Lawyers representing Dominion Voting Systems addressed a scathing letter on Wednesday night to former Trump election steal lawyer Sidney Powell, demanding that she publicly retract a series of false statements that the election technology supplier has said she wittingly made about its voting machines.
The baseless claims have been weaponized in conspiracy theories pushed by President Donald Trump and his allies about voter fraud and have invited threats of violence on Dominion employees.
After indulging in a stream of baseless voter fraud allegations, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) candidly expressed his concern that attempts to get new voters involved in the Georgia runoff will “affect and change the outcome.”
I’ve been thinking in recent days about taking a pledge. I hope others do too. It’s sprawling enough in its scope that I haven’t known quite how to whittle or distill it down for the sake of pledging it or sharing it with others. But I will take this post as an opportunity to explain it both to myself and to you. Because I think it’s quite important.
Think of it as a rough draft.
Republicans like Marco Rubio are now claiming to be aghast, hurt and more than anything else unwilling to believe in Democratic promises of rebuilding national unity because Joe Biden’s campaign manager and incoming Deputy Chief of Staff called congressional Republicans “fuckers” in an interview. Days ago we heard that Biden’s forceful denunciation of Republican efforts to overturn the result of the election was “burning bridges” to Trump supporters. We’ve seen this pattern before: bad faith taking of umbrage to justify new forms of bad behavior and predation.
It’s not only that. The production of and the stoking of grievances is central to contemporary conservatism and its apotheosis, Trumpism. But it is mostly the weaponization of bad faith.
In a last-ditch effort to prove his loyalty to President Trump in the waning weeks of the mercurial President’s term, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Tuesday night thrust himself onto the pile of conservatives who are clutching their pearls after Jen O’Malley Dillon, who will serve as President-elect Joe Biden’s White House deputy chief of staff, slammed Republicans using — gasp! — a swear. Continue reading “Rubio Gets Roasted For Crying Foul Over Biden Aide’s GOP ‘F*ckers’ Remark”
A federal grand jury returned an indictment Wednesday against six men previously charged with plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D).
Continue reading “MI Kidnapping Plotters Hit With Federal Grand Jury Indictment”
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Georgia does not have to restore nearly 200,000 voters to the rolls for the runoff, though he admitted that there may be “discrepancies” in records used to show that those voters had moved out of the state.
Continue reading “Judge Rules Against Forcing Georgia To Restore 200K Voters Before Runoff”
Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt is in quarantine after testing positive for coronavirus on Wednesday.
A department spokesman, Nicholas Goodwin, said in a statement to the Washington Post that the secretary was asymptomatic after testing positive for coronavirus ahead of a Cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
The secretary did not attend the meeting after receiving news of his diagnosis, but had previously spent the past two days meeting with political appointees.
Goodwin told the Post that the secretary is “following all CDC guidelines and consulting with medical professionals as appropriate,” adding that the Interior Department would follow CDC guidelines, including identifying close contacts and cleaning work spaces amid the positive test result.
Bernhardt joins a growing list of Trump officials at the Interior Department and elsewhere who have tested positive for coronavirus in recent weeks. While most Interior employees assigned to the department’s headquarters are working remotely, a handful continue to come into the office regularly, according to the Post.
The news of Bernhardt’s diagnosis comes after President Donald Trump on Sunday said he would not rush to get the COVID-19 vaccine and delay its distribution to members of his administration after after the New York Times and Bloomberg reported that he and senior White House officials would be among the first to get the new vaccine as distribution began earlier this week.
The Post reported that following Bernhardt’s diagnosis, employees at Interior were also told that a large holiday party scheduled for Thursday had been cancelled.
The party’s cancellation follows news that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had skipped out on his own remarks at a widely criticized holiday party with more than 900 invitees on Tuesday.
Although it was unclear at the time why Pompeo found a substitute to make a speech at the event which ultimately netted low attendance, it was later revealed that Pompeo was in quarantine after exposure to the virus.
WOW, 20 years. TWENTY! A very, very Happy 20th (TWENTIETH!) anniversary to Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo. A tremendous accomplishment. I’m not an Internet historian by any means, but I just did some quick research and I’m pretty sure that www.talkingpointsmemo.com is literally the only website from the year 2000 that still exists.
Wait, hang on a second… no way… eBaumsWorld still exists????
[goes down 4 hour eBaumsWorld rabbit hole]
Hi. Hello. Where am I? Ah yes, TPM. Where to even begin talking about TPM? It’s impossible to put my feelings into words. And when I hit writer’s block, I like to use a little trick that I call: talk about myself. So then…
My name is Ben Craw and I started at TPM as an intern in early 2006. I had graduated college about a year earlier and was spending my days working a completely insane job on the trading floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange, which I had so little interest in or aptitude for (as much as I genuinely cherished getting comically screamed at by my cokehead broker boss) that I decided I should apply for an internship on the side, maybe even one that would utilize my up-to-that-point-complete-waste-of-money journalism degree.
Here I gotta give a quick shoutout to my brother-in-law Erik Quarfordt. He’s a few years older and way wiser than me and when I graduated college and realized I didn’t actually know anything about the world after four years of drinking and playing video games I asked him for recommendations for things to read to feel smart and informed. He’s the one who told me to check out a website called talkingpointsmemo.com. This was sometime during the infamous social security privatization “bamboozlepalooza” of 2005. I got hooked on Josh’s writing as soon as I started reading it. And then some months later it was Erik again who sent me an email about an internship posting that Josh had put up on the site. Good lookin’ out, Nasty E!
Now, I had forgotten about this until digging through some old emails (clearly repressed the memory) but the first time I was supposed to meet Josh for an interview at the Starbucks on 24th and 6th Ave, he completely blew me off. I waited for a goddamned hour and a half and the guy just no-showed. Unbelievable. He claimed in a subsequent email that it was the “first day in a new office” and that he “didn’t have his regular calendar with him,” but I knew it was bullshit. No sweat though, I’m not the type who carries grudges. (I would have my sweet revenge on Josh several years later.)
Long story short, thanks most likely to my unrelenting (and frankly embarrassing, looking back at the email chain) pestering, Josh eventually agreed to take me on as an (cough *unpaid*) intern in February of 2006. I started out as a researcher under the redoubtable Paul Kiel, the original and for my money greatest muckraker in TPM history. Observing Paul was the first time I truly understood what a real journalist is. It was honestly a thrill and a marvel to watch him work, and I quickly realized holy shit there is no way I could ever do that. This realization was only confirmed and strengthened by watching other terrifying talents like Justin Rood, Laura McGann, and Spencer Ackerman.
Aside from being an incredibly prolific reporter and a deft (and funny!) writer, Paul was also very supportive and generous, and I still remember the first time he let me write my very own entry (with a byline and everything) laying out TPM Muckraker’s exhaustive catalogue of characters in the sprawling Jack Abramoff scandal. (What’s up Bob Ney!) Ah, those were the salad days.
As the year progressed I moved from a Muckraker researcher to a TPM Election Central blogger covering the 2006 midterms. And now here’s a question for the real TPM heads: who remembers Election Central’s “Midterm Roundup” column that ran from the summer of 2006 up until the November elections? [no one raises hand] Really? No one? [complete silence] Well, I wrote that and believe me, it was fucking great. Is there any record of it on the internet? Well, no. But I’m telling you, it was like, gold. Every word. And if you still don’t believe me, there is actual proof of its existence because (and I’ll never forget this) in October 2006 David Kurtz (who at the time I believe was still operating as the shadowy and mysterious TPM Reader DK) gave me the highly coveted shoutout from the MAIN blog:
For TPM readers who enjoy an occasional dose of snark, TPM’s Election Central offers “Midterm Roundup,” a daily early morning jolt of political caffeine. It’s as frothy as steamed milk, as referential as Dennis Miller, and speaks of itself in the third person as often as a pro athlete.
(Listen, say what you want about Dennis Miller, the man’s reference game is on fleek like the eyebrows of Elin Ulfsdotter Snakenborg, Marchioness of Northampton.)
It was around the time that I was writing the “Midterm Roundup” — for free, outside of my day job, every night, usually between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. so that it would cover fresh news when it published in the morning — that I realized I might’ve found something I enjoyed doing. And it felt like a genuine miracle that Josh and the rest of his small but brilliant staff (Kate Cambor! Greg Sargent!) actually published/tolerated my work (which, to be fair, I was doing for free).
I guess I wasn’t much of a blogger though, because in early 2007 when Josh offered me a real-deal, full-time, paying(!) job, it wasn’t as a writer, but as a video producer … which is something I had … [quickly scans ben-craw-resume-2007.doc] … exactly zero experience doing! But it was 2007, and as we all remember from that specific era … it was time to pivot to video.
I’m still not exactly sure what made Josh think I was the right person to hire for this new video venture idea he had, but his timing couldn’t have been better because by then I had been fired from my job at the Mercantile Exchange (boss literally yelled “You’re fired, get the fuck out of my sight” after I made some small clerical error) and, if memory serves, I was in the process of applying for a job at a catering company. I was so desperate that — and this isn’t a joke — when Josh informed me of the salary he was offering, I said something to the effect of “Amazing! I would do it for even less than that!” (Narrator voice: It was not amazing.) They, uh, didn’t teach salary negotiation in the journalism program I attended.
Transitioning from writing to video production was awkward at first. (How to hold camera? How to get recorded video footage from camera to computer? What to do with video footage once on computer?) But Josh was at least smart enough to hire a part-time freelancer who did know video production to teach me the ropes, and I fudged my way through producing, directing (I guess?), and editing the original episodes of TPM’s daily “vlog,” TPMtv.
Those early TPMtv episodes were great, since they mostly just consisted of Josh speaking eloquently and insightfully to the camera for a few minutes, but they were not exactly bravura displays of production or editing prowess. Some of you old heads may recall those episodes that had Josh in front of a green screen. No no, no digital background superimposed on that green screen in post, just … Josh standing and talking in front of a plain green screen. “Attention viewers, we are a professional video production department. Look, we have a green screen.” (For the record, I did eventually learn how to edit in a green screen background, which we pretty much never utilized.)
If you want to get a good sense of just what kind of ship I was running as TPMtv’s producer and director, here is a highlight reel of some of our finest work:
But what we lacked in Hollywood sheen we made up for in goddamn badass hardcore punk rock DIY determination, goddamnit. We weren’t gonna let those asshole corporate scumbags have their way, whoever they were and whatever their way might’ve been. And in time we gradually expanded what we were capable of. I remember a big turning point was when we added multiple flatscreen TVs to the walls of TPM’s tiny, one-room Flower District office so that we could monitor (and eventually pull clips from) the various cable news stations. I just unearthed an old email from 2007 in which Josh implored my colleague Andrew Golis and I to “make sure we know what we’re doing before we try to mount these flatscreens” lest we “damage the wall” or “injure or kill someone.” (To my knowledge, no TPM employee ever perished under a flatscreen TV that had fallen from a wall, at least not during my tenure.)
One big plus, at least, of being a very small outfit was that we were nimble enough to take the show on the road — first to events like YearlyKos/Netroots Nation and then to cover the 2008 presidential race. I often reflect back in equal amounts fondness and horror at the two weeks I spent with David Kurtz, first in Denver and then in St. Paul, for the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. The fondness comes from the quality time spent with David (one of the most affable and agreeable people I could ever imagine spending two weeks on the road with) … the horror from basically everything else: the logistics, the stress, being the sole person responsible for producing/editing TPM’s 2008 convention coverage without, y’know, breaking or losing any of the very expensive equipment I still didn’t totally know how to operate. I remember a lot of running, a decent amount of trespassing, and one night at the RNC where if memory serves we were only given one seat in the arena to share between the two of us (I don’t remember who sat on whose lap).
I’m pretty sure the downright nightmarish video quality here is due to the fact that we were attempting to pull off some sort of proto live-streaming setup, which most assuredly did not work out as planned, but here we are standing above and behind the stage (for some reason?) as Michelle Obama completes her speech on night one of the DNC:
Now for a quick anecdote — remember earlier when I mentioned that I got revenge on Josh for blowing off my initial internship interview? Well that revenge would come during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. First off, here is the number one thing to know when attending a national presidential nominating convention: do not lose your media credential. That is, do NOT lose it. Lost or stolen media credentials, it is drilled into you ad infinitum, will *NOT* be replaced. Media credentials are like sacred mystical gemstones — they are to be clutched to your chest at all times and guarded with your fucking life. Now, if you happen to be one of only two people that a small online media company has invested a significant portion of its operating budget into sending to such a convention — and especially if you’re the only person that can shoot and edit the videos that are the entire reason for your presence at said convention — well then, that media credential somehow becomes even more valuable. You lose it, and not just your own existence at the convention but your company’s entire operation … is toast!
Well, in the middle of day two or three of the 2008 DNC, amidst a packed schedule of events and interviews we were supposed to shoot, I had to take a doodoo.
So I went into a public restroom, clutching my media credential as I had been rigorously trained to do. And when I came out of the restroom … I was no longer clutching my media credential. Now look, is it possible that I took my media credential out of my pocket at some point to peruse the fine print on the back of it as the only pre-iPhone reading material on hand to help induce my bowels? To be honest, I really don’t recall! But the bottom line is that when I reunited with DK post-restroom, my media credential was gone. We probably blew a solid two hours frantically retracing our steps from the entire morning. But I knew full well in my heart (meaning my bowels) what I had done. At that point David and I had exactly two options: 1. pack our bags and fly home, or 2. ask our boss, the guy who had sent us there at no inconsiderable expense — Josh Marshall — to cash in a favor of truly incalculable proportions in order to secure for us an item that theretofore was not believed to exist: a replacement media credential.
Well, we chose option two. And when I received my replacement media credential, I was struck by two main thoughts: “Holy shit, I guess my boss has some serious fucking juice” and, “My God, I can never ask that man for another thing as long as I live.” So, thanks Josh! And also, sorry Josh!
It was around the 2008 presidential election that I also started producing a daily video series called “The Day in 100 Seconds.” By then we had been doing a lot of recording and posting of news clips off the multiple flatscreen TVs that were now very safely and securely affixed to our office wall. One day Josh said, “Why don’t we try doing like a recap of the day’s news using only TV footage? Keep it simple, just the 10 or so most newsworthy clips.” They started out simple enough like he asked, but I got kind of carried away the more I did them and before long our Day in 100 Seconds videos were turning out like this:
It felt a little bit like “Mystery Science Theater 3000” — I was trapped on the prisoner spacecraft Satellite of Love, forced to watch nothing but cable news all day, and this was my sole means of entertaining myself to keep from descending into full madness.
In what was probably some kind of accounting error, TPMtv was nominated in the “Best News or Politics Web Series” category at the First Annual “Streamy” Awards in 2009 (if you’re not familiar with the Streamys — can’t imagine you’re alone — they’re like the Webbys but only for web video). Josh was generous enough to fly me out to Los Angeles to attend the award show, a potential blunder on his part because unbeknownst to him, had TPMtv won the award, I had memorized and was fully planning to deliver verbatim Dirk Diggler’s adult film awards acceptance speech from Boogie Nights. (Trust me, it totally would’ve worked — Dirk never explicitly mentions pornography and it’s actually a very stirring and inspiring speech. I had even practiced the karate kick and the bows he does at the end.)
In an absolute travesty and miscarriage, TPMtv was robbed of the award, losing out to a series called “Alive in Baghdad,” which I’ve never dignified with a viewing myself but which certainly doesn’t sound as serious or as journalistically vital as a bunch of clips of cable news idiots yelling dumb shit at each other. (I’ve never been nominated for a Streamy since, proving the entire enterprise is a sham, most likely a multi-level marketing scheme. If you want a real award show check out the Golden Dukes.)
At some point, Josh and I decided that the Day in 100 Seconds was consuming a little too much of my time and energy (it’s possible he took issue with my habit of screaming and throwing the nearest office supply at any colleague that attempted to get my attention between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.).
And through a bit of kismet that is to this day very hilarious to me, my final edit of The Day in 100 Seconds happened to fall on August 28, 2009, the same day as the public paying of respects for the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Of course, our viewers didn’t know at the time what I knew as I edited this one (definitely not through tears). Here it is, a fitting farewell to a great American institution (meaning The Day in 100 Seconds, not Kennedy):
I remained at TPM for a few months after that before deciding in January of 2010 that it was time to move on. I don’t remember exactly why the end came when it did, but the time felt right. And Josh probably felt like he needed someone who actually knew how to properly work a video camera, which I certainly did not begrudge him.
Looking back on my career some 15 years into it, if there’s one thing that I always think of that kind of molded me (and/or mutated me) into the video editor I am today, it’s making those Day in 100 Seconds videos. It was an absurd, Sisyphean daily task, but for some reason I took a weirdly calming zen pleasure in attempting to craft something out of pure excrement. And that’s the approach to making videos that I’ve taken ever since, and that I think shines through in most of what I would consider my best work.
So I’m forever grateful to Josh and TPM, first for giving me a great website to read in order to feel smart and informed, then for giving me an internship, then for giving me a job, and then for giving me the freedom to learn and experiment and have so much fun that it became a career.
I don’t know anyone else’s story as well as I know my own, but I get the sense that there are a lot like mine among the long list of TPM alums, which is one of the many things that makes TPM so special and unique. I’ve written like three times the word count that was suggested to me for this essay (very sorry), and there are so many more stories and awesome people I haven’t even mentioned. And of course, there are many more essays that can and have and will be written about TPM’s rare combination of not just journalistic but commercial/business innovation that has empowered it to endure, impossibly, in this current media environment … which I will leave for other people to write while I go check back in on eBaumsWorld.
I’m really proud and grateful to say that I played some small role in TPM’s first 20 years, and I wish Josh and the whole company a thriving and prosperous 20 years to come. And then also more good years after that.
Oh, one last thing I should thank Josh for: I was in between apartment leases for about two weeks in the summer of 2007 and Josh let me, um, live at the TPM office. Y’know, just until I could move into my new apartment. I mean, whatever, the place had a shower. And a pretty comfortable couch to sleep on. So. Not sure if that’s the kind of thing I should be admitting on the internet but anyway, yeah. Thank you Josh!
The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that pharmacists can draw additional doses from vials of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, an effort that would expand the country’s supply of the first vaccine to win its authorization by millions of doses.
“At this time, given the public health emergency, FDA is advising that it is acceptable to use every full dose obtainable — the sixth, or possibly even a seventh — from each vial, pending resolution of the issue,” an agency spokesman said in a statement, urging pharmacists to draw beyond each vial’s expected five doses as it handles the matter with Pfizer.
Politico, the first to report the development, pointed out that if the additional supply in each vial is consistent, the amount of remaining vaccine could be up to 40 percent greater.
But according to Sharon Castillo, a Pfizer spokeswoman, the amount of vaccine remaining in each vial “can vary,” and depends on the type of needles and syringes used.
“At this time, we cannot provide a recommendation on the use of the remaining amount of vaccine from each vial,” Castillo said in a statement to Politico. “Vaccinators need to consult their institution’s policies for the use of multidose vials.”
The FDA and Pfizer further warned that any leftover vaccine from different vials that is smaller than a full dose should not be mixed together at risk of cross-contamination.
The push to use every drop in each coveted vaccine vial, comes as the Trump administration scrambles to negotiate with Pfizer to sell the government tens of millions of additional doses so that it can increase vaccine rollout this spring after the drug company said the United States would likely have to wait until summer.
The New York Times reported last week that the Trump administration had dropped the ball by passing on an offer from Pfizer to purchase millions more doses of its vaccine earlier this year.
Months after rejecting that offer, which was reissued as recently as October according to the Washington Post, the nation has secured only enough doses of two coronavirus vaccines to vaccinate 150 million people against COVID-19 by the end of June.
That includes a vaccine from Moderna which is expected to receive authorization from FDA in the coming days.
Federal officials on Wednesday continue to insist that they have secured enough doses to meet their targets, in spite of criticism.
Operation Warp Speed’s chief science adviser Moncef Slaoui defended the administration’s decision to turn down Pfizer’s earlier offer to ensure coverage for more Americans, saying, “you wouldn’t buy something before you knew it works if you had six opportunities to have one provider provide you with what you needed.”
Vice President Mike Pence has tentative plans to skip town after overseeing the reaffirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory by Congress in January, Politico reported early Thursday.
As vice president, Pence is expected to partake in a joint session of Congress in early January that formalizes Biden’s victory after the Electoral College officially elected him on Monday. But the typically routine American democratic tradition is likely to elicit the fury of some of President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters amid a barrage of ongoing falsehoods that the election was stolen from him.
Three U.S. officials familiar with the planning told Politico that the vice president was considering a weeklong trip overseas that departed on Jan. 6, the same day that he expected to appear at the joint congressional session.
News of the well-timed trip comes after a handful of House Republicans signaled a desire to object to the results, but would need a senator to sign on to do so.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) privately asked his caucus not to do that, saying it would be a “terrible vote” for the Senate to have to take, two sources familiar with the meeting told the Associated Press.
Politico said that a U.S. government document showed an itinerary for trips that included Bahrain, Israel and Poland, with the potential for even more stops to be added to that schedule. According to the publication, a team of Pence aides and other U.S. officials made departures earlier this week to prepare for Pence’s anticipated trip which would be his first journey abroad since visiting Rome and Jerusalem before the coronavirus pandemic gained footing in the United States last January.
The trip is part of an effort to reinforce a glossy image of the Trump administration brokering peace in the Middle East by helping to establish diplomatic agreements between Israel and some Arab countries in the region.
But the timing of the visit appears to be more calculated — helping Pence to establish distance from Trump amid his election loss just hours after Congress affirms Biden’s win.
“I suspect the timing is anything but coincidental,” one Pence ally told Politico of the vice president’s tentative travel plans.
A senior administration official rebuffed any suggestion that the trip was strategic, saying Pence’s travels haven’t been confirmed and that its timing was proposed for early January because it was his first availability after the holidays and his other obligations.
