Editors’ Blog

I don’t think we should be too concerned about President Trump convincing a judge to appoint a special master to evaluate the documents seized from his villa in Florida. Mostly this is simply a delay — a boon for the former President but not a huge one. The special master will review the materials for attorney-client privilege documents which the DOJ has already done. There’s no reason to believe the results will be any different.

In honor of Labor Day weekend I wanted to make sure you saw this Gallup report which shows public support for unions to be at a 57 year high.

As recently as 1999 and 2003 the number was 66% and 65%. Today it is at 71%, comparable to the 72% in 1936 and 71% in 1965. You can see there’s a nadir in 2009. I assume that was driven in part by the political battles over the auto bailout in which the UAW was routinely portrayed as the reason why U.S. automakers were uncompetitive. The upward trend doesn’t seem to be a blip.

CNN’s low energy purge of its news staff continues apace. John Harwood apparently got the news this morning that he was out. The clearest explanation of what’s happening is that the company is now under Republican management, specifically top shareholder and Trump donor John Malone. Many at CNN believe his understanding of and exposure to CNN is essentially what he sees of it through Fox News. They’re probably right. But there’s a deeper structural issue at play that is also important to keep in mind.

News networks like CNN are not designed, purchased or run to be niche operations or only to serve a portion of the public. Their potential market is supposed to be everyone. One might say this is impossible in an era of polarization. There’s some truth in that too. But that’s not exactly it either.

Jezebel: ‘Fuck It, I’ll Kill Us All’: Kristina Karamo’s Ex-Husband Accused Her of Trying to Crash Car with Entire Family Inside

Arizona Republic: Billionaires have helped define him, but Blake Masters needs money (sub req.)

WaPo: Truth Social faces financial peril as worry about Trump’s future grows

Arizona Republic: Candidates for attorney general and governor call for Saudi Arabian water leases to be investigated and canceled

BridgeMichigan: Romance author Nora Roberts helps save MI library defunded over LGBTQ books

I want to be careful not to over-read this part of Biden’s speech, but there was one passage that jumped out for what it might mean about the 2022 and 2024 elections.

It came in the bottom third of the speech, after he had warned of political violence and explicitly blamed Trump and MAGA. It suggests Biden won’t stand idly by as MAGA targets elections and election infrastructure.

What does that mean for 2022 and 2024? Not sure. Here’s the passage:

You may have seen reports about the ongoing tug-of-war or game of chicken between Peter Thiel and Mitch McConnell. In short, it’s about who picks up the tab for the campaigns of Thiel’s political proteges Blake Masters in Arizona and JD Vance in Ohio. Both campaigns are floundering and both need money badly. Given Ohio’s GOP advantages, even a floundering campaign leaves Vance still in a fairly strong position. But it wasn’t even supposed to be a contest. You can go to others for the inside gossip on the back and forth between the two men. I want to focus your attention on something more general.

Biden from Independence Hall in Philadelphia:

Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.

Now, I want to be very clear, very clear up front. Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans. But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country.

In a primetime speech from Pennsylvania, President Biden plans to deliver a national address that has all the makings of a pre-midterms campaign speech.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the newest revelations in the Trump documents case, as well as Republican backpedaling in the face of Dobbs backlash.

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

There’s no question that Democrats’ chances in the midterms have improved dramatically over the course of the summer. From the point in May when Sam Alito’s draft of the Dobbs decision leaked to the press until now, the generic ballot average has shifted just over 3.5 points in Democrats’ direction. For the generic ballot average, that’s a big shift. But could the polls themselves be underweighting Republican strength? Like many others I’ve been figuring that Trump being on the ballot has been the key in recent elections. He and his party’s chances were underrated in 2016 and 2020. In 2018, they were pretty much on the mark. But Philip Bump of the Post and I were apparently both watching G. Elliott Morris’s Twitter feed yesterday when he noted that this wasn’t quite true. The national averages were on the mark in 2018. But at the state level key contests still underweighted Republican chances. Bump pulled the numbers himself and sure enough, that skew was there in Senate races in 2018 too.