TPM Reader EB emailed today to tell me something that hadn’t come across my radar: the cost of computer memory is going absolutely through the roof. Just do a Google search for something like rising cost of computer memory and you’ll see a ton of articles. To give you a sense of scale the cost increases are approaching 200% year over year and as much as 30% for certain kinds of gaming RAM recently in one week. The cause is what you’d expect: the insatiable demand for memory created by the AI server farm buildout. I buy computer memory too but I don’t think I’ve tried to buy recently enough to be aware of the surge.
I told EB that I continue to find all of this surreal.
The original civil rights groups who challenged Texas’ new gerrymandered maps back in August of this year have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a lower court ruling that would temporarily block the use of the redistricted map in the 2026 elections.
Pam Bondi long ago gave up her dignity, so having her corrupt prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James blow up is not a humiliation in the normal sense of the word. But as a lickspittle attorney general whose career is dependent on currying favor with President Trump, yesterday was a personal and professional disaster.
Bondi’s scheme to install Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia and rush to indict Comey before the statute of limitations expired was thoroughly rejected by a federal judge. Comey’s indictment was dismissed along with James’. But it was quite a bit worse than that.
Bondi had overextended herself throughout the fight over Halligan’s appointment, taking unusual and embarrassing steps to try to paper over the flaws in her scheme. There was the first attempt to retroactively ratify Halligan’s acts as U.S. attorney and, bizarrely, to appoint Halligan to a second position, also retroactively, just in case the initial scheme failed.
That was followed by a public dressing-down when the judge questioned how Bondi could have ratified the Comey indictment since the transcripts of the grand jury proceedings were incomplete. That forced Bondi to rush out a second purported ratification, admitting that she had only seen a partial transcript but had since reviewed the fuller record.
Bondi’s maneuvering only reinforced how ham-handed and inept her scheming on Trump’s behalf had been. In the end, the judge rejected all of it: Bondi’s appointment of Halligan as interim U.S. attorney, her subsequent after-the-fact appointment of Halligan as a special attorney, her first ratification, and her second one.
Judged by the perverse standards of the Trump White House, Bondi utterly failed. Appeals will follow and corrupt re-indictments may come, but for this day Bondi was the Trump’s incompetent henchman who left a string of messes behind for others to clean up.
A Missed Chance for a Perfect Test Case
The dismissal of the Comey indictment, while the right call on the law and the facts, does deprive us of as strong a vindictive prosecution claim as we’re likely to see. Comey’s legal team had structured its arguments to be the seminal test case for whether Donald Trump could freely use the Justice Department to exact retribution against his foes, with serious implications for the other vindictive prosecutions, both those pending and those still to come.
The Halligan appointment was part and parcel of that vindictive prosecution — a former Trump personal lawyer turned White House aide with no experience as a prosecutor rushed into place after her predecessor was ousted for refusing to do Trump’s dirty work — so you can’t easily separate it from the rest of Comey’s vindictive prosecution claim.
But to the extent the courts are going to have to grapple with new standards or benchmarks for vindictive prosecutions in the Trump era, the Comey case was as good as they get. Someone else will have to set that standard now, with perhaps fewer advantageous facts and without as stellar a legal team as Comey had.
Not a Fair Fight in Some Ways
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA – NOVEMBER 19: Michael Dreeben, an attorney for James Comey, departs the Albert V. Bryan United Sates Courthouse following a motion hearing in the Comey obstruction and false statements case on November 19, 2025 in Alexandria, Virginia. The hearing comes days after Judge William E. Fitzpatrick questioned whether government misconduct in the case could require dismissing the charges against the former FBI director. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
Watching Comey’s legal team spar in court with B-team DOJ lawyers over the past two weeks was another reminder of how much damage Bondi has done to the Justice Department. Halligan was too inexperienced to fight this fight, so outside DOJ lawyers were brought in. They were no match for the Comey team.
While Comey is most often identified as a former FBI director, for the purposes of this case it was always more striking to me that he was a former deputy attorney general, the No. 2, who ran the department day to day. Being targeted by the department he once ran operationally, while also witnessing the erosion of its professionalism and traditions, made for an especially poignant tableau.
Comey was defended by longtime Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and Michael Dreeben, the former deputy solicitor general who was a legendary Supreme Court advocate and criminal law expert, plus several other highly capable litigators. The quality of his defense showed in every aspect of the case, especially when contrasted with what Bondi failed to bring to the table.
What Was at Stake in the Halligan Fight
In bypassing local judges to install Halligan, the Trump administration was seeking to rob both the judicial and legislative branches of some of their prerogatives.
The Retribution: Ed Martin Edition
Last week, I wasn’t sure what to make of the reports that the Trump DOJ seemed to be looking into how the bogus mortgage fraud claims against Letitia James and Adam Schiff emerged. It seemed hard to believe that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was overseeing an investigation into DOJ official Ed Martin and Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
It’s still not clear what exactly is going on, but the scenario that makes the most sense and best lines up with the reporting so far is that prosecutors and investigators are trying to get a handle on the origin story of the mortgage fraud nonsense now instead of finding themselves surprised later.
It all blew out into the open on Thursday when a potential witness named Christine Bish went public about being questioned by prosecutors that morning at the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland (where an important hearing in the Abrego Garcia civil case happened to be underway). She was generally disgruntled that their questioning of her was not focused on Schiff’s conduct.
Since then reports have understandably been focused on the weird tactics Martin and Pulte used, including the possible use of intermediaries, to gin up the mortgage fraud claims. But the Trump DOJ has circled the wagons and it’s looking less likely now that Martin and Pulte are the targets of any investigation: “Martin and Pulte are not being investigated by a grand jury, according to a person familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly,” the WaPo reports.
Quote of the Day
“We’ve never dealt with this. This is really chilling.”–former Army JAG Geoffrey Corn, on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s unprecedented investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) for exercising his First Amendment rights as a retired Navy captain
Trump Has Sidelined CISA for 2026
At the end of his first term, President Trump fired Christopher Krebs as head of DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for publicly saying that the 2020 election was free from fraud. In his second term, Trump revoked Krebs’ security clearance and has gutted CISA, whose duties included protecting election infrastructure. The agency was mostly sidelined in this year’s elections, leaving election officials scrambling to fill the gaps going into next year’s midterms.
Real-Time Analysis
Greg Sargent and I had a quick conversation about all of the breaking news yesterday afternoon — from the Comey/James dismissals to Hegseth’s retaliation against Kelly:
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
For a lot of young Americans, every major life decision that signifies adulthood starts with the same question: Can I afford it?
Can I afford to move for that “dream job”? Can I afford to get married, have a kid, or take care of one? Can I afford to buy a home, or even just stay in the one I rent?
For previous generations, those questions had simpler answers.
Older generations who bought entire homes for the same price as a down payment today often don’t fully grasp what it means to face $2,500 rent, $2,000-a-month childcare, and six-figure student debt — even with a so-called “good job.”
The divide today isn’t just about money. It’s about agency. The ability to make choices about your own life and to dream about your future was something every generation before us was told was their birthright.
For millions of young Americans today, that sense of freedom feels out of reach.
The generational divide of our moment isn’t about partisanship or social issues. It’s about affordability — and how differently each generation experiences what it takes to build a good life.
In one of the most blatant retribution schemes yet in Trump II, the Pentagon announced Monday that it is investigating Sen. Mark Kelly, a combat veteran and elected Democrat from Arizona who has long been critical of Trump and recently upset Trump admin officials for stating publicly something that is in the Constitution — obviously a major offense in this era.
Kelly was one of several elected Dems who are veterans of the military or former national security officials who participated in a video posted by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) last week, asking members of the military to “stand up” for the Constitution in the wake of Trump’s efforts to weaponize the military against American civilians. They also reminded service members that they swore an oath to the Constitution and “can refuse illegal orders” as part of that duty.
President Trump then sparked up-til-this-point new levels of outrage when he threatened a handful of elected national Democrats, including Kelly, with arrest and shared posts on social media suggesting they should be put to death by hanging. It was one of the more sinister moments of Trump’s second term thus far, and Democratic leadership in Congress contacted the police to ensure members were kept safe.
Now the Pentagon is investigating Kelly. The recently rebranded Department of War posted on Twitter Monday announcing the probe and claiming the department had received “serious allegations of misconduct” against Kelly.
OFFICIAL STATEMENT:
The Department of War has received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.). In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. § 688, and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations…
“Their foolish screed sows doubt and confusion — which only puts our warriors in danger,” Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday, confirming the “investigation” is about the video.
Kelly, for his part, has responded in a Twitter post about his military service, including his choice to retire from service after “my wife Gabby was shot in the head while serving her constituents.”
“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” he said. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”
In what might become a win for the Trump administration’s ongoing redistricting battle, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked a lower court order on Friday that enjoined the use of Texas’ new map for the 2026 election.
Texas Republicans, including GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court on Friday in an effort to save the gerrymandered Republican-favoring map — a part of Trump’s larger pressure campaign to maintain control of the U.S. House in the midterm elections.
The lower court last week called the map “racially gerrymandered.” But on Friday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito placed a temporary hold on that order to give the full court time to consider the issue.
Republicans who filed the appeal have argued that the lower court’s order that blocks the use of the new map caused “chaos.”
Texas Republicans hastily redrew several districts in the state represented by Democrats in response to Trump’s demands that red states engage in mid-cycle gerrymandering before the midterms. The new maps would likely flip the seats from Democratic to Republican.
— Khaya Himmelman
Americans Can’t Afford Their Electric Bill
The Washington Post is out with new reporting today on the affordability crisis in America, focused specifically on electric bills. It looked at disconnection rates — when a household’s electricity gets shut off because bills haven’t been paid — in 11 states and found that those rates have risen in at least eight of them compared to last year. The rate is especially high in New York City. More from the Post:
In Pennsylvania, where Pellew lives, power shutoffs have risen 21 percent this year, with more than 270,000 households losing electricity, according to state data through October. The average electricity bill in the state, meanwhile, has risen 13 percent from a year ago, as utilities upgrade electric grids to accommodate a burst of new data centers, according to an analysis of federal data by NEADA, which represents state directors of energy aid programs for low-income families.
For almost a decade now, we’ve watched as Trump plowed through guardrails intended to restrain a rogue executive, exploited one loophole after another, and managed to turn every legal ambiguity in his favor.
So it’s worth noting that one relatively small structural guardrail held firm and provided a check today on one of Trump’s worst abuses.
A federal judge has ruled that former insurance lawyer Lindsey Halligan was invalidly appointed as interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia and has dismissed the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The dual rulings by U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie of South Carolina are the most significant judicial rebukes yet to the politically motivated prosecutions driven by the White House of political nemeses of President Donald Trump. Comey was indicted for allegedly lying to Congress, and James for alleged mortgage fraud, but both cases were widely seen by legal experts as flimsy and pretextual.
I mentioned earlier this month that we had this panel at our 25th anniversary event that I simply loved, an oral history of TPM. We published the audio of the panel as last week’s installment of the podcast. I have my own reasons for enjoying it, but I think you will too. In any case, one thing I was reminded of in listening to the discussion is that in recent years I’ve shifted toward analysis and away from my own reporting. Not as an absolute, of course. And in the spring I was reporting on a lot of stuff at once. But certainly over this year, I’ve written a lot of big-picture looks at what I think is happening in the country, what the Trump administration is trying to do, what people can and are doing to resist those efforts, what the big global story is. Listening to the panel discussion made me a bit hungry to do more of the thread-collecting and yanking of nitty gritty reporting, the grabbing on to a story and getting everything of out it, finding and introducing the key characters, finding the arc of their story.
Investigating The Investigators: Aileen Cannon Edition
Incisive new reporting from Charlie Savage on the sprawling investigate the investigators charade going on in South Florida puts U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon back in the thick of things.
What’s emerged in the last few weeks is that Miami U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones is overseeing a criminal investigation that stretches all the way back to the 2016 election. He has reportedly issued subpoenas to investigators of the 2016 Trump-Russia connection, including former CIA Director John Brennan and FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page.
Reding Quiñones has empaneled an “extra” grand jury in Ft. Pierce, Florida, where only Judge Cannon of Mar-a-Lago case fame can oversee it. “He has not said why he is putting an extra grand jury 130 miles away in Judge Cannon’s courthouse,” Savage reports.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has been supervising Reding Quiñones’ investigation of the investigators through a low-level official in the DAG’s office named Christopher-James DeLorenz, who was a Cannon law clerk until August 2024, according to Savage.
Cannon’s oversight of the “extra” grand jury means she is “in charge of disputes like requests by recipients of subpoenas to quash them, on grounds ranging from an expired statute of limitations to claims of privilege, or requests by prosecutors to compel such witnesses to testify under threat of being jailed for contempt of court,” Savage reports.
If Mike Davis — the shit-stirring conservative legal activist — is to be believed, the Ft. Pierce grand jury is being used to advance a grand theory that the Deep State conspired to deprive Donald Trump of his civil rights. Davis was more coy with the NYT. Cannon, of course, interfered with the criminal investigation of Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case before he was indicted, then was randomly assigned his case and dismissed the indictment entirely, after slow-rolling the case for months.
The chance to use a grand jury under Cannon’s auspices to run an open-ended investigation pegged to the Mar-a-Lago search that sweeps up Trump grievances, paybacks, and scores to settle dating all he way back to the 2016 election has the potential to be the most dangerous and damaging of Trump’s many investigate the investigator retributions.
The Retribution: James Comey Edition
Former FBI Director James Comey on Friday filed a new motion to dismiss the indictment against him, rolling up all of the revelations over the course of last week about the unusual and perhaps fatally flawed handling of the grand jury by interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan.
Big Revelation in Abrego Garcia Case
In a statement to the WaPo on Friday, Costa Rica Security Minister Mario Zamora Cordero blew up the Trump administration’s deeply misleading representations to the judge in one of the Abrego Garcia cases.
Zamora Cordero said Costa Rica’s offer from August to accept Abrego Garcia and give him legal status still stands — which flies in the face of claims by the Trump administration that Costa Rica will no longer accept him. The Trump administration is insisting on deporting him to one of several African countries, most recently Liberia, to which he has no previous ties. As I wrote at length last week, the Trump administration has repeatedly defied court orders to provide a fact witness who can attest in court to its representations about Costa Rica.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers immediately notified the judge in his civil case of the new reporting from the WaPo, and his lawyers in his criminal case cited the report as additional evidence that his prosecution is vindictive, punishment for having exercised his legal rights to challenge his wrongful removal from the United States to El Salvador earlier this year.
Special Protection For Kash Patel’s Girlfriend
FBI Director Kash Patel enlisted two SWAT-trained FBI agents in Atlanta to protect his aspiring country music singer girlfriend at the NRA’s annual convention last spring, the NYT reports.
Arizona Fake Electors Case Not Completely Dead Yet
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced that she will ask the state’s Supreme Court to revive the Trump 2020 fake electors case that was tossed out by the trial judge.
The Epstein Files
The Trump DOJ has renewed its previously rejected request for a federal judge in Florida to unseal the grand jury testimony related to Jeffrey Epstein and his confidante Ghislaine Maxwell. In the new motion filed late Friday, the Trump DOJ cited the recently passed law ‘ demanding that the department release its Epstein files as the basis for renewing its request to the court.
Meanwhile, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton faces a slew of complications, including a potential conflict of interest, in responding to the “baldly political directive” he received from Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate only Democrats’ connections to Epstein, Politico reports.
Alito Reinstates Texas’ Pro-GOP Map
Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary administrative stay allowing Texas to continue using its new pro-GOP congressional district map while the Supreme Court considers whether to put a lower court ruling throwing out the map on hold while the state’s appeal proceeds.
Venezuela Watch
Since taking office 10 months ago, the Trump White House has repeatedly “steamrolled or sidestepped government lawyers” who questioned its lethal high seas strikes on alleged drug traffickers, the WaPo reports.
Joint Chiefs chair Dan Caine is visiting the region today, meeting with U.S. service members in Puerto Rico.
The Trump administration is poised to affix the label “foreign terrorist organization” on Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles, which experts says is neither a cartel, nor a group, nor even a hierarchy.
The Corruption: Pardon Edition
The right-wing provocateurs Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl — convicted in Ohio and awaiting sentencing in Michigan for racist robocalls — were paid $960,000 by former nursing home magnate Joseph Schwartz for help seeking a presidential pardon. Schwartz, who was sentenced earlier this year to three years in prison for defrauding the government of $38 million, was pardoned by President Trump on Nov. 14, after serving only three months.
Schwartz is not the only client paying Burkman and Wohl for pardon help, as NOTUS has reported.
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
This story is a few days old. But I only came across it yesterday. Meet Austin Smith. He’s a former state legislator in Arizona, member of the Arizona Freedom Caucus. Or former member. He was also strategic director of Turning Points Action, Turning Points’ political arm. (Yes, what other arm would their be?) He was also a hardcore “vote fraud” hustler. And now rather predictably he’s pled guilty to attempted election fraud. Yes, surprise, surprise. In fact, he’s from Surprise, Arizona. No really. You can read the story here.
