This Hurricane-Ravaged Town Has Waited Years for Long-Term Aid. It Could Happen Again.

Posted on by John Light

This article first appeared at ProPublica, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the Advocate. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

LAKE CHARLES, La. — Hilda Brown ambled down a wooden walkway with the help of a cane and gingerly took a seat at a table between her badly damaged house and a FEMA trailer. It had been more than a year and a half since Hurricane Laura, but the then-64-year-old widow still didn’t know where to turn.

Continue reading “This Hurricane-Ravaged Town Has Waited Years for Long-Term Aid. It Could Happen Again.” → 

State Legislatures Rush To Put In Place Laws to Protect Election Workers Ahead of Midterms

Posted on by Kaila Philo

The democratic process hasn’t been the same since 2020 — and if a rising, anti-democratic movement in America gets its way, we may never go back. But in the wake of unprecedented attacks on those who administer our elections, state lawmakers have scrambled to put in place new laws ahead of the midterms that would provide them with more protection. 

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Doesn’t Add Up

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Most of the news discussion about the DeSantis/Martha’s Vineyard saga appears to have moved on to chin-scratching pieces about what it all means or how the politics might shake out. That’s premature. The fact that DeSantis would pull a stunt like this is entirely unsurprising if also morally obscene. But if it was his work why did he fly migrants from Texas? There’s been no clear or really any explanation for why this would be the case. He’s vaguely suggested that he was flying them from Texas before they could come to Florida. But the details about how the migrants were found in San Antonio doesn’t suggest anything like that. DeSantis won’t discuss it.

It also seems clear that this wasn’t arranged by actual government employees. At a minimum it was delegated to private parties who quite possibly broke a few laws to do it. The woman “Perla” seems to have disappeared and gave one migrant a card with only her first name and a phone number. That’s not a government employee, at least not one working on the books.

Continue reading “Doesn’t Add Up” → 

It Appears That MTG Is Now Kicking Young Activists Who Ask Her About Gun Violence

Posted on by Cristina Cabrera

Several videos circulating social media appear to show far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) getting rough with a young activist who confronted her about gun violence on Thursday.

Continue reading “It Appears That MTG Is Now Kicking Young Activists Who Ask Her About Gun Violence” → 

Perla Spoke of “Anonymous Benefactor”

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Here’s more pieces of the puzzle. We now learn that “Perla,” the woman who coaxed the migrants on to the DeSantis Air flights under false pretenses, paid another migrant, a 27 year old Venezuelan named Emmanuel, for the contact information of the migrants Perla would eventually coax onto the plane. Emmanuel gave her contact info for about 10 migrants he’d met at the migrant center where they were saying.

Continue reading “Perla Spoke of “Anonymous Benefactor”” → 

Trump the Master

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Important context here from TPM Reader and Alum WT …

Cannon’s order denying the DOJ’s stay request is insane enough that it seems to have overshadowed the other thing she did yesterday: issuing the attached “order appointing a special master.” The actual details of the order are gobsmackingly bad: the order neuters Dearie’s authority before the process begins, boxes in the DOJ, and puts Trump’s counsel in the driver’s seat of the entire process.

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New Hampshire Election-Denying Senate Nom Suddenly Sees The Light

Posted on by Cristina Cabrera

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Uhhhh Democracy Is Real Now! I’m Electable, I Swear!

During a debate with fellow GOP New Hampshire Senate hopefuls last month, retired Gen. Don Bolduc, the proud election truther who won the nomination this week, bragged about signing a letter falsely claiming Trump won the 2020 election. Then Bolduc declared that “dammit, I stand by” the letter and “I’m not switching horses, baby!”

  • Yesterday, Bolduc chucked the horse into a volcano and announced on Fox that “the election was not stolen,” something he discovered after having “done a lot of research on this.”

NY AG Shoots Down Trump’s Settlement Offer

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) is now reportedly laying the groundwork to sue Trump in her civil investigation into the Trump Organization: She reportedly rejected a settlement offer from the ex-president’s attorneys earlier this month, according to the New York Times and ABC News.

  • James is also reportedly mulling a lawsuit against one of Trump’s adult children who helped him run the business: Eric, Don Jr. and Ivanka Trump. It’s unclear which one James is looking at for a potential suit, though.
  • There’s still a chance James and Trump reach an agreement, so a lawsuit isn’t a given at this point.

Senate Punts Marriage Equality Vote Until After Midterms

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), the chief sponsor of the Senate’s same-sex marriage bill, announced on Thursday that the legislation will be put to a vote sometime after the midterm elections instead of next week, as Democrats had initially planned.

  • The bill doesn’t have the 10  GOP votes needed to break the filibuster right now. Only four Republicans currently back the legislation: Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH), Susan Collins (R-ME), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).
  • Democrats are hoping that more Republicans will get on board once they don’t have to sweat over backlash from their conservative voters. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) said yesterday that the bill would get more votes in November and December than it would on Monday.
  • The bipartisan group of senators who’ve been working on the bill said on Thursday that they’re “confident” it’ll pass when it reaches the Senate floor for a vote.

DeSantis Spox Brags About Boss Trafficking Humans Like Cartels

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) sent two chartered planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard earlier this week in a blatantly political MAGA display to impress GOP donors.

  • Lawyers for the migrants say their clients were lied to about having jobs and shelter waiting for them there.
  • It appears as though the migrants didn’t even come from Florida and that DeSantis actually had them picked up from Texas (imagine how happy Texas Gov. Greg Abbot, who’s been trying to pull similar stunts, would be about that).
  • And DeSantis’ genius deputy press secretary tried to defend the grotesque gambit yesterday by essentially agreeing that yes, his boss was, in fact, doing a human trafficking.

Here’s some relevant history:

Georgia DA Floats Prison Time For Election Probe Targets

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor who’s been investigating Trump’s 2020 election meddling crusade in her state, told the Washington Post that the extent of the criminal activity she’s uncovered in her probe means that people may face prison sentences.

  • But it’ll be months before Willis’ office decides to indict anyone.
  • There are at least 17 targets in Willis’ investigation right now, and the prosecutor told the Post there will be more.

Cannon Serves Trump More Special Justice

Federal Judge Aileen Cannon is still blocking the DOJ’s investigation into Trump hoarding White House records (some of which were classified) at Mar-a-Lago: On Thursday, she rejected the Justice Department’s request to use the classified documents in its probe.

  • Cannon also appointed a special master to review the documents that were seized from Mar-a-Lago, as Trump requested. The judge chose Judge Raymond Dearie, one of Trump’s proposed candidates whom the DOJ said it would accept as the special master.

Must Read

“​​28 Freight Rail Workers Tell Us What They Want You to Know About Their Lives” – Vice

“By the end of my 10 years, it didn’t matter how much money they threw at me. That job changed me.  I didn’t feel like I was even a person anymore. I’d lost my hobbies, my friends, and my fiancée.  More importantly, I’d lost any reason to live.”

McCarthy Plans To Expose Jan. 6 Call Leaker

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told Politico yesterday that he knows who recorded and leaked his damning post-Jan. 6 calls with other GOP leaders about asking Trump to resign. The California Republican also said he plans on unmasking the culprit sometime in the future. Dun dun dun!

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

Perla and the Thirsty Governor

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Aaron Blake and TPM alum Greg Sargent both had pieces in the Post yesterday looking at whether these immigrant transport stunts might break the law. There are a number of interesting legal complexities. One has to do with whether they’re “illegal” or “undocumented.” There are laws against knowingly transporting such immigrants or doing so to further them committing crimes. But in most cases these are people who have been processed as asylum seekers and are awaiting an asylum hearing. So until that hearing they are in the country legally. So that doesn’t really apply. It’s also unclear what state government authorities might be authorized to do as opposed to federal authorities. But the operative issue seems to be whether people are coerced or deceived into being transported.

Continue reading “Perla and the Thirsty Governor” → 

WTF?

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I am both aghast and now fascinated by just what Ron DeSantis was doing here. We get the basic idea of shipping immigrants and legal asylum-seekers to liberal cities to own the libs. But DeSantis apparently sent a team to Texas who approached a few dozen Venezuelan immigrants after they emerged from a shelter in San Antonio, Texas. According to one of the migrants, Luis, age 27, they were “promised a flight to Massachusetts, along with shelter, support for 90 days, help with work permits and English lessons.” The woman called herself “Perla” but did not provide any identification or explanation of who she was working for other than having the group sign liability waivers.

Continue reading “WTF?” → 

DeSantis Previewed to Top Donors

Posted on by Josh Marshall

The Post now reports that at a GOP donor retreat last weekend DeSantis bragged that he had a pot of money for shipping migrants to liberal parts of the country and that he might go to Texas to find immigrants to send. “I do have this money. I want to be helpful. Maybe we will go to Texas and help. Maybe we’ll send to Chicago, Hollywood, Martha’s Vineyard. Who knows?”