A lot of you are getting campaign text messages. If they’re pitches for money, those aren’t as important. But I’m particularly interested in ones that are putting nuggets of news in front of you to, in theory, drive your vote for one or the other candidate. If you’re getting these and haven’t requested they stop, I’m very interested to see them. Ideally, if you can screenshot them and send them to me at the regular TPM email, great. If you can cut and paste, that works too. Let me know what you’re seeing. And if possible, let me know where you’re getting them geographically and anything general about your political profile that might help me understand what kind of people the campaigns are sending them to.
In New Report Into FBI’s Half-Baked Kavanaugh Probe, Thomas-Hill Parallels Abound
The two cases already drew obvious parallels, 30 years apart: Men are nominated for the Supreme Court, their elevation prompts revelations of alleged past harms done to multiple women, Republicans go into total-war mode to smear the women and defend their nominees, Democrats and the FBI fail to protect the women or disqualify the nominees.
Continue reading “In New Report Into FBI’s Half-Baked Kavanaugh Probe, Thomas-Hill Parallels Abound”Latest Target Of DeSantis’ Intimidation Project: TV Stations That Air Amendment 4 Ads
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) administration is reportedly trying to intimidate television stations into taking down advertisements put out by supporters of Amendment 4 — a proposal on the ballot in Florida this fall that seeks to codify abortion access into the Sunshine State constitution, where abortion is banned after six weeks.
Continue reading “Latest Target Of DeSantis’ Intimidation Project: TV Stations That Air Amendment 4 Ads”Even Supreme Court’s Right Wing Expresses Skepticism Towards Proposed Ghost Gun Free-For-All
While the conservative supermajority of the Supreme Court plainly wields an expansive view of gun rights (and a shrinkingly narrow one of agency power), it occasionally butts up against a plea for deregulation with ramifications too extreme for even these justices.
Continue reading “Even Supreme Court’s Right Wing Expresses Skepticism Towards Proposed Ghost Gun Free-For-All”Insider Newsletters Still Struggling to Make Interview Fetch Happen
The Beltway demand for Kamala Harris to do her ninth or twentieth “substantive” (read: mainstream media) interview is reaching a fever pitch in the wake of Harris’ campaign announcing a new round of podcasts, Late Night and influencer interviews coming right after her appearance on 60 Minutes. Yesterday’s Politico’s Playbook captured the mood in a newsletter edition that managed to be both catty and frivolous, a churning mix of trying to make “fetch” happen and “debate me, bro” hectoring. Yes, she’s doing a bunch of interviews, they announced. But sorry lady, they just ain’t the right ones …
Continue reading “Insider Newsletters Still Struggling to Make Interview Fetch Happen”Trump Invokes The Ghastly Racist Trope Of Genetic Inferiority
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
‘Bad Genes’
In a campaign that Donald Trump has centered on race ever since the biracial Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, the former president continues to ratchet up the toxicity of his rhetoric as the election approaches.
After he and his running mate JD Vance targeted Black Haitian immigrants legally residing in Springfield, Ohio, culminating with a campaign stop there last week, the former president began repeating nonsensical claims about Black immigrants from the Congo.
Then in a new level of vitriol – that echoes some of the worst racism that history has to offer – Trump suggested Monday that some immigrants are genetically inferior:
JUST NOW: @realDonaldTrump leans heavily into race science by telling @hughhewitt that you can tell whether migrants are predisposed to committing murder by "their genes."
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) October 7, 2024
"We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now," he adds. pic.twitter.com/t722iYq4Hm
As Philip Bump notes, it’s not the first time Trump has invoked his baseless theory of genetic differences as part of a broader racist appeal to his audiences.
The dehumanizing of immigrants is nothing new for Trump, either. The not-so-subtle shift to focusing on immigrants of color, while facing off against an opponent with Black and South Asian heritage, is new to this campaign cycle, but it of course reminiscent of his deep foray into birtherism during the presidency of Barack Obama.
Trump’s Deep Anti-Semitism On Full Display, Too
To mark the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Donald Trump trafficked in a patented mix of anti-Semitism and narcissism:
- “I did more for the Jewish people than anybody — and it’s not reciprocal,” Trump complained to Hugh Hewitt.
- In the same interview, Trump falsely claimed that he had visited Gaza in the past.
- To make matters worse, a Trump campaign aide pushed back against the insinuation that Trump had lied about visiting Gaza by claiming Gaza is “in Israel” and Trump had visited Israel. Ergo?
Abortion Watch
Several new developments, all with consequences for women’s health and the 2024 election:
- Georgia: Georgia Supreme Court reinstates state’s 6-week abortion ban
- Texas: The Supreme Court Punts Again On Emergency Abortion Care
- Florida: DeSantis Threatening Jail Time for Running Abortion Rights Ads in Florida
BREAKING …
The FBI probe of the sexual assault claims against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh were constrained by the Trump White House, according to a new report to be released today by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a fierce opponent of Kavanaugh’s 2018 nomination.
SCOTUS Begins Its New Term
- TPM’s Kate Riga: The Supreme Court Returns For A Culture War Term
- Nancy Gertner and Stephen Vladeck: This Supreme Court Is Its Own Worst Enemy
- NYT: Death Penalty, Nuclear Waste and More: Supreme Court Rounds Out Coming Term
By The Numbers
Kamala Harris takes a lead in NYT/Siena poll for the first time, pulling ahead of Donald Trump among likely voters nationwide 49%-46%.
Tampa Faces Catastrophic Hurricane Milton
The long-feared direct hit on Tampa by a major hurricane – the likes of which hasn’t been experienced in more than a century, during which time development of the bay area exploded – seems nearly inevitable as Milton approaches from the west across an exceptionally warm Gulf of Mexico, according to forecasts from the National Hurricane Center.
Tampa’s unique geography makes it the major U.S. city most vulnerable to a storm surge. The current storm surge warning predicts 10-15 feet of water above normally dry ground in and around Tampa, which is dotted with canals, inlets, and channels that make vast areas of residential and commercial development vulnerable to inundation.
In terms of flooding potential, we’re talking Katrina and Sandy levels of potential inundation. Whether Milton, which deepened Monday into one of the strongest storms on record in the Atlantic basin, leaves a similar trail of destruction and loss of life as those two historic storms will depend in part on how successful today’s continuing evacuation of the west central Florida coastline is. It’s not a survivable storm surge for those who remain.
Evacuating large areas of a major urban area is neither simple nor easy, and in some ways we need to be honest with ourselves that it’s not entirely possible. The logistics are difficult, the communications challenges hard to overcome, and the sheer number of old, infirm, immobile, and those without means makes it a sobering reality that while it’s easy to call for a mass evacuation, it’s nearly impossible to execute one.
If you’ve not lived on the Gulf Coast, it’s difficult to describe how little time you have to decide whether to call an abrupt halt to normal life and shift into hurricane mode. Do you skip class or work today or wait and see until tomorrow? Do you cancel that long-awaited doctor appointment, that much-needed treatment, or that scheduled surgery? What about that deadline at work, or your contractual obligation to a client, or the much-needed service your business provides? These are agonizing decisions that might be easier if they came once a lifetime or once a decade, but they now come more often, sometimes multiple times a year.
The Tampa region is still picking up the pieces from the record storm surge that Hurricane Helene brought as it brushed by on its way to landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida two weeks ago. The second major storm in as many weeks makes it both more challenging to prepare for the second storm and more daunting to recover in its aftermath.
If you have loved ones in the Tampa area, urge them to leave. The pain of regretting your decision to stay after it’s too late to leave is exquisite, especially if you have children, elderly parents, employees, or others depending on you to make good decisions. You do not want to spend the rest of your life carrying the burden of a bad decision with no escape hatch.
Too Much Irony To Bear
"Ironically, we cannot show Climate Central’s 'Climate Shift Index: Ocean' for Milton…b/ the data for that product comes from NOAA NCEI facility in Asheville, NC, which was severely affected by record flooding spawned by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago."https://t.co/wyCUIjjD2k
— David Kurtz (@TPM_dk) October 7, 2024
Exclusive
WSJ:
Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death,” walked out of a U.S. prison almost two years ago in a trade with Moscow for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner. Now he is back in business, trying to broker the sale of small arms to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants.
Meet The TheoBros
A good introduction to the world that JD Vance comes from via Mother Jones. If you’ve been following TPM’s coverage of Christian nationalism, you’ll see some familiar characters and overlapping lineages:
So Gross
Elon & Tucker having a good laugh in new interview: “Nobody has even bothered to kill Kamala because it’s pointless. Ha, ha, ha. What do you achieve? Nothing, you just bought another puppet Nobody is trying to kill Biden, it would be pointless.” pic.twitter.com/9evhzElxai
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 8, 2024
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DeSantis Threatening Jail Time for Running Abortion Rights Ads in Florida
Florida has become the state where elements of a future, second-Trump-presidency America already come into view. We’re seeing some of these things happening right now in Florida. The example I’m about to share with you legitimately shocked me. (That’s a high bar.) It’s about the pro-choice ballot amendment which would restore Roe protections in Florida if it gets the support of 60% of voters. As in most other states, getting to 50% isn’t that difficult. 60% is much harder. To head off even the chance that the ballot initiative might hit that challenging high bar, the state of Florida is already spending a substantial amount of tax payer dollars campaigning against the initiative. Now we learn that the state is quite literally threatening jail time for the employees of stations that agree to run one of the ads for the pro-choice amendment. You heard that right — not sue under some claim of defamation but actual criminal charges.
When I first read this I thought it was one of those civil suits. Opposing campaigns will occasionally do this to scare stations out of running their opponent’s ads. I’ve never seen a state government do it, but particularly litigious campaigns occasionally do. But it’s not a civil suit. They’re threatening criminal charges.
A few fact points to explain what’s going on.
Continue reading “DeSantis Threatening Jail Time for Running Abortion Rights Ads in Florida”The Supreme Court Punts Again On Emergency Abortion Care, With Lives On The Line
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a Texas emergency abortions case, further muddying the waters on what doctors in states where the procedure is outlawed should do when faced with patients in dire need of medical care — and raising more questions about what exactly the high court thinks it is doing on this topic.
Continue reading “The Supreme Court Punts Again On Emergency Abortion Care, With Lives On The Line”Are You Experiencing Vibe-o-Chondria?
Over the weekend a number of people, independently, asked me if there was some shift in the presidential campaign, some shift in the vibes, some shift in the polls, etc. When I asked what prompted the question, it was usually chalked up to a number of articles over the weekend suggesting that Harris’ campaign is faltering or stalled or somehow blowing the election. The through-line through most of this commentary is that Harris’ campaign is too risk-averse or not running an aggressive enough campaign, which she needs to be doing. There are actually some so-so polls out this morning. But we’ve been in a period of small ups and downs for about a month. So I wanted to tell you what I told these people.
Continue reading “Are You Experiencing Vibe-o-Chondria?”Right-Wing Election Denialism Reaches An Astonishing New Low
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Is West Virginia Gonna Secede If Kamala Harris Wins?
It’s been our editorial policy for some time not to overemphasize legislation at the state level that has merely been introduced. Dozens if not hundreds of whacky and extreme things are proposed each year in state legislatures but have no real chance of ever passing. Sometimes they amount to little more than gussied up press releases. But every once in a while something comes along that is so representative of the political moment that it’s newsworthy in its own right, even if it never goes anywhere.
Take, for instance, the resolution that four GOP lawmakers introduced Sunday in the special session in West Virginia. It’s as extreme as anything I’ve seen in the last few years. The proposed resolution, inter alia, calls on West Virginia not to “recognize” the results of the 2024 presidential election if “election fraud in any state was a major reason that resulted in a candidate for President obtaining a majority in the Electoral College.”
“Election fraud” is defined in the text very broadly to include a laundry list of bogus right-wing claims ranging from non-citizen voting to “prosecutions for apparent political motives.” By this definition, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing prosecution of Donald Trump could be sufficient grounds on its own for West Virginia to refuse to recognize a victorious Kamala Harris as the legitimate president.
One Democratic lawmaker in West Virginia called the proposed resolution “WILD.”
As secessionist as it would be for a state to refuse to recognize the legitimately elected president (an epic irony considering West Virginia’s own history of breaking away from Virginia rather than secede from the Union and join the Confederacy), it’s another section of the proposed resolution that takes it a whole new level of twisted conspiracizing.
After declaring that “the current Democrat-led regime, has utterly failed, and continues to fail, in a suspicious manner, in its absolute duty to adequately protect the Republican nominee for president,” the draft resolution declares:
That, the State of West Virginia will not recognize any election of the Democrat candidate for President during the 2024 election cycle if the Republican presidential or vice-presidential candidate is assassinated, seriously injured during an assassination attempt, incarcerated, de facto eliminated or barred from the ballot in any states, or is the subject of legal actions that preclude their effective campaigning …
In addition to seeming to contemplate a do-over election if a single strand of Donald Trump’s hair is amiss, the proposed resolution again suggests that the prosecution of Donald Trump – even at the state level – would be grounds to ignore Harris’ election victory because those prosecutions constitute “legal actions that preclude … effective campaigning.”
I’m being only a little tongue-in-cheek about the secessionist vibes of the resolution. Here’s the actual language the proposed resolution uses to prescribe what happens if any of its provisions are triggered: “the Legislature will be called into special session by the Governor to consider actions to preserve the Freedom of our People.”
If West Virginia secedes, does that mean it reverts to becoming part of Virginia again? I have so many questions.
Election Denialism Still Front And Center For National GOP
- Sunday on ABC: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to say that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
- Sunday on NBC: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) refuses to concede that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
New Harris Ad Zeroes In On Jan 6
A new digital ad from the Harris campaign concludes with this line: “And next time, there will be no one to stop him”:
MUST READ
Timothy Snyder on Trump’s Hitlerian month of September.
Photo Of The Year
Tesla CEO Elon Musk (R) jumps on stage as he joins former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign rally at site of his first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. @realDonaldTrump @AFPphoto pic.twitter.com/2yXcBfB0wK
— Jim Watson (@JimWatson_AFP) October 6, 2024
EXCLUSIVE
Trump allies are threatening to retaliate against government contractor Deloitte because one of its employees shared with the WaPo private texts between himself and JD Vance in which Vance was critical of Trump.
To be clear, Deloitte just happens to be the guy’s employer and had no involvement in the text exchanges, their release, or JD Vance’s since disavowed criticisms of then-President Trump.
Quote Of The Day
Kamala Harris, responding to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR), who said last month that her kids keep her humble but Harris has nothing to keep her humble: “I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble.”
2024 Ephemera
- NYT goes there: Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age
- WaPo: Vance says Trump administration would end funding to Planned Parenthood
- WSJ: Trump’s Plan Boosts Budget Deficits by $7.5 Trillion, Double Harris’s Proposal
Hurricane Helene Disinformation Is Out Of Control
While responding to the immediate catastrophic effects of Hurricane Helene, public officials are also being forced to contend with widespread and persistent disinformation that is hampering relief efforts:
- Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC) took to X/Twitter and called it a “relentless vortex of disinformation, dialed up by bad actors and platforms like X.”
- HuffPost: North Carolina Republican Pleads To End Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories About Helene Disaster Recovery
- Brian Beutler: MAGA’s Hurricane Helene Lies Are A Trial Run For The Election
One Year Anniversary of Oct. 7 Attack
- The U.S. government warned of a heightened risk of terrorist attacks within this country on the anniversary of the Hamas massacre of Israelis.
- AP: “The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project, released Monday on the anniversary of Hamas’ attacks on Israel.”
- Matthew Duss: Joe Biden Chose This Catastrophic Path Every Step of the Way
And The Grift Goes On
Oklahoma schools Superintendent Ryan Walters plan to buy Bibles for every public school classroom looks, sounds, and smells like another Trump grift. The bid documents for the acquisition of 55,000 Bibles restricts which specific books are eligible for purchase, The Oklahoman reports. A Bible supplier which carries 2,900 versions of the Bible tells the newspaper that none of them met the bid criteria.
Which Bibles are eligible? According to the newspaper:
But one Bible fits perfectly: Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, endorsed by former President Donald Trump and commonly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiving fees for his endorsement.
Another potential contender? “[T]he We The People Bible, which was also endorsed by Donald Trump Jr. It sells for $90.”
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