Editors’ Blog

Russia experts are wondering what Vladimir Putin is up to. We are witnessing one of the recurrent build-ups of Russian military forces on the Ukraine border. For a variety of reasons experts on the region believe this may be building to a new full-scale military engagement. Putin also seems at least passively involved in the engineered refugee crisis on the border between Belarus and Poland. Josh Kovensky surveyed these developments here on Friday. Meanwhile we’ve seen a new round of saber-rattling over Taiwan, with aggressive military exercises from the mainland and deepening expressions of support from the US. All of which is to say that while we in the US see a deepening wave of crises in the US, this is matched by an increasingly tense and dangerous climate abroad. Both of these tension points – Ukraine and Taiwan – hold the possibility of direct military confrontations with nuclear powers Russia and China. And that’s not great.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss what comes next for the reconciliation bill, as well as some early indications of what the 2022 Senate battlefield might look like.

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

Court observers appear divided on whether the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is headed to a hung jury or an outright acquittal. Very few seem to think the case is headed toward a conviction. That’s very jarring because many of us see it as obvious that Rittenhouse is unquestionably the guilty party, even if precisely what he is guilty of may be open to interpretation and despite the fact that the nature of self-defense laws in many states give the defense plenty of room to work with even in a case like this. Setting aside the technical components of first degree murder charges where this trial seems deeply unjust. Rittenhouse traveled to Wisconsin loaded for bear looking for trouble, found it and the law says that’s okay. That is compounded by the way the right in the US has made Rittenhouse into a folk hero.

But I’ve tried to distill down just what gets to me about this case. And here’s what I’ve come up with.

This afternoon the DC Circuit Court temporarily blocked the release of documents sought by the House special committee investigating the January 6th insurrection. This comes after U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan ruled against former President Trump’s claims of executive privilege and denied his request to stay the ruling subject to appeal. The stay stops the release, which was supposed to have begun tomorrow, until the circuit court can rule on the appeal.

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.”