Republicans are pushing to eliminate Direct File, a Biden administration program that offers a way for some Americans to file their taxes without paying for preparation services. To Wyden, the effort to eliminate the program is an attempt to “intentionally sabotage basic public services.”
“To me, paying your taxes ought to be free and easy — and the biggest benefit of direct file is it’s free,” Wyden, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, told TPM.
Of the many problems likely to be caused by the GOP’s extremely narrow margins in the House next year, the debt ceiling, for now, seems to be the one that has most captured Trump’s attention. Truth Social reveals him to be very angry about it all — despite the fact that the recent history of debt-limit standoffs is a creation of his own party.
Going back more than a decade now, Republicans have regularly used the debt ceiling as hostage-taking exercise, risking national default and credit downgrades in a performative effort to look like budget hawks, or what they imagine budget hawks would look like. Because Republicans will start next year in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, there are no hostages to take except themselves. Couple that with their initial 217-215 margin in the House — barely a vote to spare — and there’s plenty of opportunity for inflicting Republican-on-Republican pain.
Whether or not the debt ceiling ultimately gets raised is entirely within Republicans’ control, yet the potential for a fight still looms — a realization that may well be the source of Trump’s recent ire that a debt ceiling reckoning will come due in the first half of 2025.
Some backstory to this latest confrontation:
Congress voted in 2023 to suspend the debt ceiling until 2025 — when there would be a new Congress and, perhaps, a new president. The deal had the support of then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, who was coming off of a grueling speakership battle.
Unfortunately for Republicans, the president come 2025 turns out to be one of their own. The suspension technically expires on Jan. 1, but the Treasury Department will be able to keep the government running for a few more months through the now familiar “extraordinary measures.”
The drama Republicans perpetually stir up around raising the debt ceiling apparently began to loom large for Trump earlier this month: After Elon Musk blew up the House’s spending bill, Trump demanded the House work into its next version some kind of debt ceiling suspension. That bill didn’t pass, leaving Trump railing against Republicans who have built opposing debt ceiling increases into their personal brand, like Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX).
This all leaves Trump trying to whip votes through Truth Social by attacking everyone involved, including departed House Speaker McCarthy. “The extension of the Debt Ceiling by a previous Speaker of the House, a good man and a friend of mine, from this past September of the Biden Administration, to June of the Trump Administration, will go down as one of the dumbest political decisions made in years,” he complained on Sunday.
Trump seems to think his only hope is not members of his own party but House Democrats, who earlier this month were content to let the CR comedy play out without lending a hand, and who will be especially unwilling to pass any debt ceiling solution that also includes toxic elements of Trump’s agenda. (There’s already talk of trying to woo debt-ceiling hostage-takers with such prizes as cuts to mandatory spending, a category that includes such things as food stamps, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.)
“I call it ‘1929’ because the Democrats don’t care what our Country may be forced into,” he posted, seemingly hoping the prospect that his own party might force a default — rendered through a questionable historical analogy — might coax Democrats on board.
It’s time to contemplate 2024’s biggest freaks, as we gather around one last time before the new year to celebrate those who sucked the most shamelessly, who grifted the most elegantly, who were the most sophisticated in their betrayal of public trust.
As is tradition, the losers are the winners.
There were a handful of repeat offenders in some categories this winter, but for the most part the winners you selected in each category were either newcomers who saw their political star ascend during 2024’s election cycle — or under-the-radar old faithfuls who let their freak flags fly in entirely new and creative ways this year.
The hosts of The Josh Marshall Podcast, TPM’s Josh Marshall and Kate Riga, announced the winners of this year’s Golden Dukes live on the podcast. Watch as the envelopes are unsealed and winners unveiled or peruse the results of our annual commemoration of the year’s most radiant rats below:
Best Scandal – General Interest
Winner – John Roberts & the conservative justices [51.6% of the vote]
2nd place – Elon Musk [15%]
3rd place [tie] – Donald Trump [14.2%]
3rd place [tie] – Bob “Gold Bars” Menendez [14.2%]
5th place – The billionaire owners of the WashingtonPost & the LA Times [5%]
The Takes [edited for clarity]
Josh: “I have to say, they earned it. I think I agree with the Academy on this one.”
Kate: “If you want to take the more traditional scandal lens to this choice, I think the voters might have been thinking particularly of the Alito flag scandal, the Clarence Thomas billionaire stuff. Obviously, [the Court is] scandalous, kind of writ large, in terms of being fairly illegitimate. But you know, in terms of active, old-school scandal … they’ve been dipping their toes in that as well.
Best Scandal — Sex & Generalized Carnality
Winner – Matt Gaetz [39.2% of the vote]
2nd place – Mark Robinson’s Black Nazi Pornhub account [28.3%]
3rd place – The Ziegler Moms for Liberty swingin’threesome [26.1%]
4th place – RFK Jr.’s Many, Many Affairs [6.4%]
The Takes [edited for clarity]
Josh: “Matt Gaetz. Interesting, interesting. I have to say my favorite was the Ziegler’s. That to me is open and shut and I do feel like if we were closer to that scandal, they would have really been in contention here.”
Kate: “Yeah, my winner, I think, would have probably been Mark Robinson … but the people have spoken, it’s Matt Gaetz … My favorite, quote unquote, favorite chapter of the Matt Gaetz thing was when, I think it was Markwayne Mullen was on TV, and he was talking about how Gaetz would just show off nudes on the floor. And everyone would be like, ‘Great, Matt.’ Like, what are you expecting? What do you want? It is really funny to me, this idea that he’s scampering around like a puppy, being like, ‘guys, guys, look.’ And everyone’s like, ‘Cool. Congrats. Get away from me.’”
Best Scandal — Local Venue
Winner – Kristi Noem, Dog Killer [39.1% of the vote]
2nd place – Ryan Walters [29.8%]
3rd place – Eric Adams [27.2%]
4th place – Anthony D’Esposito [4%]
The Takes [edited for clarity]
Josh: “I’m vindicated because, despite the recency issue, it’s so strong that she won. Right? It’s just stand-out. It’s stand-out.
Kate: “Kristi Noem I think deserves it for outing herself. The only reason we know this happened is because she wrote about it in her book. My personal favorite part of this passage where she murdered all these animals on the same day is that there was a team of construction workers nearby who could see and were apparently looking over with horrified looks on their faces while she was doing that, which I kind of enjoy because the whole framing of this anecdote is supposed to be: I’m South Dakota tough. I don’t fuck around. I take care of what needs to be taken care of. And then you’ve got these hard, rough and tumble South Dakota construction dudes who are like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’”
Meritorious Achievement in the Crazy
Winner – RFK Jr., killer of various wildlife [47.5% of the vote]
2nd place – Rudy Giuliani [32.9%]
3rd place – Nancy Mace’s anti-trans crusade [11%]
4th place – Russell Vought [8.6%]
The Takes [edited for clarity]
Kate: “He had the bear, he had the whale, he had the brain worm. But the bear was really special because … every detail he adds in the story is increasingly bizarre. He starts out, ‘We found the bear. I wanted to cook it up. That’s just kind of the hick in me.’ And it’s like, who are you fooling? You are a Kennedy. And then he says, ‘You know, but we had to go to Peter Luger’s. So I had to drop off the bear because I was going to the airport from Peter Lugar’s.’ What schedule is this? Why is this your evening?”
‘I’m Going To Trump’s Cabinet And I’m Bringing …’
Winner – Pete Hegseth [39.1% of the vote]
2nd place – RFK Jr. [29.2%]
3rd place – Tulsi Gabbard [24.9%]
4th place – Linda McMahon [6.8%]
The Takes [edited for clarity]
Josh: “RFK Jr. could get any of these. So I guess that makes sense.”
Kate: “It’s objectively really funny that he’s going around Congress and they’re asking him about his drinking habits. We haven’t seen this since Brett Kavanaugh was before the Senate Judiciary Committee and he did his whole: ‘Yeah, I like beer. So what? I have a beer every now and then. Yeah, I black out sometimes. What’s the problem?’ You know, it’s nice to have that in the discourse again.”
Best Scandal — World-Wide Wingnutery
Winner – Tucker Carlson [31.7% of the vote]
2nd place – Yoon Suk Yeol [27%]
3rd place – Javier Milei [16.1%]
4th place – Jair Bolsonaro [13.5%]
5th place – Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis [11.7%]
The Takes [edited for clarity]
Josh: “I guess I was wrong calling him a dark horse.”
Kate: “The heel turn from being fired by Fox News … that we have not seen a true explanation for … to the kind of pathetic Twitter Space interviews with Catturd. I’ll never forget … And then the additional heel turn where he’s become kind of a Russian stooge and goes to grocery stores in Moscow. And then try[ing] to do symbiosis with [Putin] on the right-wing talking points … It’s been an interesting couple of years for our boy Tucker.
I wanted to flag this article to you. It’s a fascinating look at right-wing South Korean YouTubers and President Yoon’s recent attempt to impose martial law in the country, which ended with Yoon being impeached and removed from power. It matches with bits and pieces of what I’ve been able to pick up in the English language press in South Korea as well as from various commentators who write in English on social media.
One big takeaway is that South Korea is similarly awash in right-wing and left-wing YouTubers who have similarly either destabilized trust in traditional media or taken advantage of that lack of trust, depending on whether you’re on Team Chicken or Team Egg. The trajectory there seems more recent. A lot of it is over just the last two or three years, while in the U.S. these trends date back significantly further. But the most interesting detail is that this world seems to be a big part of the answer to a question that still looms over the whole attempted coup, which is: “what was President Yoon thinking?”
This isn’t the Cold War where you could either be fearing a communist takeover or exploit those fears as a justification for a coup. While South Korea’s democratic era only goes back to the late 1980s, it’s deeply entrenched. And while there was a protracted political crisis of sorts in the country, it really wasn’t one that anyone imagined leading to a replay of things that happened in the country in the 1960s of 1970s. And this isn’t some statement of naiveté: how the whole thing played out vindicates this perspective. The country’s reaction to the attempt can best be described as a widespread “What the fuck?” Like not even, “this won’t stand!” or “we’ll defend our democracy!”, though those were there too. The immediate reaction to Yoon’s move was as much bafflement as fear or anger. The whole thing was so crazy and out of left field that people struggled to understand what Yoon had even been thinking. That’s why the attempted coup played out as it did and why Yoon is currently out of power and looking at likely treason charges.
Many of you have have enjoyed this quiet interregnum between Christmas and the New Year to unplug from the news and focus on family and friends. I did, too, but it has felt like an uncanny quiet, a pause after the GOP’s self-own chaos over the last-minute passage of a CR to fund the government and before the grueling pace of Trump II destruction begins in earnest.
Morning Memo will be around most of this week (except New Year’s Day). We’ll begin the week with a roundup of things you may have missed over the Christmas holiday and a few things to look ahead to this week.
Great Scoop
Just before the holidays, NPR had a great scoop – headlined “Louisiana forbids public health workers from promoting COVID, flu and mpox shots” – about a new policy being low-key implemented by the Louisiana Department of Health:
According to the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear losing their jobs or other forms of retaliation, the policy would be implemented quietly and would not be put in writing.
Staffers were also told that it applies to every aspect of the health department’s work: Employees could not send out press releases, give interviews, hold vaccine events, give presentations or create social media posts encouraging the public to get the vaccines. They also could not put up signs at the department’s clinics that COVID, flu or mpox vaccines were available on site.
Listen here:
Trump Border Czar Wants To Use Military As ‘Force Multiplier’
“Donald Trump’s team is looking at using military bases to detain migrants and military planes to boost deportations, the president-elect’s incoming border czar Tom Homan said.”–WSJ
‘How Much Did You Pay To Have Your Daughter Raped?’
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) latest grandstanding over immigration is a $100,000 billboard ad campaign to deter migrants from crossing the border with crude messages like “How much did you pay to have your daughter raped?”
Sign Of The Times
WSJ: Some Justice Department Lawyers Look for Protection—and the Exits
Elon Musk Watch
Donald Trump dismisses talk that he’s ceded the presidency to Elon Musk as a “hoax.”
Musk doubles down on support for German far-right party.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré: Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk
For Your Radar …
When the new Congress convenes for the first time Friday, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) will try to retain the speakership after the pre-Christmas debacle over the continuing resolution to fund the federal government until mid-March and avoid a shutdown. It’s an early measure of how chaotic GOP rules in Washington will be. Matt Glassman has everything you could possibly want to know about the speaker election.
Texas Congresswoman Suffering From Dementia
Retiring Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), until April the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has been little-seen in Washington since then and is residing in an independent living facility in Texas where she is suffering from “dementia issues,” according to reports over the holidays.
Granger’s situation was first reported by The Dallas Express. Some aspects of the initial report were disputed by Granger’s office, but the upshot is that her health issues have made serving out the remainder of her term difficult at best.
ICYMI
TPM’s Kate Riga: Ethics Committee Finds ‘Substantial Evidence’ That Gaetz Committed ‘Statutory Rape’
Rudy G Faces A Reckoning
After dressing up as Santa Claus to promote his Rudy Coffee, Rudy Giuliani faces a contempt of court hearing Friday in the defamation case against him by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The judge is already signaling it may not go well for the former NYC mayor.
‘This Is Trump’s America Now’
A Colorado man was arrested on suspicion of bias-motivated crimes, second degree assault and harassment for a Dec. 18 incident in Grand Junction when he allegedly attacked TV reporter Ja’Ronn Alex, who is of Pacific Island descent:
After arriving in Grand Junction, Egan, who was driving a taxi, pulled up next to Alex at a stoplight and, according to an arrest affidavit, said something to the effect of: “Are you even a U.S. citizen? This is Trump’s America now! I’m a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!”
Alex, who had been out reporting, then drove back to his news station in the city. After he got out of his vehicle, Egan chased Alex as he ran toward the station’s door and demanded to see his identification, according to the document laying out police’s evidence in the case. Egan then tackled Alex, put him in a headlock and “began to strangle him,” the affidavit said. Coworkers who ran out to help and witnesses told police that Alex appeared to be losing his ability to breathe during the attack, which was partially captured on surveillance video, according to the document.
‘Target On My Back’
Nashville TV reporter Phil Williams was targeted by the Christian right in a pre-Christmas wave of online abuse: “Rarely in my nearly 40-year career as a journalist have I felt the target on my back as continuously and intensely as I have in the last 15 months.”
Trump Files Brief In TikTok Case At SCOTUS
“The Trump brief, on which Trump’s intended nominee to be Solicitor General, John Sauer, is counsel of record (indeed, Sauer is the only listed counsel), is a striking document. It includes a series of wholly irrelevant platitudes about Trump; and, even though it takes no position on whether the TikTok statute is or is not constitutional, it urges the Court to ‘stay’ the January 19 effective date to allow for Trump, once he comes to office, to pursue some (unspecified) political solution to the dispute.”–Steve Vladeck
Joe Biden Agonistes
Jimmy Carter dying in the waning days of the Biden presidency felt like a passing of the baton from the last one-term Democratic president whose legacy has been debated for half a century to the next. The debate over Joe Biden’s legacy is just beginning but will probably last at least as long, depending on how destructive the return to Trump turns out to be. The WaPo gives Biden world an early chance to weigh in.
Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024
Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter embraces his wife Rosalynn after receiving the final news of his victory in the national general election, November 2, 1976. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
My own memories of Jimmy Carter are those of a child: As a bleary-eyed six-year-old barging in on my shaving father the morning after the 1976 election demanding to know why he hadn’t woken me in the night, as promised, with the result. He had, he assured me. Or driving the old family station wagon with the Carter-Mondale bumper sticker on it through a good chunk of high school deep into the Reagan ’80s. If you’re feeling a little nostalgic, too, our slideshow may spark some memories.
Former president Jimmy Carter passed away Sunday, around 3:45 p.m. ET, at home in Plains, Georgia, his son Chip told news outlets. He had turned 100 in October. Here is a look at some moments from a remarkable life.
One-year-old James Earl Carter
(Getty Images)
Jimmy Carter graduates from the US Naval Academy
(Photo by Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)
Jimmy Carter on his family’s peanut farm in Georgia
Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in their first televised presidential debate, 1976
(Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, 1976
Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter embraces his wife Rosalynn after receiving the final news of his victory in the national general election, November 2, 1976. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
President Carter at Camp David, 1978
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (R) shake hands at the start of the second trilateral meeting with President Jimmy Carter. The talks led to the Camp David Accords, signed on September 17, 1978. (Getty Images)
Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan debate, 1980
Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan, shake hands as they greet one another before their debate on the stage of the Music Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, on October 28, 1980. (Getty Images)
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter work for Habitat for Humanity, 1988
Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter work at a Habitat for Humanity site in Atlanta, building houses. (Getty Images)
Jimmy Carter and Willie Nelson, 1985
Jimmy Carter, smiling broadly and standing next to Willie Nelson, at a concert to mark Plains, Georgia’s 100th anniversary. (Photo by Thomas S. England/Getty Images)
Jimmy Carter and his hand-made chess set, 1993
Jimmy Carter, photographed with a wooden Chess set, board, case and photo album that he made by hand, at The Carter Center on January 4,1993 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo By Rick Diamond/Getty Images)
Jimmy Carter holds up his Nobel Peace Prize, 2002
Jimmy Carter holds up his Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2002, in Oslo, Norway. Carter was recognized for many years of public service and urged others to work for peace during his acceptance speech. (Photo by Arne Knudsen/Getty Images)
The Carters working with Habitat for Humanity, 2003
Jimmy Carter and Rosalyn Carter attach siding to the front of a Habitat for Humanity home being built June 10, 2003, in LaGrange, Georgia. More than 90 homes were built in LaGrange; Valdosta, Georgia; and Anniston, Alabama by volunteers as part of Habitat for Humanity International’s Jimmy Carter Work Project 2003. (Photo by Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images)
Jimmy Carter discusses his cancer diagnosis, 2015
Jimmy Carter discusses his cancer diagnosis during a press conference at the Carter Center on August 20, 2015, in Atlanta, Georgia. Carter confirmed that he has melanoma that has spread to his liver and brain and will start treatment. (Photo by Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
Jimmy Carter at the funeral of Rosalynn Carter 2023
Jimmy Carter departs a funeral service for Rosalynn Carter at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, on November 29, 2023. Rosalynn Carter died at the age of 96. (Photo by ALEX BRANDON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Plains Peanut Festival celebrates the birthday of the former president
People attend the Plains Peanut Festival on September 28, 2024 in Plains, Georgia ahead of his 100th birthday on, Tuesday, October 1. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)
We’re seeing a range of headlines today about the “MAGA civil war” centered on immigration policy. Is the point to put America to work for Americans (MAGA-coded “real Americans,” of course)? Or is it to open the flood gates for engineers from Bangalore and Taiwan to achieve maximum efficiency and the global dominance of Silicon Valley? Vivek Ramaswamy baldly went there with a long post arguing that you simply can’t staff Silicon Valley with native-born Americans because the country is mired in a “culture of mediocrity.” “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he continued. It’s worth reading because it distills a specific viewpoint, at least parts of which many people agree with and which has powerful backers in Silicon Valley.
But let me suggest that a “MAGA civil war” isn’t the right frame to understand any of this. MAGA of the 2024-25 era is more like an electoral machine built around Donald Trump. Itr runs very well. Who gets to run it and who does it work for? Good white folk from Middle America or the best and the brightest from South Asia? MAGA never really had core policies. It had impulses. A huge amount of canonical Trumpism, as it was articulated during the Biden years, was a raft of policies and goals that were little more than payback over the Mueller probe. With Trump now tired and on the way out, there’s an increasing free-for-all over who gets the keys. Musk? Bannon? Ramaswamy? The Project 2025 Heritage Crowd? JD Vance and Josh Hawley and anti-cat ladyism?
After a week-ish off for the holidays, I gently dipped my toes back into the news cycle from the comfort of my couch Friday and was smacked in the face with the ice cold (albeit refreshing!) water that was the release of the House Ethics Committee’s report on its Matt Gaetz inquiry and the newly emerging rift in the MAGAsphere taking place between the tech bros (Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, et al.) and those on the vehemently anti-immigrant and often racist side of the movement (Laura Loomer, Nick Fuentes).
Ten days ago I wrote about the need for a big pile of money and good lawyering that would not only defend Trump’s self-proclaimed “enemies list” from civil and criminal legal harassment but affirmatively take the fight to Trump and MAGA’s legal corruption and abuses of power. Today I want to return to that topic. There’s good news and bad news, or good news and suboptimal news. Your mileage may vary.
Let’s start with the good news. There actually are some groups mobilizing to do this kind of defense. I’m not going to get into particulars or names of the groups for reasons I’ll explain in a moment — but groups or consortia that are organizing to be the place that Trump targets can go when they get their subpoena or their lawsuit or whatever other form the harassment or abuse it takes. And it’s not just Trump. It’s a more general effort to defend civil society. So perhaps it’s the immigrants rights group which is targeted by a state attorney general. Or it’s the independent press outlet being targeting by the federal or a state government or your run-of-the-mill billionaire. This is happening and it involves a lot of pre-existing groups coordinating their efforts to this end, but also umbrella operations getting commitments for pro-bono work from law firms and much else.
But there’s a catch. For very real reasons these groups don’t want to draw a lot of attention to themselves. They don’t want themselves to become the targets of harassment and lawfare when they’re trying to defend others from it. If they themselves get run out of business who’s going to be around to help everyone else? So I can’t give websites for these operations that you’d want to look up if you’re a target or show you how to contribute money. They’re not set up that way and they don’t want the attention.
