A short time ago President Trump said he is ordering the US military to start guarding the US-Mexico border until his wall is built. Can he do that? The short answer is: no. The longer answer is basically no but I wanted to explain the details because it’s not 100% no. Read More

Trump says he’ll have the US military guard the Mexican border “until we can have a wall.”

Trump: “Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than I have.”

Trump: No one is tougher on Russia than me. Everybody Agrees. pic.twitter.com/Q1zj4ANTg3

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 3, 2018

Here are key statements from the President just moments ago in the White House on Russia, the Border, Amazon and China (selections from White House pool report) … Read More

Episode #7 of The Josh Marshall Podcast is out. I ask The New Yorker’s Jeff Toobin the big question: Is Paul Manafort more worried about a lifetime sentence or getting nerve gassed in Northern Virginia. Listen here. And remember: please subscribe on iTunes or Google Play if you haven’t already. It really helps a lot.

President Trump has now officially joined Michael Cohen’s shell company in arguing that Stormy Daniels should have to hash out her disagreements with the President in secret arbitration. This is the agreement President Trump and his lawyers won’t say if he is even a party to.

Your weekly Sum Up of the critical developments on voting rights and democracy over the last week.

Over the last three days, a GoFundMe account for fired former acting Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe has raised more than $500,000 for legal defense expenses. In response I’ve seen a number of people pillory the effort as a sort of liberal do-gooderism gone off the rails. Rather than flooding money on a guy who is at worst very solidly in the upper middle class, people should focus their charity on climate activism or poverty or cancer research. In a similar vein, Damon Linker has this column up about Donald Trump’s criticisms of Amazon. As he puts it, “Liberals find the president so morally repulsive and so transparently dishonest that they now respond to everything he says with instantaneous outrage and disgust, while presuming in each and every case that his statements are made in bad faith, concealing baser motives.” As he later concludes, “On Amazon, he’s indisputably right.” Read More

We have a very interesting reporting project we’re working on. Do you work in a business that does marketing on Facebook? Especially DTC marketing? Are you directly involved in that part of the business, advertising through the Facebook interface? If you do, we’d love to hear from you. There are a few questions we’re interested in asking. Drop us a line by email – our regular tips and comments line. All totally confidential.

Just put “Facebook” in your subject line.

Good Lord, you’ve got to read this. In many ways, Donald Trump embodies the rot, ridiculousness and corruption the GOP has been tumbling toward for 30 years. But if Trump and Trumpism are the macrocosm, twice-former Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) is the microcosm: a crooked, ridiculous goofball extremist who got washed into Congress in the 1994 wave election but was too ridiculous even for the “Gingrich Revolution” and got tossed two years later. He made a comeback in 2012 and now he’s on trial in Texas on a 28 count felony fraud trial the charges for which are like a ‘Best in Show’ litany of comically crooked nonsense. One of the highlights is he hired James O’Keefe’s mentor to run an undercover ‘sting’ against a fellow Republican he thought might run against him. It’s Mad Magazine Spy v Spy kinda stuff. Allegra Kirkland’s got a quick and dirty run-down you’re going to want to read.