This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump held one of his trademark rallies at a casino resort in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania. As is usually the case when Trump has a microphone and a captive audience, he spent most of the night delivering a campaign-style stump speech peppered with references to everything he hates: President Joe Biden (“a sleepy son-of-a-bitch who destroyed our country”), Representative Ilhan Omar (“whatever the hell her name is, with her little turban”), Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (“one of the dumbest governors ever in our history”), and Haiti, Somalia, and other countries where people are not white (“shithole countries…filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime”).
At one point, Trump jokingly acknowledged that he’d wandered a good distance from the topic he’d planned to address, which was “how he plans to continue to bring down prices,” according to the Republican Party of Pennsylvania’s announcement. “I haven’t read practically anything off this stupid teleprompter,” Trump told the crowd, reassuring his concerned supporters that he has no trouble remembering how to do off-the-cuff racism in public.
Trump’s rally, in other words, was not the sort of thing that a typical federal judge would choose to attend. But Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer and Department of Justice fixer whom Trump promoted to the Third Circuit earlier this year, is not a typical federal judge. And when MS NOW spotted Bove in the audience on Tuesday and asked what he was doing there, Bove responded, “Just here as a citizen coming to watch the president speak.”
Republican members of Indiana’s state Senate are expected to take a vote as soon as tomorrow that could mark the conclusion of a months-long drive by the Trump administration, and many of Trump’s closest allies, to force state legislators to draw Democrats out of representation for Indiana in the U.S. House.
In case you missed it, we kicked offGolden Duke 2025 voting last week and the competition is heating up. Some of you have reached out with your complaints about the exclusion of ne’er-do-wells such as President Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) from this year’s awards. We hear you! They suck! They can re-earn their places in the Duke competition when they start sucking in a less demonic and more lighthearted way ❤️
If you haven’t had a chance to participate in selecting 2025’s most admirable vermin please follow this link and vote before time runs out! As you’ll see, we’ve added some new categories this year to meet our uniquely maniacal moment 🙃 Early voting shows that Trump’s $300 Million White House Ballroom might easily take the cake for Best Scandal but the competition to win a Meritorious Achievement in Grifting or Best Supporting Hatchet Man remains tight.
P.S. If you submitted the nomination we ended up publishing for Lindsey Halligan, Tom “Cashbag” Homan or Signalgate, please reach out! We don’t have your email address and want to send your complimentary TPM merch.
I’ve noted many times the central role of Supreme Court reform to any civic democratic future. If you’re a regular reader, you know my arguments. So I won’t recapitulate them here. I’ve also noted how very few Democratic officials seem at all ready for this and a huge amount of work is required to get them here. Luckily there’s time: The first chance to do anything like this is 2029. But there’s another, even more critical, underlying need. A lot of the Democratic public still sees the idea as disconcerting or extreme. And we shouldn’t run away from this perception. Because it is extreme. It is a remedy only justified and really necessitated by a basically unprecedented development in American history which is robbing the public of its right to self-government. (The question is whether there is any precedent is complicated. There are arguably two similar instances in American history. But we can return to that later.) The point is that there is a lot of work to do. Inherently resistant Democratic politicians certainly aren’t going to be brought along if a substantial number of their own voters, perhaps a majority of them, are spooked by the idea.
So this requires a substantial campaign of public education — activist/political groups dedicated specifically and focusedly to the issue, ones that are political activist in nature, ones that draw from the elite legal world. An entire language of explanation is required.
I’ve been surprised that the uproar over the killing of the two survivors of the Sept. 2 attack has not yielded a renewed look at a later attack that also left a survivor — under especially dire circumstances.
The official accounts of the Oct. 27 strike were muddled from the beginning, with conflicting initial reports of whether the survivor had been rescued. More than six weeks later, key questions remain unanswered:
Oct. 27: U.S. conducts three strikes against four different vessels, killing 14 people and leaving a sole survivor, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in a social media post the next day:
Regarding the survivor, USSOUTHCOM immediately initiated Search and Rescue (SAR) standard protocols; Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue.
The U.S. Coast Guard would later say that the strikes occurred on the afternoon of Oct. 27.
Oct. 28: Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that her government “was informed about the Monday strike and about the potential survivor” on Tuesday morning, CNN reported.
The Mexican Navy would later say that its forces officially began a search-and-rescue operation for the “alleged castaway” at 6:30 a.m. on Oct 28, in the area U.S. officials reported a survivor.
“In a statement on X, Mexico’s Navy said it received a request from the U.S. Coast Guard and then carried out a rescue operation about 400 miles southwest of Acapulco, adding that an aircraft and a vessel were being used to carry it out,” Reuters reported.
The reason for the delay between the strikes on the afternoon of Oct. 27 and the launch of the Mexican search-and-rescue operation has not been publicly explained.
Notably, the NYT reported that the survivor had been rescued: “A U.S. military official, discussing operations on the condition of anonymity, said the lone survivor was picked up in waters near the coasts of Mexico and Guatemala.”
However, President Sheinbaum’s public comments cast doubt on whether there was a survivor, CNN reported:
Sheinbaum said she instructed the foreign minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, to meet with the US ambassador to Mexico, Ron Johnson, “and we will give them the information with the Navy secretariat about this survivor, if it is the case that there was indeed a survivor.”
The U.S. Coast Guard would later say the Mexican Navy informed it on the afternoon of Oct. 28 that is had found no survivors.
Oct. 29: “Pentagon officials convened another session about boat strike survivors, a video conference involving dozens of American diplomats from across the Western Hemisphere,” the NYT would later report. No word of whether the fate of the lone survivor came up in the conference call two days after the attack in question.
Oct. 31: Mexico publicly announces that it has found no survivors from the Oct. 27 attacks.
After citing an anonymous U.S. military official earlier in the week as saying the survivor was rescued, the NYT reports that the Pentagon is offering a different account:
The Pentagon said that after the strikes on Monday, U.S. military officials “observed one narcoterrorist in the water clinging to some wreckage.” U.S. officials then alerted a Mexican military boat nearby of the survivor, the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday, and Mexican officials assumed responsibility for the rescue.
The Pentagon statement also mentioned that it alerted not just the Mexican military boat but a nearby Mexican military aircraft, according to the NYT report:
The Pentagon statement on Friday said the U.S. forces acted “in accordance with international protocols for a distressed person in the water” and “relayed the precise location and status of the person in the water” to a Mexican military aircraft that was operating nearby.
Nov. 1: Mexican Navy planned to end its active search for survivors of the Oct. 27 strikes.
“The survivor was spotted swimming in the ocean … was never located and is believed to have drowned,” ABC News would grimly describe it a few weeks later.
As you can see, the inconsistencies in the various reports are glaring: Was there a survivor? Was the survivor rescued? Why the delay between the purported sighting of the survivor by the U.S. military and its hand off of the responsibility for the search-and-rescue operation to Mexico?
In mid-October, the Pentagon had briefly detained two survivors of a different strike before quickly repatriating them to Ecuador and Colombia, respectively. The Pentagon’s obvious squeamishness about taking survivors into custody raises a host of additional questions about the fate of the lone survivor.
Pentagon Considered Sending Boat Strike Survivors to CECOT
The Pentagon considered sending the two survivors of the Sept. 2 U.S. strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, the NYT is now reporting: “The State Department lawyers were stunned, one official said, and rejected the idea.”
Nothing to See Here!
Less than two weeks after launching a bipartisan investigation into the Trump administration’s lawless strikes on the high seas, the GOP chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is shutting down the probe.
More Saber-Rattling
A pair of U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets flew over the Gulf of Venezuela on Tuesday, with conflicting reports on whether they entered Venezuelan airspace.
Nearly every day of the Trump II presidency provides another searing example of the white nationalism that fuels MAGA. The most recent is the Justice Department eliminating its “disparate impact” regulations: “The Justice Department on Tuesday moved to end long-standing civil rights policies that prohibit local governments and organizations that receive federal funding from maintaining policies that disproportionately harm people of color,” Politico reports.
Thread of the Day
1/ A few thoughts about @williambaude.bsky.social’s comment in yesterday’s NYT chat that, “It’s amazing how many of our problems today could be solved by a Congress that was willing and able to legislate in response to national problems.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/o…
FEMA: Conspiracy theorist election denier Gregg Phillips will lead the Office of Response and Recovery, Marisa Kabas reports.
USAID: Right-wing influencer Mike Benz, who rose to prominence last year by spreading fantastical claims about USAID, is now working at the agency, The Atlantic reports.
Spotted at Unhinged Trump Rally: Emil Bove
Appeals Court Judge Emil Bove was seen in the crowd at the wild Pennsylvania rally held last night by President Trump, where he said things like this:
Trump on 2028: "They say I'm not allowed to run. I don't know what the hell that's all about. He said, 'Four more years.' You see the new hat? We have four more years — 2028."
Trump: "Ilhan Omar, whatever the hell her name is. With her little turban. I love her. She comes in, does nothing but bitch … we ought to get her the hell out … she's here illegally."The crowd in Pennsylvania then starts chanting "send her back!"
Trump: "You can give up certain products. You could give up pencils. Because under the China policy, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need 1 or 2. They don't need that many. You always need steel. You don't need 37 dolls for your daughter. 2 or 3 is nice. So we're doing things right."
A federal judge enjoined the Trump administration’s federalization of the California National Guard Wednesday, writing that it has “sent California Guardsmen into other states, effectively creating a national police force made up of state troops.”
The Trump administration has made moves to officially kill off President Biden’s income-driven student loan repayment plan — meaning that some borrowers who have not made payments for years will have to figure out a plan for making payments again. And officials are trying to spin the decision as some sort of positive thing for participants in the plan, despite the fact that they are enrolled because they can’t afford their federal student loan costs.
A friend of mine ran an analogy by me which really resonated. Perhaps others have drawn the comparison.
In the late 18th century, what would later evolve into the British Raj was coalescing into full British domination of the Indian subcontinent — especially after two key battles in 1757 and 1764 waged not by Britain but a private company called the British East India Company. That made it possible for what were often British men of relatively modest origins to build almost unimaginably large fortunes. Life in India was a matter of extremes for British operatives of the East India Company, a joint stock company which owned what were in effect Britain’s Indian colonies. Countless young Brits went out to India and died in short order. But if they could avoid dying, in a relatively few years they could build these unimaginable fortunes. None of them wanted to stay. Virtually no Britons died of old age in India at the time. The whole point was to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible and get back to Great Britain while they were still alive. Then they would pour that money into an estate and land.
They were called “nabobs,” a corruption of “nawab,” a title in the Mughal Empire which originally referred to a provincial governor but evolved into something more like a hereditary lord as Mughal rule disintegrated.
As Republicans came before the Supreme Court Tuesday to get rid of one of the last regulations governing our wild west campaign finance system, the colloquies fell flat.
