Editors’ Blog

One thing that has had me very concerned over recent days is that the White House would be forced to take a rough deal with House Republicans and then also have to whip Democratic votes to get it passed. So the Freedom Caucus forces a ruinous deal and then doesn’t even vote for it. Democrats have to make up those votes. That’s not worth doing. Despite the danger, force McCarthy to pass it entirely with Republican votes. If he can’t get the votes for his own demands, let’s just go over the cliff.

But news out tonight from the Times, now also confirmed by the Post, points to the outlines of a deal that actually looks fairly good for the Dems.

Caveats: You’ll know there’s a deal when it’s official. Maybe this falls apart. Also, let’s remember that we shouldn’t be in this negotiation at all. But we are in the negotiation and we’re days from a crisis. Here are the outlines of a deal as I understand them from the Times article.

A few hours after the janky roll out of his 2024 campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered The Donald a compelling consolation prize if he were to beat the former president in the 2024 primaries.

The sentencing today of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for the Jan. 6 attack prompted me to dig into the TPM archives. We’ve been covering Rhodes and the Oath Keepers for a long time. But I couldn’t remember exactly how long. On closer look, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was from virtually the beginning of his emergence on the national stage. But rummaging through our past coverage also helped me to re-familiarize myself with the context in which Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers.

Rhodes incorporated the Oath Keepers in 2009 (gee, who became president that year?), and you can’t divorce its creation from the then-emerging Tea Party movement.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate do a deep dive into the rightward march of many state legislatures.

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

Today is a great day to sign up for Morning Memo!

Here’s my quick take on the DeSantis-Musk campaign launch.

As you must know by now, the thing kicked up with a grandly humiliating tech glitch in which the whole “Twitter Space” crashed. After 20 minutes or so (I didn’t time it) they started a new one — now hosted on Musk’s crony David Sacks’s account as opposed to Musk’s — and that one mostly worked. Huge fail. And that will probably be the headline takeaway for most news organizations. Then DeSantis read a rushed and canned campaign announcement which was basically a mess. But once they got down to talking, DeSantis is fairly good at talking about the issues that matter to him.

The problem is the issues that matter to him. This is a way, way, WAY online-minded campaign. Extremely online, as the cool kids say. The whole conversation is geared to the keyboard warrior world of the far right.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin today warning that there is a “heightened threat environment” for violent attacks in the U.S. as we head into the 2024 election cycle.

Department officials specifically warned that “perceptions of the 2024 general election cycle” and “legislative or judicial decisions pertaining to sociopolitical issues” could be mobilizing issues for those wishing to carry out acts of violence. It also specifically warns of the potential for attacks on “individuals or events associated with the LGBTQIA+ community.”

If we didn’t have enough high-stakes drama on our plates we might be all over this. But I wanted to make sure it was on your radar. It started yesterday when notorious reprobate Texas AG Ken Paxton put out a statement calling on the Texas Speaker of the House to resign over a video clip from the House floor which appeared to many to show him drunk. (His speech was at least slurred at one point. Here’s a breakdown of the video.)

As many of you know Paxton is both hard right and ludicrous and has seemingly for years been under investigation, indictment, sued by various people including his staff … and yet somehow still manages to remain permanently in office.

That was where things stood as of yesterday when I first heard about this.

Let me note something technical but important. While the White House has not yet shown any inclination to argue that the President has legal or constitutional authority to disregard the debt limit law, a union, National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), has. Indeed, they’re arguing in federal court that he is constitutionally obligated to do so. (On the legal and constitutional merits, I think there’s little question they’re right.) This case has been underway for a while. David Dayen, at the Prospect, notes the DOJ has now responded to the union’s request for a preliminary injunction.

There’s a really stunning report out from the Journal last night. Corporate bonds at some of America’s top-rated companies are now trading at a yield discount to Treasuries. This isn’t quite the same as investors thinking U.S. corporate debt is safer over time. It’s focused on the what happens over the next few months rather than where you put money over time. But it’s still a stunning development, cutting at the very architecture of the world financial system and the United States’ position as its gravitational center.

To put it in layman’s terms, if you need a place to put money over the course of this summer and you need it to be as safe as possible, investors are deciding Microsoft’s corporate bonds are more attractive than bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury.

It’s a clarifying perspective on the impact of GOP extremism and nihilism on the nation’s finances and global power.