The last couple years have had a way of making saps and chumps out of optimists. They’ve gotten shot down enough they don’t even want to poke your head above the parapet. Optimism is an ethic and an attitude, not a belief. But surveying the ground in recent days I’ve seen hints of better things afoot for 2018. Read More

Two South Carolina legislators who sponsored a bill to erect a monument to African-American Confederate Veterans were confronted over the weekend with new evidence that the men they wish to honor never existed. Read More

As a small organization we go to a skeleton staff over the two end of year-long weekends. But here we are. It’s the second day of the year. And we are back. I am going to share some thoughts later today on the state of the Russia investigation, which seems to me to be at the end of the beginning. More on that later this morning. What I want to share with you is that this will be a special and transformative year in the life of this organization.

I already mentioned yesterday that I am optimistic about 2018 on the public front. I want to share with you what we plan to do on the TPM front. Read More

President Trump’s ridiculous tweet this morning – taking credit for a record low number of civil aviation fatalities this year – made me think about the remarkable record over the last two decades. Read More

Michele Bachmann is asking God whether she should run for Al Franken’s senate seat.

Steve Bannon is talking about going into Utah to battle Mitt Romney, if Romney chooses to run to succeed Orrin Hatch. Clearly, Utah is a very, very conservative state. But it’s shown itself to be considerably more resistant to Trumpism than other highly conservative states. Even McMullin didn’t win there. But he made a strong showing. The Mormon Church has too, again, relative to other generally conservative religious denominations. Obviously, Bannon would need a candidate. And a lot would depend on that. But I’m skeptical that Bannon’s style of louche and grimy race conservatism plays well in Utah, especially against someone like Romney.

This is a dangerous development but likely inevitable as Trumpism seeps into the government. The acting director of ICE is calling for the arrest of public officials in ‘sanctuary’ cities and states. Homan isn’t a Trump appointee. He’s career immigration service.

Michele Bachmann was in many ways the John the Baptist of Trumpism, foretelling his coming and laying the ground of the Crazy to come. With Bachmann back in the news mulling a run for Al Franken’s senate seat, we put together a look at her wildest, most pre-Trumpian Trumpian moments (Prime access) that led to today. I’m amazed how much of this insane stuff I’d forgotten about.

One of the things we will be focusing on on the Russia front in 2018 is not simply breaking a lot of news but on narrating the bigger picture. It can be a difficult story to make sense of because it has so many tentacles. There are so many disparate and far-flung parts to keep track of and make sense of. One of the top themes of Glenn Simpson’s and Peter Fritsch’s must-read oped published yesterday in The New York Times is that the focus on conspiracy during the 2016 campaign cycle has almost totally eclipsed examination of Donald Trump’s longstanding involvement with the Russian criminal underworld and money laundering which laid the basis of what happened in 2016. (That has always seemed to be Trump’s greatest fear.) We’ll come back to that.

So where are we now in this story? A series of revelations in the final weeks of 2017 placed us at what we should think not as the beginning or the end but the end of the beginning. We are still only at the front end of this investigation. We still know only the outlines of what happened and how. But we are past any serious question about whether there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. There was. It’s no longer a matter of probability, even high probability. We know it from either undisputed facts or sworn statements from Trump associates now cooperating with the Mueller investigation. Read More

It got lost in today’s Bannon hysteria but we just saw a preview of the Democrats 2019 Trump investigations agenda. I explain (Prime access).