This is not new. But I at least hadn’t heard any of these dots connected. I wasn’t even aware of the dots. A friend mentioned to me over the weekend that he’d heard about Wall Streeters buying up the rights to tariff refunds from big corporate importers. So the idea is that a Wall Street firm goes to an importer and says, you’ve now paid $10 million in tariffs. I’ll pay you $2 million right now for the right to collect the refund if courts ever end up deciding the tariffs were illegal. My friend had also heard that one of the most aggressive buyers was Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm until recently headed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and now run by Lutnick’s sons. Twenty-something Brandon Lutnick, pictured above on the left in a 2016 photo, is the current chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald. (He must be hella talented!)
Continue reading “Lutnick Family Angling To Make Astronomical Sums Off Court Nixing Tariffs”A Texas County Cuts Over 100 Polling Sites as Trump Attacks Mail-In Voting Nationally
This article was first published at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
Officials in a large North Texas county decided this week to cut more than 100 Election Day polling sites and reduce the number of early voting locations, amid growing concern about GOP efforts to limit voting access ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Continue reading “A Texas County Cuts Over 100 Polling Sites as Trump Attacks Mail-In Voting Nationally”The Trump Administration is Investigating Workers’ Rights in Mexico While Demolishing Them At Home
Just one minute before the White House distributed via email a new executive order further dismantling collective bargaining protections for U.S. federal workers, President Donald Trump’s Department of Labor made another, somewhat surprising announcement.
Continue reading “The Trump Administration is Investigating Workers’ Rights in Mexico While Demolishing Them At Home”‘Active Clubs’ Are White Supremacy’s New, Dangerous Frontier
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Small local organizations called Active Clubs have spread widely across the U.S. and internationally, using fitness as a cover for a much more alarming mission. These groups are a new and harder-to-detect form of white supremacist organizing that merges extremist ideology with fitness and combat sports culture.
Continue reading “‘Active Clubs’ Are White Supremacy’s New, Dangerous Frontier”A Labor Day Call for Action From the States
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Last week the White House staged a pre-Labor Day Cabinet meeting to celebrate the administration’s supposed victories for American workers. Cabinet members took turns offering fawning, sycophantic praise of their boss in a display of precisely the workplace dynamics the labor movement fights to eliminate. It was an apt symbol of this administration’s approach to workers.
Continue reading “A Labor Day Call for Action From the States”Texas Redistricting Fight Has Been Testing Ground for the Trump Admin’s Latest Legal Strategy
This article was originally published at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
On July 7, the Justice Department sent a harshly written letter threatening to sue the staunchly Republican state of Texas, notwithstanding its efforts to help elect Donald Trump and the fact that the president had singled out its leaders as key allies in his immigration crackdown.
Continue reading “Texas Redistricting Fight Has Been Testing Ground for the Trump Admin’s Latest Legal Strategy”Have We Seen the Last Of ‘Alligator Alcatraz?’
Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
The last detainees inside the grim “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention camp spearheaded by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) are reportedly set to leave the facility.
Continue reading “Have We Seen the Last Of ‘Alligator Alcatraz?’”Trump’s Tariffs Are Illegal, Appeals Court Finds
An appeals court ruled 7-4 Friday evening that most of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, a series of which he imposed by executive order under emergency powers granted by The International Emergency Economic Powers Act, are unlawful.
Continue reading “Trump’s Tariffs Are Illegal, Appeals Court Finds”Tea Leaves Are There for Reading
The Specter of Town Halls is Haunting the GOP
GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado was apparently just a no-show at his own town hall on Wednesday. Technically it wasn’t a town hall but rather a public meeting in which Hurd would meet with members of the Montezuma County Commission. Point being, it wasn’t one of these things where Democrats put on a town hall because the member won’t call one. It was one he was involved in organizing. Anyway, apparently Hurd found out shortly before arriving that more than a hundred people had shown up because just after the event began, Montezuma County Commission Chair Jim Candeleria announced that Hurd wouldn’t be able to make it because an aide he was traveling with had a “medical emergency”.
No word on how the dog is doing after it ate Hurd’s homework.