Congress is back in town from their two-week Easter recess and Senate Republicans are trying to execute on a second reconciliation package as Congress continues to be consumed by a 58-day Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown, resignations and potential Democratic-led war powers votes.
As Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) explained it on Monday night, leadership is hoping to keep the reconciliation package “very, very skinny — anorexic-like skinny.”
“To execute on it and do it with any kind of speed, you’ve got to keep it really tight,” Thune told reporters Monday night.
FRISCO, TEXAS – Far-right activists are seizing on a new example of the America they fear. It’s a booming, Texas city home to the Dallas Cowboys’ practice facility and a PGA golf resort.
Most hardcore evangelical Christians can reverse engineer a case for why any given politician or influential emerging world leader is probably the antichrist. What’s rare is when the hysteria sticks, and there’s a consensus around why — as seems to be the case with growing sinister feelings about President Trump this week.
Facing expulsion vote, Swalwell resigns from Congress.
Quite apart from the gravity of the allegations, I simply cannot remember a more rapid and total campaign and, it would now seem, career implosion. Usually loyalists and especially senior staff hold out a bit longer. Just stunning in every dimension.
This post at Axios gives us the benefit of Barak Ravid’s reporting on the state of the U.S.-Iran negotiations. His sources suggest that the core hold up was the Iranian nuclear program, with the U.S. insisting on a 20 year moratorium on uranium production and the Iranians countering with something in the single digits. Note that this isn’t that different from what President Obama got with the JCPOA — a longterm but by no means permanent cessation. There’s also no mention in the Ravid piece about the Strait of Hormuz or the sanctions regime. Perhaps I’m wrong in what I noted here and the demand for sanctions relief is merely a bluff. But other reports say that Hormuz was in fact a major stumbling block, as one would expect. While I don’t question Ravid’s reporting as such, this article in the Times, I believe, captures the dynamic more precisely: Iran and the U.S. are now moving into a battle of economic privation, testing which player can endure more economic pain.
Conspiracy theories have become an inescapable part of American politics and political culture. I talked to Mike Rothschild, a journalist and conspiracy researcher who writes TPM’s Rough Edges column, about why some conspiracies endure, and what happens when fringe ideas are legitimized by some of the most powerful people on earth.
We got into the long tail of QAnon; just how many central banks the Rothschild family supposedly owns; and why MAGA conspiracy peddlers are turning on President Trump.
I wanted to share a few more thoughts on the current ceasefire and negotiations between the United States and Iran. As I noted earlier, there’s something so rich about sending JD Vance to lead the negotiations since the vice president has bent over backwards to signal to everyone who will listen (or write stories) that he was absolutely, positively against the war in the first place. President Trump has sent Vance to conduct and really own negotiations that almost certainly wouldn’t go well for the United States.
This cannot be an accident.
I started this post before the news broke that the first attempt at negotiations had broken down or, at least for now, had failed. That news just tightened the box into which Trump placed Vance. If the war resumes, Vance owns that continuation because he walked away from the negotiating table. It’s almost as though he gave the original order. If the negotiations fail, that’s on Vance too.
If you spent the weekend enjoying spring, you’ll be forgiven if you’re a tad disoriented this Monday morning.
Since we last convened Friday:
Viktor Orbán conceded defeat in Hungarian elections.
President Trump decided to shut down the Strait of Hormuz for Iran.
Eric Swalwell’s political career abruptly flamed out after serious sexual misconduct allegations emerged.
Trump openly beefed with the pope while portraying himself as an American Jesus.
And yet … stating things plainly like that doesn’t begin to capture the bonkers nature of the weekend’s news. Just ask JD Vance, who emerged as the biggest loser after an ignominious trip abroad that included a last-ditch campaign appearance for Orbán and the quick collapse of negotiations to end the Iran conflict he reportedly quietly opposed.
A Blow to Global Authoritarianism
If we’re lucky, Orbán’s defeat in Hungary will mark the beginning of the end of right-wing state capture. A few salient early reactions:
Political theorist Jacob T. Levy: “It’s not just that Orbán losing inspires hope in other competitive-autocratic countries ruled by right-wing nationalist authoritarians. It’s that his loss materially changes things in those other countries, because he’s been operating as a headquarters and funding source for the international ideological movement.”
Timothy Ash of Britain’s Chatham House: “People may go along with a kleptocracy for as long as an economy is doing well, but ultimately, if the economy starts failing, and they see all these guys lining their pockets, then you can expect a reaction.”
Political scientist Gabriela Greilinger in TPM: “If anything, the Hungarian election shows that authoritarians don’t ‘just lose.’ Rather, Hungary presented the perfect storm to defeat an authoritarian: a weak economy, scandal after scandal from the governing party, and an emerging opposition figure who rose to the occasion with the skill to lead a movement, highlight the government’s numerous failings, and increase the salience of issues that are of interest to the majority of voters.”
Latest on the Blockade of the Strait of Hormuz
Trump’s arc on the Strait of Hormuz goes something like: I will destroy Persian civilization if Iran doesn’t open the strait -> The strait will open automatically on its own after the ceasefire and we can all make money off of ships transiting through it. -> Fine, I’ll close the strait myself.
Contrary to President Trump’s assertion that the U.S. will blockade the strait, the U.S. military says it’s only a blockade of Iranian ports.
NATO allies are refusing to participate. It is not at all clear what the blockade is intended to accomplish or reasonably could achieve — or how it fits into Trump’s broader strategy, to the extent there is one.
A U.S.. strike Saturday on two alleged drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific killed five people, raising the death toll in the campaign to at least 168 people.
Swalwell Under Criminal Investigation
After stories Friday by the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN alleging that Rep. Eric Swalwell engaged in repeated instances of sexual misconduct, including sexual assault, the California Democrat suspended his campaign for governor. In response to one alleged incident in New York City, the Manhattan District Attorney launched a criminal investigation into Swalwell.
In unrelated Swalwell news, the Trump DHS appears to be pursuing a new vindictive investigation of Swalwell for allegedly illegally employing a Brazilian nanny several years ago.
Trump Targets Pope Leo
We’re still nowhere near the bottom of Trump II’s descent into madness:
Deranged anti-Pope Leo screed from the current president of the U.S.
Some staff at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis were given the Operation Metro Surge challenge coin pictured above, TPM’s Hunter Walker reports.
The Purges: Immigration Judges
The Trump administration has fired two immigration judges who dismissed high-profile deportation cases against pro-Palestinian international students Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi, the NYT reports.
The Corruption: Mass Pardons Edition
President Trump has repeatedly promised to issue mass pardons to members of his administration before he leaves office, the WSJ reports.
Those staffers can believe him at their own risk.
Pirro Touted Fed Subpoenas to Trump
I would imagine we’ll hear about this in the appeal of Judge Boasberg’s decision quashing D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s subpoenas of the Federal Reserve, via the WSJ:
On a Friday evening in January, President Trump received a call from the federal prosecutor he refers to as “Judge Jeanine.” His U.S. attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, had a welcome update for the president: Her office had sent subpoenas to the Federal Reserve as part of an investigation into its chair, Jerome Powell.
Monumentalism Watch
In a Saturday order, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sent Trump’s vanity ballroom case back to U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to sort out whether the project is ballroom or a bunker.
Trump unveiled plans for the gargantuan monstrosity he wants to erect at the foot of Memorial Bridge between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial:
As screens fragment our attention, as AI pushes for speed and efficiency at the cost of our humanity, as the academy puts a pinch of incense on the altar of innovation, slowing down and revisiting a text again and again (whether sheet music, a book, a recording, a poem) is a revolutionary act. It turns you into a particular kind of reader, one attentive to the minute, to nuances, to how meaning can shift ever so slightly when this word is used rather than that.
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
