Republican state officials and legislators in Louisiana argued to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday that the state has moved past racial discrimination in voting — and so should be allowed to suppress Black voting power with impunity.
Continue reading “Louisiana: Racism Doesn’t Exist Anymore, So Let Us Racially Gerrymander”Trump Loses Bid to Block Friday Sentencing
Donald Trump failed on Tuesday to persuade a New York appeals court to block his Friday sentencing in the Manhattan hush money case.
Continue reading “Trump Loses Bid to Block Friday Sentencing”Zuckerberg Achieves Trump Lap Monkey Badge And Other Platform News
You’ve likely seen that Mark Zuckerberg, newly re-branded as Donald Trump’s fluffy lap monkey, has announced that Facebook and Meta’s other properties are getting out of the content moderation business. They’ll move in the direction of “community notes,” semi-functional community moderation which Elon Musk pioneered at Twitter. What interested me much more was the Axios run-down of the news: “Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are of one mind. The most powerful global information platforms should be governed by free speech — and the people — not by the platforms themselves.”
Who are we kidding here?
I’ve always been wary of the whole concept of “misinformation” in the context of corporate platform moderation. Not against precisely, but highly skeptical that you can actually come to such open and shut definitions at scale. But it’s all basically an impossible skein to untangle because of the unavoidable scourge of the platform monopolies themselves. These are private companies, not any kind of actual public square. Let them do whatever they want. Don’t do them the favor of granting the premise that their advertising and data platform is a public good. And yet the freedom to spin up untrammeled monopolies makes the conceit half true. There’s simply no extracting a “free speech” from these engines since they’re algorithms all the way down.
But again, who are we kidding here?
Continue reading “Zuckerberg Achieves Trump Lap Monkey Badge And Other Platform News”New York Appeals Court Keeps Trump Sentencing In Place
The Appellate Division of the First Judicial Department in New York heard emergency arguments this afternoon on President-elect Donald Trump’s request to block his sentencing in the hush money case, which is scheduled for Friday before Judge Juan Merchan. The court denied Trump’s motion for a stay.
Catch up on Josh Kovensky’s coverage from the courthouse below:
Aileen Cannon Purports To Block Public Release Of Jack Smith Report
On dubious authority, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order Tuesday purporting to block the public release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s closing report by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Continue reading “Aileen Cannon Purports To Block Public Release Of Jack Smith Report”Trump Is Big Mad About Jack Smith’s Forthcoming Report
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Last Gasps
Over the next few days we will witness the final death spasms of the efforts to hold Donald Trump accountable to the rule of law. A convicted felon, who was also under other indictment, has never risen to the presidency before. We are deep into uncharted waters, and it’s unclear whether the final skirmishes over how the cases against Trump are disposed of matter much in the overall scheme of things. Most at stake seems to be whether the rule of law will retain some shred of dignity.
What we do know is that Trump is fighting fiercely to cow the last judges and the remaining prosecutors standing between him and being sworn in as president unencumbered by any legal restraint or stain.
A new battlefront opened yesterday in the special counsel cases while Trump’s effort to avoid sentencing later this week in the hush money case took on new urgency. We’ll take them in order.
Trump Tries To Block Special Counsel Report
Under the regulations for special counsel, they are to submit a final report to the attorney general, who may make the report public. It has been the practice of Attorney General Merrick Garland to make special counsel reports public.
We learned yesterday that Trump’s lawyers – themselves poised to take top DOJ positions in the new Trump administration – have been privately lobbying Garland to bury Special Counsel Jack Smith’s reports on the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago investigations.
We learned of this development when two of Trump’s co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago case filed an emergency motion asking U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to block the public release of any report pertaining to them. Let me pause and note that as to the Trump co-defendants there is a legitimate concern that the public release of further information about them could be prejudicial since their cases, still on appeal, were not extinguished by the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity. I am sure that is a consideration Garland will be weighing anyway.
Attached to the motion was a strident 12-page letter dated Jan. 6, 2025, from Trump’s attorneys to Garland demanding that he halt all efforts to prepare and release Smith’s report, and throwing all manner of arguments, legal and political, into the mix.
In response to the motion, Jack Smith confirmed in a new filing that he is “working to finalize a two-volume confidential report to the Attorney General explaining the Special Counsel’s prosecution decisions.” One volume pertains to the Mar-a-Lago, Smith told Cannon. The other volume, presumably, applies to the Jan. 6 case. Smith said he would not turn the Mar-a-Lago volume over to Garland before 1 p.m. today. Smith also said Garland has not decided how to handle the volume of the report related to Mar-a-Lago but regardless will not release it to the public before Friday, Jan. 10, 2025 at 10 a.m. ET.
Notably the letter to Garland from Trump’s counsel indicates they have been allowed to review drafts of the special counsel report, though they complained about the compressed time frame and onerous conditions of their review.
Again, this is uncharted territory. The Jan. 6 case against Trump has been dismissed. Cannon dismissed the Mar-a-Lago case against him and DOJ has dropped its appeal of that dismissal as to Trump. So, for example, it’s not clear whether Cannon has any jurisdiction to weigh in here. But it would not take much in the way of judicial delays to push all of this back a few days and leave it to the new Trump DOJ – helmed in part by his now-personal attorneys – to make it all go away.
Trump Tries To Stop Hush Money Sentencing
Judge Juan Merchan denied Monday Donald Trump’s last-ditch request to delay his sentencing set for Friday in the hush money case. Trump has already taken steps to get a state appeals court to intervene to overturn his convictions. Expect more emergency appeals today and later this week, including all the way to the Supreme Court, as Trump tries to head off sentencing.
Rudy G Held In Contempt Of Court
The only small measure of schadenfreude available on the Jan. 6 anniversary was Rudy Giuliani being held in contempt for flouting courts orders in the successful defamation case against him by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, an outgrowth of the 2020 election subversion effort. TPM’s Josh Kovensky was in court for two days of Giuliani absurdism. Give it a read.
Marking The Jan. 6 Anniversary
- Don Moynihan: “There was nothing inevitable about where we are today. In key moments key Republicans said, essentially, that Jan. 6 was not a big deal, or even a positive event. It is hard not to conclude that the people who occupy key institutions in newer democracies were simply less willing to take those democracies for granted. By contrast, American democracy seems to be of such little value to many of its leaders that they did nothing to defend it.”
- CNN: How Merrick Garland’s Justice Department ran out of time prosecuting Trump for January 6
- Roger Parloff: “Because of the unusual—almost unimaginable—posture of the investigation at this juncture, I will interweave into this recap of the Justice Department’s latest [Jan. 6 prosecution] figures some discussion about potential pardons.”
Great Read
ProPublica’s Joshua Kaplan: “Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was a ProPublica reporter.”
TPM On TV
TPM’s Hunter Walker was on last night with MSNBC’s Joy Reid discussing the still unsolved Capitol Hill pipe bomb case:
Anticipatory Obedience
The Federal Reserve’s top regulatory official, Michael Barr, resigned rather than waiting around to see if President Trump would try to remove him unlawfully: “I was worried that the risk of a dispute over the position would end up being a political distraction for the Federal Reserve and for me, and that that would end up detracting from our ability to serve our mission.”
Bannon Unfurls New Threats Against DOJ Officials
A sample of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s screed on his program yesterday targeting outgoing DC U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves:
Matthew Graves has to understand something. Matthew Graves, write this down. Or if Matthew Graves’ family or anybody that knows Matthew Graves, make sure his family knows this.
You’re going to prison for a very long time. You’re a totally evil person that has broken the law and destroyed lives, and the people whose lives you destroyed may not have the power to do anything about it, but we certainly do, and we are. You are a truly evil individual and you’re deranged.
Quote Of The Day
“Ten years ago if someone had told us the owner of one of the world’s biggest social-media companies would support a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections, including in Germany, who would have imagined that?”–French President Emmanuel Macron, addressing French ambassadors on Monday
Jimmy Carter To Lie In State At The Capitol
The remains of the late president arrive today in Washington for three days of public memorials.
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From TPM Reader JB …
Trump has promised to do a bunch of things on day 1. Why aren’t Democrats taking the worst of them and raising the cost of doing them? It is political malpractice. The easiest would be to say that Trump is going to pardon the cop killers of January 6. No deep thinking, no multi clause sentences, no saying there was or wasn’t an insurrection, just that he is going to pardon the violent cop killers of January 6. Over and over. Let him split hairs. He can deny it. Then direct the press to the officers themselves. That mob killed Capitol Hill police. Tell the press to go talk to the Capitol Hill police who were there on January 6. Then say he is anti-police. He is with the criminals. Over and over.
Next: Tulsi Gabbard loves Syrian dictators who gas their own people. This is who is going to keep us safe?
We don’t have to win everything, we just need to push back where he is soft. He is flooding the zone. We can do the same. Cop killers and dictators who gas people…those are his kind of people.
The group is one big eye roll.
Dems Shift Into Role As Opposition Party With Reminders That They’re The Adults In The Room
With little to live for in the days since Republicans took back control of the House, Senate, and White House, Democrats have officially taken up their mantle as the opposition party. That work has, in recent days, at times taken the form of repeated jabs at their colleagues across the aisle, reminding viewers at home that there’s one party that does peaceful transfers of power.
Continue reading “Dems Shift Into Role As Opposition Party With Reminders That They’re The Adults In The Room”Judge Holds Rudy Giuliani In Contempt Of Court
NEW YORK—Four years on from January 6, Rudy Giuliani has the distinction of being one of a handful of coup plotters to face a measure of accountability. In the latest example, a Manhattan federal judge held Giuliani in contempt of court on Monday after he spent months ignoring court orders in cases brought by two Georgia 2020 election workers he was found liable of defaming.
Continue reading “Judge Holds Rudy Giuliani In Contempt Of Court”Oligarchia, Here We Come
Through the spiked Washington Post endorsement editorial to the recent spiked editorial cartoon, it’s been difficult to get a precise read on Jeff Bezos’s cozying up to Donald Trump. As I wrote back in late October, there are very rational reasons for Bezos to want to avoid being on Trump’s shit list. Above all else, Trump isn’t nice. Amazon is a phantasmagoria of anti-trust problems. Trump wouldn’t need to break a lot of norms to sic the Justice Department on it. Amazon is also a major, major federal contractor. Same applies there. There’s no right to government contracts. Then there’s something that doesn’t get discussed much. SpaceX now has a dominant hold on satellite deployment and owns and controls like half the operating satellites in near-Earth orbit. But Bezos’s BlueOrigin isn’t quite an also ran. It still has a shot at being a competitor to SpaceX and Bezos reportedly now focuses most of his energy there. He at least needs Trump’s friendship to have a shot at that.
In that context came news last night that Amazon has agreed to underwrite and license a documentary about the life of past and future First Lady Melania Trump.
Continue reading “Oligarchia, Here We Come”