If you think back over the last three years, we’ve had a series of epic socio-cultural smackdowns over COVID: Lockdowns, masks, vaccines, schools. Each of these have tended to array broadly similar groups against each other, though with some key variations. But whatever you made of those fights, the public debate had really immense and immediate real world consequences. That is what is so odd and mystifying about the intensity of Lab Leak Discourse. It doesn’t actually matter. Or rather there are basically no real-world implications to either side being “right” or “winning.” I was talking to someone today who said how incredibly important it was. But after thinking about it for a bit, I thought, why? Now it’s much better for people to think up is up rather than up is down. And there are probably important secondary effects of getting this wrong, whichever way is “wrong.” But in any direct sense it’s not clear it has any real impact on anything.

I just wanted to flag for you that we’ve got our annual sign up drive coming up in a couple weeks. It’s a very important one. So if you’ve been a member and lapsed or if you’re a TPM Reader who’s never taken the plunge please consider becoming a member during this drive. Before we kick it off I’ll be sharing a few more thoughts with you about our membership business model, why we do these drives and what we’re doing more broadly today as an organization.

At present, my main contribution to Lab Leak Discourse is making fun of it. I say this operating on the distinction provided to us by TPM Reader JS a couple weeks ago, noting that Lab Leak Discourse is now entirely autonomous from the actual ongoing research into the origins of COVID-19. Indeed, I noticed yesterday that it has now taken a new turn focusing on public opinion surveys showing that a majority of Americans believe COVID began with a laboratory accident at the virology lab in Wuhan, China. The “wisdom of crowds,” one Lab Leak advocate told me, should be given its own weight along with the judgments of those with domain expertise in virology, genomics and other fields.

Let me just start out with the facts: The Economist/YouGov published the results of a poll this week that surveyed 1,500 U.S. adults between March 10–14 on a number of different topics, mostly about people’s feelings on the state of the country.

A few of the questions touched on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), asking respondents about how favorably they saw him generally and his performance as speaker of the House. Two questions asked about the issue of McCarthy giving Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and his production team exclusive access to all the internal Jan. 6 Capitol security footage for him to use to spread propaganda on his propaganda show. The survey asked if those polled had heard about the issue and if they approved or disapproved of it. The split in approval versus disapproval was relatively close.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss Kate’s scoop on a big abortion case, some extremely silly oral arguments and the lackluster House Republican hearings.

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

As a publisher, I love highly kinetic pieces like Hunter Walker’s new article on the Axios journalist, Ben Montgomery, who Axios canned after he got crosswise with Ron DeSantis’s carnivorous Florida media machine. I’ll assume you’ve read the story. So I won’t rehash the details. (If you haven’t, just read it.) But I want to expand a bit on why it’s such an important story. It captures in a single incident key dynamics of our present treacherous political moment and the role of the political press within in it.

In another sign that an indictment for Trump may be on its way, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer announced on Twitter today that his client met with Manhattan prosecutors and answered questions.

According to stories bursting across the right-wing mediasphere today, a key reason for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was its focus on spreading “woke culture” rather than efficiently managing risk and profits. Ground zero for this is the allegation that SVB had donated over $73 million to the “BLM Movement & Related Causes.” That struck me as quite a lot of money for a single company, even a large and profitable one, to give to any cause or even all causes. So I tried to find out where this factoid came from and rapidly found my way to a Trumpist think tank. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s a complete lie. I want to show you the receipts, but first some key details.

The claims come from a database posted earlier this week by the Center for the American Way of Life, a project of the Claremont Institute. As Claremont put it in a Newsweek article introducing the database, “Americans deserve to know who funded the BLM riots.”

The longtime TPM character, far-right sheriff who was banned from Fox News, Trump supporter and self-described cowboy David Clarke may soon make his way back into national news relevance.

Sigh.

A bubbling conventional wisdom has been taking shape in the recent weeks that might best be stated as a question: what happened to all the Republican investigations? From one perspective it’s early: the new Congress has only been seated for a bit over two months. There have been hearings. There was one just last week into the so-called “Twitter Files.” But they’ve been low energy and mostly a bust. Outside of the right-wing media bubble they’ve been met more with derision than headlines and follow ups. A March 6 Axios headline read: “Jim Jordan scrambles amid claims ‘weaponization’ probe is a dud.” But the reaction inside the bubble hasn’t been any different. As far back as a month ago, Fox News’ host Jesse Watters angrily denounced the underwhelming show.

Some point to Jim Jordan not having the organizational abilities or chops to run impactful hearings. Others point to Jordan getting crosswise with the other top GOP investigator, Jim Comer. The most obvious explanation is that they’re just lame and underwhelming because they don’t have the goods. But even that doesn’t work as an explanation because the same could be said about the previous times we did this under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Something’s different.