Erika Kirk, the widow of slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, concluded her eulogy for him on Sunday by saying that she was “tremendously honored” to be the new chief executive of Turning Point USA, the nonprofit and affiliated advocacy organizations he cofounded more than a decade ago to promote conservative ideology among young people.
With that appointment, Kirk has become one of the most prominent figures in the country’s Christian conservative movement.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes.
In a sting operation last September, White House “border czar” Tom Homan accepted $50,000 cash in a bag from Cava, the fast casual Mediterranean restaurant chain, from undercover FBI agents whom he believed to be business executives in want of an inside track for government contracts, according to reporting from MSNBC. Homan served as Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during President Donald Trump’s first term, and at the time of the FBI investigation, he was widely expected to resume oversight of federal immigration policy should Trump reenter office.
Agents, who recorded the entire transaction, had planned to keep monitoring Homan to see if he got the role and followed through on his pay-for-play promise, but now that he’s in position to hold up his end of the bargain, Trump appointees at the FBI and the Department of Justice have squashed the investigation. In a statement provided to MSNBC, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed that their staff reviewed the matter that “originated under the previous administration” and determined there was “no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.”
The existence of non-criminal reasons for accepting $50,000 in a pita pocket probably comes as a surprise to most normal people. But the Supreme Court isfamouslyfondofbribery, and has made it increasingly difficult to successfully prosecute public corruption. In doing so, the Court has made it increasingly easy for people like Homan to take their alleged bribes to-go.
Single-day tickets for TPM’s 25th Anniversary Celebration are now on sale! For those who only can attend either the Live Show on Thursday, Nov. 6th or The Party on Friday, Nov. 7th, now is your chance.
If you need no additional explanation, you can get tickets to The Live Show here and you can get tickets to The Party here. Want one ticket for both? You can get that here.
You could almost hear the gears turning in Owen Strickland II’s head as he pondered slowly and deliberately whether Jimmy Kimmel should’ve been taken off air in the wake of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk’s murder.
“Mr. Kimmel started out his life and career as a comedian,” Strickland began. “Somewhere along the lines he morphed a long way away from that, in my personal opinion.”
“Unless there is a dramatic turnaround in the amount of people every night watching his show, he’s gonna get canceled,” he added later.
Strickland is mayor of Bailey, North Carolina, a tiny town of about 560 people, according to the U.S. Census. He’s also chair of the Nash County Republican Party. Politicians in the area often campaign on bread-and-butter issues like poverty, education, and internet connectivity. But the First Amendment matters, too, he said.
The photo that conspiracy-monger Alex Jones recently posted of himself alongside Trump DOJ official Ed Martin suggested something was up, but it wasn’t clear what.
Now we may have some idea.
Jones — staring down the barrel of a total of $1.5 billion in defamation judgments for conspiracizing about the Sandy Hook school shooting — is apparently getting an assist from Martin as he tries to fight off paying up.
Martin has sent one of his notorious “letters of inquiry after request” to the lawyer of FBI agent William Aldenberg, who was among the first to respond to the shooting and won $90 million in one of the cases against Jones. In the letter, Martin suggests Aldenberg could be under criminal investigation for participating in the defamation trial of the “Infowars” host.
The letter to Aldenberg attorney Christopher Mattei is dated Sept. 15, three days after Jones posted the photo of him with Martin.
Of Martin’s many hats at DOJ, he emphasizes in the letter his role as director of the Trump DOJ’s so-called Weaponization Working Group. In plain English, this is the retribution task force that Attorney General Pam Bondi has established in response to the President Trump’s retribution executive order.
It’s not clear what the ostensible MAGA logic is for sweeping up Jones’ Sandy Hook liability in Trump’s larger retribution agenda. Jones was present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but was never charged in connection with the attack. A then-Infowars associate, Owen Shroyer, was sentenced in 2023 to 60 days in jail for breaching the restricted area around the Capitol.
The accusation that Martin freely throws around in the letter is that Aldenberg benefited personally from his involvement in the Jones case and therefore may have broken the law. Martin warns:
As you may know, there are criminal laws protecting the citizens from actions by government employees who may be acting for personal benefit. I encourage you to review those.
Martin asked Mattei to keep the letter confidential. “I do not wish to litigate this in the media,” he wrote. But Jones posted the letter on X yesterday.
Mattei blasted Martin for the letter and defended the Sandy Hook families, in a statement to ABC News: “In his last gasps, Jones is once again harassing them, only now with the corrupt complicity of at least one DOJ official. It’s as disgusting as it is pathetic, and we will not stand for it.”
Didn’t See This Coming: Trump Makes U-Turn on Ukraine?
European diplomats are scurrying to make sense of President Trump’s apparent reversal on the terms of a Ukraine peace deal. In a social media post, Trump sharply departed from his long insistence that Ukraine will have to give up territory lost to Russia.
“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump said in the lengthy post.
As significant as the shift in language is, Trump’s reliability remained very much in question, Politico reported:
EU officials trying to make sense of the apparent shift were caught between elation and skepticism, pointing out that Trump frequently changes his position — and may well do so again after a persuasive call with another leader, a reality that has made it all the more difficult for leaders to craft a response to the ongoing war and recent provocations from Moscow in European airspace far away from Ukraine.
‘Your Countries Are Going to Hell’
A glimpse of how cringey Trump’s authoritarianism can be when displayed on the world stage:
Absurdity of the Day: UNGA Edition
French President Emmanuel Macron called President Donald Trump after getting stuck on the wrong side of the barricades for Trump’s motorcade during the UN General Assembly:
French President Emmanuel Macron called U.S. President Donald Trump after being stopped at a New York street blocked off for his U.S. counterpart’s motorcade during the United Nations General Assembly. #macron#trump#usa#motorcade#unitednations
Eleven West African nationals deported by the U.S. to Ghana were sent to their home countries over the weekend despite concerns they may face persecution, their lawyer told a court in Ghana on Tuesday.
It appears to be a work-around to the U.S. law that bans chain refoulement, the practice of using a middleman country to transfer migrants to their home countries when the U.S. is barred by courts from doing so directly. In this instance, the Trump administration has told at least one court that Ghana made assurances it would not engage in this practice, but demurred that it has no control over what Ghana does or recourse if Ghana reneges on its assurances.
Too Much Cringe to Take
Ben Terris on Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, the dynamic duo running Department Homeland Security, among other alleged extracurricular activities.
Routh Convicted in Trump Assassination Attempt
Ryan Routh was convicted for his 2024 attempt to kill Donald Trump at a Florida golf course where the then-candidate was playing. A federal jury in Florida found Routh guilty on all five charged counts in a case presided over by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.
ICYMI
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: Experts Watch in Horror As Trump Admin Hides Record of Right-Wing Violence
PBS to Shut Down in New Jersey
Facing a cutoff in government funding, New Jersey PBS, the state’s only public television station, announced it will cease operations next year.
This article first appeared at ProPublica, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
After a fight with a Black student in a St. Louis suburb left a white student badly injured in March 2024, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey blamed their school district for unsafe conditions, even though the incident occurred after classes and more than a half-mile from campus.
The Supreme Court sent the independent executive branch agency into extinction this week, without even bothering to overturn the precedent that forbids it to do so first.
On November 6th and 7th we’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of TPM. It’s a two-day event in New York City — a TPM mini-festival: night one a discussion and oral history of TPM featuring TPM alums, current staff and special guests, followed by a live podcast and mega cocktail hour at the historic Metrograph Theater Manhattan. Night two a big party at The Bogart House in Brooklyn. Tickets are officially on sale now. We’re also offering sponsorship passes for those who’d like a few extra goodies and also help defray the costs of the event to keep ticket prices reasonable for other attendees. If you’re a member, there’s an email you received this morning with links to purchase your tickets. We can’t wait to see you.
President Donald Trump agreed to and then — in less than a day— cancelled a Thursday meeting that he was going to have with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in order to discuss government funding ahead of the looming deadline.
“After reviewing the details of the unserious and ridiculous demands being made by the Minority Radical Left Democrats in return for their Votes to keep our thriving Country open, I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive,” President Trump wrote in a lengthy Truth Social post.
