Editors’ Blog

Late last night, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan denied Trump’s emergency motion to block the Jan. 6 panel’s subpoena from going into effect while the former president appealed her earlier decision that the subpoena was valid.

The National Archives are due to start providing the material Trump claims is privileged on Friday, meaning he has just a few business hours left to stop those materials from winding up in the committee’s hands.

How might this play out? Josh Kovensky delved into some of those eventualities yesterday.

Domestic extremists are still capitalizing on the spread of disinfo to encourage violence in online forums, according to a new anti-terrorism bulletin from the Department Of Homeland Security set to be released today.

And in promoting online violence, domestic extremists are targeting entities we’re all a bit too familiar with: members of Congress, public health officials and school board members.

The County School Board in Spotsylvania County, Virginia is divided. Not over whether to remove books that they define as “sexually explicit” from the district’s school libraries. They voted unanimously (6-0) to do so, though one board member wasn’t present. The division was between those members who wanted to remove the books and those who wanted to remove them from the shelves also burn them.

You’ve probably seen reports that House Republicans are now considering stripping committee assignments from the 13 Republican members who voted for the bipartisan Biden infrastructure bill. It’s the latest DC GOP purity test. In a speech Monday at a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner ex-President Trump ripped into the 13 as traitors to the GOP and to him. One of them, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis – the sole Republican from New York City – was there in the crowd appearing “visibly shaken,” according to a source who spoke to The New York Post. It is another reminder that while Republicans have numerous advantages going into 2022, managing the GOP is inherently difficult with ex-President Trump’s ever-changing list of Republicans he wants to wish to the cornfield because they weren’t nice to him.

Why do so many members of Trump’s inner circle and so many of his 2021/2022 endorsees have histories of spousal abuse, pulling guns on partners or accusations of strangulation?

The ruling out tonight from US District Judge Tanya Chutkan is a big one. The decision can and certainly will be appealed. Trump actually tried to appeal the decision in advance of it even coming out. But Chutkan’s ruling vindicates the principle – long assumed and all but inevitable in the logic of the constitution and the office of the presidency it creates – that decisions about executive privilege inhere in the office and thus the current occupant of the office. Which is to say, Joe Biden.

As Chutkan puts it succintly: “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”

It appears that Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) might be trying to run for attorney general of his home state. “Might be” and “trying” are the key terms here.

Some stories perfectly typify the larger stories they are a part of. Journalists sometimes call these stories too good to check. But sometimes they seem in fact to be true. Which brings us to Evan Neumann, 48, one of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol complex on January 6th.

He was no bit player. He made it to the FBI’s Most Wanted list for assaulting Capitol Police officers during the storming of the Capitol. Over the weekend Neumann showed up on state-run Belarus 1 TV channel seeking asylum in the former Soviet republic, as a victim of persecution in the US.

Gov. Sununu of New Hampshire has just announced he won’t be running for Senate in 2022. That is a big, big relief for Democrats who need to hold Sen. Maggie Hassan’s seat to have any hope of holding on to the chamber next year. Hassan isn’t out of the woods. But Sununu is popular and his family has all but monopolized state-wide office in the state for a couple generations. He was their best shot at picking up that seat.

Guest hosted today by TPM reporter Kate Riga.

In an election post-mortem, the Terry McAuliffe gubernatorial campaign in Virginia highlighted some of its findings in the immediate wake of Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory.