making sense of current events. You want to see what the experts say but most experts have their own preconceptions and established narratives through which they are inclined to organize new events. I wanted to add this caution as a limitation or counter to my own view. But it remains my own view. This move is not only an example of the lopsided and outmoded relationship with Saudi Arabia but a specific effort to damage the party the Saudi leader, Mohamed bin Salman, opposes in U.S. domestic politics.

EPIC/MRA, a signature in-state poll for Michigan: Whitmer 49%, Dixon 38%.

The Marquette University Law School poll is the premium in-state Wisconsin poll. Its latest poll yesterday had sobering news for Democrats. Ron Johnson is now 6 points ahead of Mandela Barnes among likely voters. What caught my eye though is that it was tied among registered voters. I’m not trying to unskew this poll. That 6 point margin is, unfortunately, in line with other recent polls. But a 6 point difference between registered and likely voters is really large. That may show a very large GOP turnout and motivation advantage or maybe it’s missing something. Notably the same big divergence showed up in Marquette’s survey of the governor’s race. But here it was far more in the Democrats’ favor. Gov. Evers was up by 5 points among registered voters and by one among likelies.

The latest news out of the Mar-a-Lago case, which Josh Kovensky explains here, really makes it hard to see how the government can avoid charging Trump with a crime even if they’d prefer not to. The government appears to have clear, corroborated evidence that after receiving subpoenas for the retrieval of classified documents, Trump directly ordered a resort employee to remove the records from the storerooms where the government’s investigation focused and to his personal residence.

Yesterday I noted this odd report that Elon Musk’s weird foray into Russo-Ukraine War peacemaking was preceded by a call with Vladimir Putin. This was revealed in a global intelligence newsletter published by Ian Bremmer. Then Musk denied that any such call had happened. That’s where we got to yesterday. But there’s more from overnight that I want to update you on.

The short version is that it seems pretty clear that Musk’s denial is a lie. And the original tweets themselves have a variety of references that seem like they come from a Russian nationalist or someone very familiar with the set of post-Soviet grievances which are the mother’s milk of Putin’s political world. (They refer to “Khrushchev’s Mistake” and the conquest of Crimea in 1783.)

Here’s the somewhat longer version.

As you can see in LiveWire, Elon Musk — really, unsurprisingly — had just talked to Vladimir Putin before going on to Twitter and proposing a peace plan which mostly amounted to Russia’s original war aims. Typical? Gross? Par for the course? Perhaps all of these. But it reminded me of something more general. Many of our would-be oligarchs in the United States seem quite attracted to the Russian strongman/oligarch model. It’s not just the authoritarianism but the way oligarchs operate within it. It’s part of the broader anti-democratic, authoritarian turn within a large swathe of the tech industry.

Not the same point. But this essay by John Ganz gets at some similar points.

Late Update: Musk now denies on Twitter that the conversation took place. He says he’s only spoken to Putin once and that it was 18 months ago. We’ll wait to hear what Ian Bremmer, who reported the conversation, has to say about it.

Bernie Sanders has an article in The Guardian saying it’s a mistake for Democrats to make abortion central to their closing argument for the 2022 election. He’s wrong. Let me explain why.

First, Sanders prefaces his argument with all sorts of caveats. He’s 100% pro-choice; he hates the Dobbs decision; abortion should definitely be part of their message. But the closing argument should be on the economy and economic justice. That’s his argument.

This argument will be grist for those in the Democratic Party who think that Sanders and the Sanders wing of the party see economics and mixed economy social justice as the essence of real progressivism while things like abortion are important but secondary — both substantively and politically. That’s a critique and intramural argument among Democrats I’m not going to resolve here. But my disagreement with Sanders is more focused.

TPM Reader GS followed up with this note about my crime post. Again, I know this can seem a little insular, writing about crime in my hometown. But I am doing so to address issues about crime, perceptions of crime and the politics of crime that are by no means local or regional.