I’ve been publicly critical of Google and Amazon for their monopolistic and often (especially in Amazon’s case) predatory business practices. But neither seems to have a corporate culture with the same level of sleaze and ‘if we can code it, we should totally do it’ ethos as Facebook. They deserve all the reputational damage they’re now incurring. But this is especially rich. Read More
Don’t miss Allegra Kirkland’s look at the NRA’s admissions about foreign funding. It is a very heavily lawyered letter which concedes that the NRA does receive funding from foreign individuals and entities. They also note that they move money between various accounts “as permitted by law.” This pretty clearly would allow the NRA to take foreign money into its non-election related accounts and then take money from those accounts which could be used on US elections and use it for that. In other words, all money is fungible and they’re conceding the mechanism to operationalize that fungibility. Lots of questions remain. But these are pretty key admissions, given the questions about the NRA’s ties to Russia and chatter about Russian money moving through the NRA into the 2016 election.
Don’t miss our weekly Sum Ups on Health Care Policy and Voting Rights/Democracy.
I was away for a week when apparently thirty insane things happened. In this week’s episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast, David Taintor walks me through all the crazy stuff that happened and we hash it all out. Listen on iTunes, Google Play or right here at TPM.
A big, really important favor. These early episodes are critical for building an audience for this new effort. If you haven’t yet it would mean a great deal to me if you could subscribe to my new podcast on iTunes. No cost. No need even to listen (though you totally should). It’s just clicking a button and it helps us a lot. Just subscribing and if possible rating us is a huge, huge help. Thanks.
Does the President not have a personal attorney because those attorneys are afraid of being disbarred or possibly going to jail? Very interesting follow up from TPM Reader EF …
Read More
This is important to note. By all evidence President Trump had to be pushed to sign off on this expulsion of Russian diplomats/spies. Reports also say that Trump refused to commit to the expulsion until he saw that other European allies committing first. Both domestically and internationally, Trump seems to have been faced by a fait accompli. All that said, he did sign off on a major expulsion. Yet note that Russia appears to be placing the blame on the United States and President Trump. Read More
I can think of lots of reasons no respected or prestigious lawyers are willing to represent the President. But I suspect this may be one of them that gets less attention than it should. From TPM Reader JB …
No big law firm can rep Trump because of powerful partners (especially female) redlining it and the associate recruiting pr disaster it would trigger (especially with young women). Repping Trump is a political statement no large law firm can afford to make. Big city lawyers are disproportionately Dems.
Thanks to everyone who held down the TPM fort while I was away. I published a few posts over the last couple days. But I only got back to New York this evening. I was away for a few days longer than expected for unforeseen reasons. Read More
A few thoughts on the Stormy Daniels interview. Read More
A number of times over recent weeks I’ve had people write in and ask me who they should contribute money to for the 2018 midterm. In most cases, it’s not really a matter of particular candidates but both a bigger and smaller picture: Should I be contributing to particular candidates? The party committees (DCCC, DSCC, DNC, etc.)? The state parties? Various activist groups who in turn support candidates either directly or indirectly. All of these channels of funding play a critical role in a complex ecosystem of funding. But just where can you have the most effect?
This refocused my attention on a project that I put a lot of time into planning and then discarded late last year. The idea was a new publication that would be entirely dedicated to answering this question: where to put your money if you want to elect Democrats. Period. In this case, I mean this in the broadest sense. You may be focused solely on electing as many Democrats as possible. Or maybe you want to shift the Democratic party to the left or a more social democratic direction. Or perhaps your focus is global warming or unions or making the Democratic party look more like it’s voting base or a slew of other issues, which is disproportionately made up of ethnic minorities and women. Whatever your goal – and most people probably have some mix of these goals – if you want to help fund campaigns you still have the same basic need for information about where – quite apart from individual candidates or ideology – your money can have the greatest impact. Read More