Key paragraphs in new Times piece on Erdogan’s handling of the Khashoggi crisis …

Mr. Erdogan has long publicly treated the crown prince as a respected ally to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia, an important regional power. But it was an open secret that the two men were bitter rivals in a feud over Arab democracy and political Islam that has divided the region.

Evidently sensing Saudi weakness after the skeptical reception that greeted the latest claims from the kingdom, Mr. Erdogan over the last two days has gone on the attack.

Read More

So what’s with the timing of this caravan making its way up through Mexico? A lot of readers have been asking me this and I’ve been wondering myself. Read More

TPM Reader RW points out a key part Paul Manafort’s cooperation agreement which casts some doubt on Rudy Giuliani’s claims that he’s been assured that Manafort hasn’t provided any evidence against President Trump. Read More

This is so bizarre I’m wondering if it’s simply not true. But Rudy Giuliani is claiming that the Joint Defense Agreement his client, President Trump, had with Paul Manafort has continued even after Manafort pleaded guilty and became a cooperating witness in the Mueller investigation. That beggars belief. But Giuliani says he has continued to have discussions with Manafort’s lawyer Kevin Downing and he insists Manafort hasn’t provided anything incriminating against President Trump.

This week I’m excited to introduce TPM Inside.

Inside is TPM’s inner circle membership. It is for TPM Readers who want a closer, deeper look at the most important news stories and policy questions. It brings you inside operations at TPM and gives you a voice in guiding our future. Inside is also for TPM Readers who want to and are able to support TPM at a higher level than a base Prime membership. Read More

It’s just dangling there in an AP piece. But according to the AP, one of the members of the Saudi hit team made five calls from the consulate that day – four to the head of MBS’s office and one to the United States. Read More

As we come up on two weeks before the election, I’d like to throw out a question. What race are you excited about? A house race, a governor’s race, a local race. Anything. It’s not an absolute rule but I’m most interested in ones that you have some connection to. Either you live in the district or state or perhaps you’re volunteering in the race or maybe it’s next door. I like getting an up close view of how you’re seeing races in your area and I’m sure other readers will too. Drop me a line.

Here are a few thoughts on the still unfolding Khashoggi scandal and story.

First, I think critics of Saudi Arabia should take some solace from the fact that the Saudis I believe had and perhaps still have a narrow window in which they could depose Mohammed bin Salman and wash their hands of Khashoggi’s murder. Yet they show no sign of doing so. Saudi Arabia has long been a brutal and utterly repressive regime. But in the last few years it’s become a different kind of brutal and utterly repressive regime. Saudi Kings – all sons of state founder ibn Saud since 1953 – have generally ruled by consensus within the upper echelons of the al Saud clan. That’s one reason so many longstanding challenges have gone unresolved or postponed. It’s not a system which makes room for dynamic leadership. It’s a highly conservative ruling circle which doesn’t do a lot of dangerous or crazy things. Until now. Read More

This week at TPM we’re kicking off a major four part series on social insurance and risk in the US economy. This is a topic that has always been central to TPM’s editorial concerns. And though we couldn’t have known it when we first planned the series, the timing is fortuitous since last week Sen. McConnell incautiously let slip that Republicans plan to use the expanded deficits driven by the 2017 tax cut bill as a reason to push through big cuts to programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and more. We’ll be talking about this a lot in the coming weeks. Please look out for the series.

One thing to watch closely now as we’re coming near to two weeks before the election is that results for individual races can start to bounce around rather dramatically. That should be less so with national polls like generic ballots. But a critical fraction of voters only start focusing late in the cycle. That can drive rapid changes. In House races, that should generally even out across scores of competitive races. But in governor and senate races, where there are comparatively few, it can be a bigger deal.