Editors’ Blog

Much appreciation to those of you who stepped up in a big way in response to my post yesterday. One reader doubled his initial contribution, and several other readers also came forward with four-figure contributions.

Your substantial giving has pushed us close to the $400,000 mark. 

If we can get over that hump today, then we can spend next week sprinting toward $500,000 in the final stretch run. 

Keep it coming!

My colleague Kate Riga will do a better job explaining the nuances and particulars. For myself, I can only say this is no surprise. I think it affirms the point I made yesterday which is that to the degree there is any shift on the Court it is pulling back from giving SCOTUS goodies to every rightwinger who has an ideological hobbyhorse and servicing every electoral need of the Republican Party. The blowback and backlash may have made the costs of that bust-out jurisprudence a bit too high. Rather they’ll concentrate on the core stuff they really care about. And affirmative action has been one of the core half dozen or so things the conservative judicial movement has cared about for decades. They have the power and they’re gonna do it.

Each of you has a role to play in getting us over the $500,000 hump, but I want to home in on the heavy-hitters out there. We can’t do it without you, either. If you’re in a position to give into the four or five figures, we need you. We need you a lot. Click here. 

The oversaturation strategy continues.

For the last 24 hours or so Russian military bloggers have been claiming that Gen. Sergei Surovikin, who was at one time the top Russian general in Ukraine and is still one of the top commanders in the theater, had been arrested over his involvement in the Wagner Mutiny. This comes after The New York Times report yesterday that he had advance knowledge of the mutiny. But what gets claimed on these mil blogger Telegram channels means almost nothing. It’s a mix of the very most current information and complete nonsense, lies, propaganda, etc. It means almost nothing if you can’t distinguish one from another. But now the Moscow Times, which is a reputable publication, is reporting it too. But so far it’s only the Moscow Times.

I share this with you partly because it would be a very big deal if it happened but also to caution you that I don’t think we should yet treat it as quite totally confirmed. I also share it to give you a sense of the murkiness of the moment, in which potential arrests of some of the highest ranking military officers in the country may or may not have happened and no one seems to be quite sure.

We are just forty contributors away from 4,000 TPM Reader/contributors so far in this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive. And we’re hoping to get to the $400,000 threshold today. I’ll try to keep these short. But if you can help us get there that would be quite wonderful. It truly takes about one minute. Click here.

Increasingly over recent months and years I and many others have been arguing that the current Supreme Court is fundamentally corrupt. The venal corruption we’ve seen on display with Justices Thomas and Alito is part of that but far from the most important part. The right-wing conservative majority is both the product of and the embodiment of a deeper corruption: put simply, an organized and successful attempt to pack the Court and, with this power achieved, dispense with any pretense of a consistent theory of jurisprudence to advance far-right and partisan Republican claims and thwart democratic action. And yet just as we’re making the argument we’ve seen a string of decisions in which to varying levels of surprise the Court has turned back novel right-wing power grabs and efforts to advance Republican interests under the cover of law.

So what’s up here? Did we have something wrong?

It won’t surprise you that I don’t think we got anything wrong. But the contrast or disjuncture is great enough that it deserves some explanation. And since I’ve been such a critic I wanted to offer one.

More instances of Stolen (Infrastructure) Valor, now from Republican senators hyping Biden administration spending they voted against. Now it’s broadband grants to states under the Department of Commerce’s Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, which is part of the Biden infrastructure bill. The infrastructure bill did have a non-trivial amount of Republican support. But Senators Cornyn and Tuberville, who are currently hyping it back home, voted against. See here for Cornyn and here for Tuberville.

Got other examples? Please drop us a line at the comments/tips email which is talk (at) talkingpointsmemo (dot) com.

The Times reported overnight, based on U.S. intelligence, that one of the senior Russian generals in Ukraine, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, at least had advanced knowledge of the Wagner Mutiny and may have had some role in planning it. Surovikin is a one-time commander of Russian forces in Ukraine and remains a senior commander in the theater. You can read the details in the piece but I want to focus your attention on something different. This is another example of the Biden administration using selective disclosure of U.S. intelligence as an offensive tool in its cold conflict with Russia.

As I mentioned this morning, we’re entering the final lap in our drive. And we really need to hit our goal. Right now the $400,000 and 4,000 individual contributors milestones are coming into view. Please help us hit these critical milestones as we make our way toward hitting our critical goal for the drive. Especially if you’ve been putting it off, make today the day. Just click right here.

Late Update: Currently at $369,744, hoping we can clear $370,000 momentarily and pass $380,000 tonight. (Yes, I’m trying out for your local PBS station, I guess.)

Latter Update: Now at $372,136 and 3,900 individual TPM Readers contributing.