Editors’ Blog

More of the conversation from TPM Reader MM …

I agree with PT that the Dems didn’t “drive themselves into a cul-de-sac”, because they had no real choice.

But I disagree with much of the rest of his analysis. First, and most obviously, it is manifestly untrue that Manchin and Sinema haven’t learned the lessons of the past 30 years: they learned those lessons quite well. Their goals are simply at variance with, or at best skew to, many or most of goals of the rest of the Democratic caucus. Should they be Democrats? Nothing could matter less. It says ‘D’ after their names, and without them we wouldn’t even have these issues to worry about and argue over.

Matt Gaetz’s buddy is not just cooperating with the feds, he’s making allegations that “take us to some places we did not anticipate,” a prosecutor told a judge yesterday.  

The Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court today to temporarily block the enforcement of the unprecedentedly dangerous and restrictive abortion ban in Texas, filing an emergency appeal with the high court on Monday to protect the rights of women, and people who can become pregnant, in the red state.

It’s the second attempt by the DOJ to legally challenge the abortion law, which not only bans abortions post six-weeks in Texas, but also was crafted to be uniquely difficult to challenge in court. It enlists private citizens, instead of state officials, to deal with its enforcement. It’s a Wild West law that offers a $10,000 bounty to members of the public who successfully bring lawsuits against abortion providers and/or anyone who might “aid or abet” in the process of getting an abortion post-six weeks, including someone as far in the periphery of the act as a cab driver who might drive a woman to a clinic.

From TPM Reader PT …

I don’t think it’s fair to say that the Democrats “drove themselves into a cul-de-sac” on the reconciliation bill because that assumes, or implies, that the Democrats had other options. It also makes the Democrats, writ large, responsible for the fact that two (!) of their Senators haven’t managed to learn the lessons of the last 30 years.

Perhaps it’s worth replaying the tape to see how we got here.

Kari Lake, the frontrunner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in Arizona after an endorsement by former President Trump, has called for the imprisonment of the state’s Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, along with other election officials and various journalists over the 2020 election. Hobbs is also a leading Democratic candidate for governor. Arizona holds its next gubernatorial election in 2022 and the state will certainly be hotly contested in the 2024 presidential election.

We’re unspooling the news of Colin Powell’s death from COVID-19 complications here.

From TPM Reader MT …

I want to follow up from JB’s last line (Democrats in Congress have driven themselves into a cul-de-sac on the reconciliation bill) and just note how amazingly frustrated I am at the Democrats in Congress and those who said go for all or nothing.  I have kept my thoughts to myself with the assumption that the Democrats know what they are doing.  How stupid is that?

Unfortunately I think TPM Reader JB is right about this …

One other difference between Sen. Manchin and Sen. Tester you might have mentioned in your podcast this week is that Manchin is self-consciously wealthy.

I’ve noted several times over recent weeks that former President Trump lacks most of the unique protections he had as President. That means the Jan 6th committee should be able to press a real investigation whereas the House committees in the previous Congress and the two impeachment processes could not. Much of this is because ex-Presidents have no executive privilege. But it’s just as much that they don’t control the Justice Department and that possession is 9/10ths of the law. The current President, in some cases directly and in others indirectly, has custody of the records of the government of the United States. But it’s a small wrinkle to this story that I want to expand on today, both because it’s interesting to know in its own right but because it’s a window into how this latest investigation really puts not only the judiciary but the elite legal profession itself on trial.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the plodding reconciliation negotiations, coming showdown on the Jan. 6 committee, and quasi-revival of the stalled-out voting rights push.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.