GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado was apparently just a no-show at his own town hall on Wednesday. Technically it wasn’t a town hall but rather a public meeting in which Hurd would meet with members of the Montezuma County Commission. Point being, it wasn’t one of these things where Democrats put on a town hall because the member won’t call one. It was one he was involved in organizing. Anyway, apparently Hurd found out shortly before arriving that more than a hundred people had shown up because just after the event began, Montezuma County Commission Chair Jim Candeleria announced that Hurd wouldn’t be able to make it because an aide he was traveling with had a “medical emergency”.

No word on how the dog is doing after it ate Hurd’s homework.

Kate and Josh discuss Trump’s “firing” of a Fed governor, his eyeing of Chicago as ripe for takeover and Kate and Josh Kovensky’s scoop on the DOJ’s efforts to eradicate gender-affirming care nationwide.

Two ideas I heard from TPM Readers today:

The first is from TPM Reader BT, who recommends that big cities hold military occupation referendums. Needless to say these would not constrain President Trump. But they would make clear what the population of the city wants. I think it’s a really good idea. You need to think outside the box.

The second is from TPM Reader JB. He asks whether courts could begin holding Zoom hearings for people at risk of getting picked up by ICE at the courthouse. For immigration hearings and check-ins this is a nonstarter since President Trump controls that process. But I see no reason why true Article 3 courts couldn’t do something like that. That doesn’t mean they will of course. But it’s an idea worth raising.

I’m by no means the first one to note this. But it’s so important that I want to make sure it’s at the top of your mind. Have you noticed that out of the blue all of Donald Trump’s enemies seem to be getting investigated for mortgage fraud? Letitia James, Adam Schiff and now Fed Board member Lisa Cook; and it’s the pretext for her purported firing by President Trump?

Well, it turns out there’s a reason. Bill Pulte is Trump’s Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, an agency created as part of the Global Financial Crisis reforms. From that post he finagled his way into being the head of Fannie Mae and Sallie Mae, the quasi public institutions which back a huge percentage of American home and student loans.

We’re seeing lots of news today about the occupation of Washington, D.C. and the president’s takeover of the Metropolitan (D.C.) Police Department, as well as clear signals that he plans to expand this program to other big blue-state cities. I want to step back from the particulars to try to see the situation as a whole and consider the political ways to react to it. This builds on the point that grew out of my conservation with a TPM Reader a week and a half ago which is that the narrow issues of legality are mostly beside the point — not irrelevant, but at best secondary. The president views states and municipalities controlled by political opponents as something akin to conquered territories which must be bent to his will by force. This includes budgetary coercion and as close as he can get to military occupation. This is un-American, outside the constitutional order and, not least in importance, unpopular.

He has done this by exploiting various loopholes, taking advantage of a compliant and corrupt Supreme Court and resorting to expedients in which his power is most un-reviewable despite his actions clearly violating the plain intention of the laws in question. None of these technicalities change the fact that these are all violations of the liberties Americans are entitled to.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is plowing ahead with plans to gerrymander California’s congressional map to match the partisan gerrymander speeding to passage in Texas. He’s also been on a nonstop crusade going back a couple weeks — one half elaborate parody, one half frontal assault — using memes, all-caps, and boffo trash talk to attack Donald Trump. Not everyone likes Gavin Newsom. Personally, I’ve never been strongly in the fan or hater camp. But Newsom is doing exactly what we should be expecting of every Democratic politician today, especially those in executive office at the state level and especially those looking for promotions or to remain in office.

One benefit of what is happening in DC is that Donald Trump is giving every major city a preview of the plan, the model they want to pursue. Only in the every other major city in the country, he’ll lack a key tool: the takeover of the local police force. The courts will likely still allow deployment of National Guard and federal police organizations: ICE, CBP, DEA, FBI etc. That’s a lot. But local governments control over their police organizations and the apparatus of local government is a major difference. Every state and major municipal government needs to be stepping forward now with what their plan is. There’s no excuse for being caught off guard or unprepared.

UPDATE: As of 6pm, we’ve only got 8 tickets remaining. If you cannot get tickets, please add your name to the waitlist in case more come available

TPM is shipping up to Boston! For our final on-the-road event of 2025, we’re joining our friends at STAT News for an evening of conversation and drinks at Lamplighter Brewing Cambridge Crossing on September 25th. The night will begin with a discussion between TPM Founder Josh Marshall and STAT News co-founder Rick Berke. After that, there will be an open bar and a chance to chat with staff from both TPM and STAT. We hope you’ll join us! Capacity is limited so, if you’re interested, please get your tickets here as soon as possible!

Date 
September 25th, 2025 Time 6:30 – 9:30 p.m. EDT
Discussion will begin at 6:45
Open bar all night. Behave yourselves. 

Location 
Lamplighter Brewing Co. – CX110 North First Street Cambridge, MA 02141 

Ticket Information
$28.52 (inclusive of tax and fees)

I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’re getting set to celebrate the 25th anniversary of TPM, what with all the site signage and so forth. I’m not going to get into the precise details because they’re still being ironed out. And our team is putting a lot of time into what we have planned and I don’t want to get ahead of their formal roll out. But we’ve got some fun things in the works for later in the year. There are two parts of it that I wanted to mention to you. First, this fall we’re going to host a two-day celebration of TPM’s anniversary in New York City. It won’t quite be a New Yorker Festival type thing, but it will be a lot more than a panel discussion or a live podcast. Think of it as maybe a micro-festival. The TPM 25th Anniversary micro-festival. So that’s coming up. As I said, details will be announced in the not-too-distant future, including how to by tickets and so forth.

There’s another part of it that I’m really excited about. As part of the 25th Anniversary celebration we’ve commissioned 25 essays on a range of topics tied to the evolution of digital news media since the year 2000, which is mostly, but not all, the history of the digital news. I’ve seen the list of contributors and it’s a really cool group of people, people who’ve been involved in that story in different ways over the years in all different parts of it. When I recently saw the finalized list, I was going through the names and topics and, with almost every one, I’d think, “wow, so cool we got that person to write a piece.”

If you’re in or near Boston I hope you’ll join us on September 25th for a Happy Hour we’re hosting at the Lamplighter Brewing Co in Cambridge. We’re cohosting it with STAT News, the medical news website. STAT co-founder Rick Berke and I will have a quick discussion about the news of the day and then it’s drinking and chatting. I’ll be there and a bunch of other TPMers will be there. We’ve done these in New York and DC for the last handful and this is our first outside of our two home cities. Only a couple dozen tickets are left. So if you’re interested the details are here.