Republican officials in Ohio are politely pleading with the Trump campaign to not visit Springfield after it spent weeks stoking false claims about Haitian immigrants eating residents’ pets, plunging the city into chaos.
Continue reading “Ohio Republican Leaders Gently Beg Trump To Please Not Visit Springfield”A Look at the Race 48 Days Out
We are now 48 days until the 2024 general election. And with the date speeding toward us, I wanted to check in on the state of the race and the latest polls. Kate and I recorded this week’s podcast this morning. And the theme was sort of trying to make sense of just what is happening right now in the aftermath of the build up to the debate and the debate itself. We have another assassination attempt which seems like an oddly secondary story. We have the ongoing grotesquery of Trump’s and Vance’s assault on Springfield, Ohio. The Trump campaign has been rather candid with reporters, telling them that they’re willing to take the hit on now admitting they were lying about the initial Fido and Felix barbecue allegations since it puts immigration at the forefront of the campaign. In other words, it might seem like a bad story for them — they’re revealed as cynical and destructive liars. But it’s a great theme for them. Because if the topic of the day is immigration, they win.
Continue reading “A Look at the Race 48 Days Out”Judge Aileen Cannon Failed to Disclose a Right-Wing Junket
This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.
Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”
A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.
It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.
In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for Scalia thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo helped organize.
Current rates for standard rooms at Sage Lodge can exceed $1,000 per night, depending on the season. With both Montana trips, Cannon’s required seminar disclosures were not posted until NPR reporters asked about the omissions this year as part of a broader national investigation of gaps in judicial disclosures.
Cannon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
In response to questions from ProPublica, the clerk in the Southern District of Florida wrote in an email that Cannon had filed the Sage Lodge trips with the federal judiciary’s administrative office but had “inadvertently” not taken the second step of posting them on the court’s website. She explained that “Judges often do not realize they must input the information twice.”
The clerk said she had no information about the May 2023 banquet.
“Judges administer the law, and we have a right to expect every judge to comply with the law,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Cannon’s husband, Joshua Lorence, a restaurant executive, accompanied her to the 2021 and 2022 colloquiums, which featured noted conservative jurists, lawyers and professors as well as lengthy “afternoon study breaks,” according to records obtained by ProPublica. Cannon emailed university staff to submit airport parking expenses and inquire about rental car reimbursement.
The rule for paid seminars is among the policies set by the Judicial Conference. Federal judges are also required by law to file annual financial disclosures, listing items such as assets, outside income and gifts.
Cannon’s annual disclosure form for 2023, which was due in May and offers another chance to report gifts and reimbursements from outside parties, has yet to be posted. (Cannon reported the two Montana trips on her annual disclosure forms, but the required 30-day privately funded seminar reports had not been posted. In 2021, Cannon incorrectly listed the school as “George Madison University.”)
The court’s administrative office declined to say if she requested a one-time extension to give her until Aug. 13 to file. A spokesperson would not discuss whether she met the deadline or the status of her disclosure, which must be reviewed internally.
Cannon’s performance during almost four years of a lifetime appointment has drawn criticism from lawyers, former federal judges and courtroom observers who told ProPublica that she doesn’t render timely decisions and has made unpredictable rulings in both civil and criminal matters. On July 15, she threw out the case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that alleges Trump mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence; Cannon called Smith’s appointment unconstitutional since he was not nominated by the president and approved by the Senate.
Smith is appealing to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked the court to remand her decision and replace her.
By contrast, Trump, who appointed Cannon in 2020 to the Fort Pierce courthouse, has praised her brilliance, and Federalist Society founder Steven Calabresi called her a heroine for throwing out the criminal case against Trump.
For decades, judicial education programs sponsored by George Mason’s Law and Economics Center have drawn in 5,000 state and federal judges and four current Supreme Court justices, according to its website. The school says its programs strive for balance and intellectual rigor. But conference agendas and speaker lists that the university must file with the courts detail lectures and panel discussions built around Federalist Society principles that are associated with conservative legal movements.
Ken Turchi, associate dean for external affairs, said the law school plays no role in judicial disclosures. “Judges’ decisions to submit (or not submit) disclosure forms are theirs alone — it’s a self-reporting process,” he said.
The guest list for the May 2023 Scalia Forum included William H. Pryor Jr., chief judge of the 11th Circuit, which is now hearing Smith’s appeal. Pryor and dinner speaker Kyle Duncan, a 5th Circuit judge, did file their required disclosures for the Scalia dinner.
Pryor’s court has overruled Cannon twice in the Trump case. It sided with the government in September 2022 on a motion for a stay and found that it “had established a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.” In December 2022, it ruled that she erred in naming a special master to examine classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. After that decision, Cannon had to dismantle an expensive operation set up by her special master, a senior federal judge in New York.
Gabe Roth, who directs Fix the Court, a nonprofit judicial reform group, said compliance with the privately funded seminar rule has improved in some circuits since his group pressed for compliance with the Administrative Office of the Courts.
“They’re a more effective way for litigants and the public to get a sense of what types of individuals and groups a judge might be hanging out with and learning from,” he said.
Records show that Cannon submitted minor reimbursement requests related to the Scalia Forum trip after she returned, including the 158 miles she drove round trip to the airport. She inquired with George Mason staff about details for an Alaska excursion recommended by a former lawyer in the Trump-era White House Counsel’s Office.
Cannon registered for George Mason’s Hill Country Colloquium at a Texas resort in December 2023 but had to back out for scheduling reasons.
“I hope to join that event, and others, in future years,” she wrote.
If you have information about Judge Aileen M. Cannon, please contact Marilyn W. Thompson at marilyn.thompson@propublica.org.
The More Desperate Trump Gets, The More Toxic His Rhetoric Becomes
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Of Course It Came To This
We’ve moved into the endgame stage of the 2024 campaign, and it’s now obvious that the pivot Donald Trump made when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden was away from the bizarre, new-fangled Biden Crime Family conspiracies to the old tried and true racist and xenophobic attacks that have animated Trump’s national political presence since 2015.
The media coverage of the sustained Trump-Vance attacks on Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, has been remarkably clear-headed that the underlying claims around “eating pets” are baseless, fabricated, and continue to be disseminated in full knowledge of their falsity.
What remains a challenge to the media coverage and the national conversation is that Trump’s point isn’t about “eating pets,” or Haitian immigrants, or Springfield. It’s about othering entire segments of the population, largely based on skin color and national origin. It’s about stoking fear in white people about these “others.” And it all reverberates and echoes in the context of othering Harris herself, whose bi-racial identity Trump hasn’t hesitated to highlight in a disparaging way.
Debunking the underlying supposed factual basis for the claims, while important, doesn’t debunk the racism, the xenophobia, or the corrosive effects on American civic life. Those explicit racist messages – not dog whistles, not coded, not euphemized – come through loud and clear to all who are listening, from white nationalists on one extreme to Republican voters to immigrant communities now feeling isolated and under siege.
We’ve seen Trump play this game before with much-easier-to-substantiate claims of undocumented immigrants committing violent crimes, which was a consistent focus of his last two campaigns. The fact that that he picked a more outrageous falsehood to parade around is perhaps a sign of his growing desperation. His lead over Biden slipped away after Harris entered the race, and we should never let it drift too far from our awareness that Trump’s own personal liberty is dependent upon winning this election.
Down The Memory Hole!
CNN: JD Vance got a former professor to delete a blog post Vance wrote in 2012 attacking GOP over anti-immigrant rhetoric
More Incitement
JD Vance’s apparent logic – that the GOP ticket can only be blamed for actual bombs not bomb scares, and that any reporting on bomb threats is a lie and fake news – serves merely as pretext for attacking the messengers:
‘You Can’t Have That Microphone Again’
In an appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered this remarkable extended answer on the virulent racist attacks that have become the central theme of the Trump-Vance campaign:
Vice President Harris’ full response to Trump’s attacks on Springfield, Ohio and his lifelong history of racism pic.twitter.com/spyJxC1bx9
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 17, 2024
What Laura Loomer Represents To White Nationalists
Laura Loomer’s suddenly higher visibility with Donald Trump just happened to coincide with Trump-Vance unleashing their attacks on Haitian immigrants. It’s not a signal that’s lost on the extreme right:
White nationalist Nick Fuentes celebrates Trump's close connection to Laura Loomer because "Laura Loomer supports white nationalists and white identitarians. She has been a friend of mine for years and she has talked about white genocide consistently." pic.twitter.com/dyuAnzMvD5
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) September 17, 2024
It’s Not Just Trump-Vance
Your occasional reminder that the entire GOP has made xenophobic attacks on immigrants the centerpiece of the general election campaign, most comprehensively with its fixation on the fake problem of non-citizen voting in federal elections.
As TPM’s Khaya Himmelman reports, in addition to its racist appeal, the non-citizen voting canard also serves the GOP purposes of delegitimizing any election that Democrats wins. And it started months in advance of a single vote being counted.
Important Read
Over the last several years, the field [of disinformation research] has undergone a broadscale attack from politicians, right-wing media, and tech industry giants. As a result, research has been curtailed, people have been laid off, and academics working in the space even fear talking to one another, lest it leave them open to charges of “conspiring” by their adversaries.
Election Threat Watch
- A series of suspicious mailings, some including unknown foreign substances, were sent to election officials in at least 14 states: Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Missouri, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Indiana, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado and Connecticut.
- Russia has retooled its election interference efforts to target the new Harris-Walz ticket, according to a new threat assessment report from Microsoft.
- Federal judge warns the judiciary that foreign actors could try to interfere in election-related cases.
Trying To Flip The Script
Since Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt against him, Donald Trump has been trying to leverage it into a political cudgel against Democrats, claiming that by calling him a threat to democracy they are inciting violence against him.
CNN queued up clips of Trump using similar (although baseless) language against Democrats:
CNN put together a rhetoric collection pic.twitter.com/BXQssMDDXh
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 18, 2024
GOP Still Targeting Childless Americans
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, at a Trump town hall event in Michigan yesterday, engaged in another pernicious way of othering Kamala Harris:
Sarah Huckabee Sanders starts the Trump town hall by taking a shot at Kamala Harris for not having biological children.
— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) September 17, 2024
"So, my kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn't have anything keeping her humble." pic.twitter.com/URV9FZBqhv
The Grifting Never Stops
CNN: “Donald Trump and his children unveiled a new cryptocurrency business Monday in a virtual address from his Mar-a-Lago estate, the latest venture that stands to benefit the former president as he seeks another four years in the Oval Office.”
Senate Republicans Again Block Bill To Protect IVF
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) forced another election-year vote on a bill to protect IVF nationally, and again Senate Republicans blocked it.
Schumer’s maneuvering indirectly set up this bit of nationally televised screw-turning that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) had to endure:
GOP Gov’t Shutdown Watch
I’ve been reluctant to put House Speaker Mike Johnson’s flailing efforts to avoid a government shutdown on your radar, largely because it seems like such an insane self-own by Republicans to force the issue right before the election. Alas, insane self-owns remain a House GOP speciality.
Editor’s Note
Today’s news happens to be a little more video heavy than usual, and that often prompts complaints about Morning Memo’s use of video embeds from X/Twitter. Your concerns are noted and largely shared. It continues to be a challenge to survey the news for you in this fragmented media ecosystem. Between cartoon villain owners turning their platforms into right-wing propaganda machines, dubious privacy practices, paywalls, and other barriers, it’s a jungle out there. There are no easy answers or perfect solutions to navigating this complicated terrain. As the media ecosystem evolves, Morning Memo continues to look for new and innovative ways to bring you the news without making you go “Ick!” about the sources of the news (can’t promise how you’ll react to the news itself though). It’s a imperfect work in progress, but your concerns are heard.
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Key Dem Senators Call For Probe Into Allegations That Egypt Funneled $10M To Trump For 2016 Campaign
Democratic senators on two relevant committees are calling for their panels to investigate allegations last month in the Washington Post about a now-closed government probe into whether Egypt funneled $10 million to Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign for president.
Continue reading “Key Dem Senators Call For Probe Into Allegations That Egypt Funneled $10M To Trump For 2016 Campaign “Trump Campaign Would Love A Government Shutdown
Once it became clear to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) last week that he didn’t have the votes to attach a bill that would require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote to a must-pass stopgap spending bill to keep the government open, he said he would spend the weekend having “family conversations” to build a “consensus.”
It’s unclear if Johnson was able to do that. But he did spend some time with Donald Trump this weekend.
Continue reading “Trump Campaign Would Love A Government Shutdown”Maybe It Won’t Be That Close?
Stuart Rothenberg is one of those old school election watcher/analyst types, from the pre-poll aggregator, pre-538 era. Rothenberg, Charlie Cook, Larry Sabato etc. His new column out from him in Roll Call caught my eye. The gist is simple enough. While he’s not predicting this outcome, Rothenberg says we shouldn’t be surprised if the 2024 presidential actually turns out not to be that close, despite the fact that a photo finish is the one thing everyone on every side of the race seems to agree on. He points to new high quality polls out of Pennsylvania and Iowa which suggest the race may not be quite as close as we all universally assume. And Rothenberg is not the type you’d generally expect to predict or hint at something like this. As Rothenberg puts it, after detailing this universal consensus: “[I]f you are something of a gambler and everyone you know believes the 2024 presidential contest is and will remain extremely close, you probably should put a few dollars on the possibility that November will produce a clear and convincing win for Harris.”
Continue reading “Maybe It Won’t Be That Close?”This Year, Nearly Everyone’s On The Same Page: GOP Gets To Work Early To Delegitimize Election
Ahead of the upcoming election, Donald Trump’s allies are advancing a more organized, more calculated version of their misinformation strategy from 2020.
Continue reading “This Year, Nearly Everyone’s On The Same Page: GOP Gets To Work Early To Delegitimize Election”A Very Important Read
Over the last ten days, as Donald Trump and JD Vance have rallied and incited hardened pro-Trump extremists to terrorize the community of Springfield, Ohio, most press reports — even ones from normal publications — have listed the Haitian immigrant population as ranging anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 people. The problem is that that number is almost certainly wrong.
Continue reading “A Very Important Read”Welp, Turns Out Police ARE Investigating Trump’s Arlington Cemetery Fiasco
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Not Done Yet!
Despite the Army declaring the “case closed,” a police investigation is underway into the Arlington National Cemetery fracas involving a cemetery staffer and two Trump campaign staffers, ABC News reports.
The police department at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, where the cemetery staffer filed a report, is apparently conducting its own investigation that is technically outside of the Army chain of command.
Among the things we learned from ABC News:
- An investigator with the base’s police department has sought in recent days to contact Trump campaign officials about the incident in order to interview the campaign staffers involved.
- Attorney Stanley Woodward is representing the Trump campaign staffers.
- The base’s police department is administered by the Army but is staffed by federal law enforcement officers, not military police.
- In a related development, the Army declined to release documents pertaining to the incident because “those documents are part of an open investigation,” ABC News said.
An unnamed Defense Department official confirmed the essence of the ABC News report, saying in a statement: “The investigation is ongoing at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall by base authorities.”
The Foiled Assassination Attempt Against Trump
New details emerged about the Florida golf course incident Sunday that marked the second apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump since July:
- Federal firearms charges were filed against the suspect, 58-year-old Ryan W. Routh. Additional criminal charges may be forthcoming.
- Routh may have been lying in wait for more than 11 hours before he was detected by Secret Service.
- Routh never got off a shot in the encounter with the Secret Service.
Secret Service Under Renewed Scrutiny
- The Secret Service conceded it did not do a full sweep of the golf course before Trump arrival in what was an unplanned outing.
- Experts called the incident a security failure even though the gunman was caught and Trump was uninjured.
- Trump’s golf outings have long been a concern for the Secret Service, but Trump himself largely dismissed those concerns.
The Suspect
- WSJ: U.S. Authorities Were Warned About Suspected Trump Gunman
- NYT: Suspect in Apparent Trump Assassination Plot Crusaded for Many Causes
- Reuters: The Erratic Life of a Struggling Roofing Contractor
The World’s Richest Moron Is Dangerous
Elon Musk deleted his own post on his platform X that wondered aloud why no one was trying to assassinate Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.
Trump-Vance In Action
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) deployed 36 state troopers to Springfield to guard 17 schools after the Trump-Vance ticket made the small city the centerpiece of its racist jihad against immigrants, specifically targeting the local Haitian immigrant community.
Dehumanization Alert
Portage County (Ohio) Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski posted on Facebook that local residents should keep a list of homes displaying Kamala Harris yard signs “Sooo…when the Illegal human ‘Locust’ (which she supports!) Need places to live…We’ll already have the addresses of the their New families…who supported their arrival!”
Oopsie!
Brian Beutler with an important catch from JD Vance’s Meet the Press interview Sunday: Trump-Vance is coming for Obamacare, and Vance tipped it off in a way that might be lost on most journalists and lay persons.
2024 Ephemera
- Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, plans to boot the Russian state TV network RT from its platforms.
- TPM’s Hunter Walker: Before He Hated Her, Donald Trump Thought Taylor Swift Was ‘Terrific’
- Scientific American makes a presidential endorsement for just the second time in the magazine’s 179-year history: Kamala Harris. The first time was when it endorsed Joe Biden in 2020, making Donald Trump the common theme here.
No Funny Business
A bipartisan group of nearly 20 ex-governors is sending a letter to their sitting successors urging them to certify the November election results by the Dec. 11 deadline prescribed by federal law.
Mark Meadows Loses In Arizona
A federal judge rejected Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ effort to remove the fake electors case against him in Arizona from state court.
The Supreme Court Isn’t Going To Fix Itself
If you can’t get enough of the NYT’s groundbreaking report over the weekend on the Supreme Court’s last term, I highly recommend Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck’s latest piece. A sample:
All of this leads to a discomfiting conclusion: This is a Court that is well aware of the political storms surrounding it (and, in some cases, for which it is responsible), and is not simply pulling in its oars. No one in Kantor and Liptak’s reporting is arguing for even a modicum of judicial restraint; and none of the justices to the right of Justice Barrett seem at all worried about the institutional impact of continuing to divide so transparently along partisan and ideological lines in the Court’s highest-profile (and themselves politically charged) rulings. What all of that suggests is that this is all going to get worse before it gets better—and that any arguments that the Court has somehow gotten past the nasty, bitter, and highly charged infighting that has characterized the past few terms are wanting for any basis in reality. This Court isn’t going to fix itself; perhaps we ought not to sit around waiting.
Vladeck’s full piece is here.
It Was Only A Matter Of Time Before This Happened
ProPublica: Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.
Kilauea Resumes Erupting
Magmatic movement over the weekend culminated in a small eruption on the flanks of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano Sunday night. The eruption paused most of Monday but resumed late in the day and continued after darkness fell. Here’s an overflight of the two new rifts that opened overnight Sunday:
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