Trump’s basic continuity with the GOP that preceded him gets lost in all of his bluster and lack of self-control. Sure, cheating on his wife with a pornstar and trying to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, among other things, get attention. But in some sense, they’re the exception to the rule. On the majority of issues, the same tendencies that existed under the Bush Administration, remain.
Continue reading “War On Terror, Redux”One of the most toxic and politically explosive parts of the current abortion rights debate is tied the complexities and perhaps inanities of leaving national abortion policy up to individual states. And a comment yesterday from Trump spokesman Jason Miller put the question right back into the center of the campaign.
It’s not enough for many anti-abortion stalwarts to ban the procedure in their state. They want to ban legal drugs designed to induce abortion. They want to surveil and block women traveling to other states to obtain an abortion. One of the most threatening dimensions of these programs is that they threaten to make doctors and other medical professionals — who might give counsel on or simply know about a woman’s plans to obtain an abortion — responsible for reporting her actions. If you visit your OB-GYN and discuss traveling to another state to get an abortion, does your OB have to report you to the local sheriff? It applies to third parties who might assist a woman either in traveling to get an abortion or getting FDA-approved medications to induce an abortion at home. The cases we’ve already seen range the gamut from sheriff’s departments wanting to pull medical and travel records for evidence of pregnancies that ended for unexplained reasons, gaps in menstruation, trips out of state that coincided with a pregnancy not brought to term.
Continue reading “Trump Camp Says State Menstrual Surveillance Programs are A-OK”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
By now you’ve seen the broad outlines of the indictment of NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Five counts – conspiracy, wire fraud, solicitation of a campaign contribution by a foreign national, and bribery – of being a sloppy, brazen idiot.
It’s our usual practice to exalt in the buffoonery, slapstick comedy, and hilarious self-incrimination of corrupt elected officials. We’ll do a little of that in a moment.
But I want to place this in a different bucket than the usual run-of-the-mill public corruption case. It belongs instead to a new breed of criminal prosecutions targeting the foreign corruption of U.S. elected officials, elections, and the political system as a whole. It’s a new class of cases that combines what we think of as traditional public corruption with a national security and foreign policy component.
While the Justice Department has been arguably slow in responding to the threats posed by Donald Trump that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack, federal law enforcement has been focused, swift, and arguably relentless in targeting malign efforts by foreign governments and interests in corrupting our domestic politics for their own ends.
Whether it’s Russian ongoing efforts to destabilize the U.S. political system, Egyptian efforts to compromise Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), or the multiple cases involving officials and business interests from our NATO ally Turkey, the pattern of quick DOJ intervention suggests this is among the highest federal law enforcement priorities. The Adams prosecution falls squarely in the recent spate of Turkey-related cases.
DOJ has used a mix of anti-public-corruption laws and the Foreign Agents Registration Act to combat these perverse outside influences. It seems especially focused on moving rapidly in the periods before elections when the potential damage of corrupt influence is greatest.
So while the allegations against Adams are especially ridiculous in the particulars, the trend of which he is a part is a relatively new and different phenomenon that’s only come into sharper focus in the past decade.
No matter which bucket you’re talking about – public corruption, foreign influence, kleptocratic excesses – the pure absurdity, utter recklessness, and cartoonish criming seems to remain entirely intact and undiluted.
Every other exchange is like: "Hello, I would like to do the crimes!" "Yes, let us discuss the crimes to do." "Let us also conspire to take steps to conceal the crimes, since we are both cognizant they are crimes." "Yes, we must conspire, they are crimes after all" pic.twitter.com/ISjMHKfDBj
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) September 26, 2024
Rudy Giuliani officially disbarred in Washington D.C. for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election on behalf of Donald Trump.
The settlement arising from Newsmax’s false claims about the 2020 election came as jury selection was beginning in Delaware. The terms of the confidential settlement were not disclosed.
ARIZONA
GEORGIA
MICHIGAN
Harris leads Trump 50%-47% among likely voters, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
NEVADA
Harris leads Trump 52%-45% among likely voters, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
NORTH CAROLINA
Harris leads Trump 50%-48% among likely voters, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
PENNSYLVANIA
Harris leads Trump 51%-46% among likely voters, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
WISCONSIN
Harris leads Trump 51%-48% among likely voters, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced a bill to expand the Supreme Court by six justices over 12 years, among other reform measures.
A Matt Gaetz word salad, offered in defiant response to inquiries by the House Ethics Committee into allegations of drug use and underage sex:
I have not used drugs which are illegal, absent some law allowing use in a jurisdiction of the United States. I have not used “illicit” drugs, which I consider to be drugs unlawful for medical or over-the-counter use everywhere in the United States.
To end a week where we needed some grounding, pause for a moment and listen to the Kentucky patois of Robert Penn Warren: “The mayor / Has been, clearly, remiss, and the city / Was totally unprepared for such a crisis.”
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Last time, it was the wall. Shutting down Muslim immigration. Family separation.
Continue reading “How Trumpworld Uses Dramatic Policy Ideas To Terrorize Immigrants And Troll Its Enemies”Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is DONE answering the House Ethics Committee’s questions about his alleged sex life and his alleged drug use, at least voluntarily.
Continue reading “Gaetz Says He’ll No Longer Voluntarily Cooperate With ‘Uncomfortably Nosey’ Ethics Panel”From TPM Reader LS …
Continue reading “On Language and Predation”I had a different response to Trump’s words. At first it was visceral disgust mixed with fear. Then the memories kicked in. This is the kind of talk the man who raped me said. It was some version of that I was going to like the experience, which was deeply untrue. And that I wouldn’t tell anyone if I knew what was best for me.
Our friend Rick Perlstein had a good piece in The American Prospect yesterday about polling and its pitfalls — both its pitfalls as a practice, with its evolving, imperfect methodologies, but also as something we political junkies obsess over. The gist of his argument is contained in the subhed: “Presidential polls are no more reliable than they were a century ago. So why do they consume our political lives?” I don’t think Rick quite sustains that claim fully. I’m not sure he’s actually trying to. But as is the case with many articles, its interesting enough for the points and the bits of history he shares along the way. The gist is that new methodologies keep working great until they suddenly don’t, and then it’s on to some new methodology. Then there’s the fact that for decades pollsters always seemed to stop polling too soon and miss big shifts at the ends of campaigns.
Continue reading “Managing Your Polling Habit, or Getting the Monkey Off Your Back”A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss recent polling, the competitive Senate races and various oddities happening in the Cornhusker State.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
When New York Mayor Eric Adams was elected in 2021, I told a number of people that I thought he’d either be a great mayor or end up getting indicted for something. A baseball player who bats .500 is a god. So I’m feeling reasonably good about this prediction. I tried to see whether I’d written this down somewhere. Back in December 2021 I wrote on Twitter that “I think there’s a lot about Adams that is really what the city needs. Most of the things. But also concerned that he’ll get indicted for something.” A month later I explained the basis of my largely misguided bullishness on Adams. “For clarity, I’m not cheering anything from the last three days. I think a mayor rooted in the politics of the city’s black middle class (which is Adams’ base) is better for the city today than rooted in the politics of liberals in Manhattan and Brooklyn.”
This general point I still believe.
Continue reading “Adams Indicted; Gotham Yawns”While Georgia has safeguards in place to prevent officials from indefinitely refusing to certify the results of the upcoming election, the newly approved rules by the MAGA-controlled Georgia State Election board have the potential to delay election certification for up to seven days. Experts tell TPM such a delay could open the floodgates to potential threats of violence and upheaval, all while sowing seeds of distrust in the election system.
Continue reading “Safeguards Will Prevent Georgia Board From Blocking Certification Indefinitely. But Delays Could Still Wreak Havoc”
