You may remember that I wrote back in August about the MAGA Twitter warrior and Trump’s Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte. He’d already used that job to finagle his way into becoming chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He’s the third generation princeling of one of the country’s biggest home-building companies and was actively angling to get appointed to the Fed, maybe even as chair.
Continue reading “Big Crookin’ in Mortgage Paperwork Nirvana: The Bill Pulte Story”Trump Admin’s Nationwide Gerrymandering Assault Faces Setbacks
President Trump’s pressure campaign to get red states across the country to redraw their congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms has hit a roadblock as various GOP-led redistricting efforts have either stalled or failed in recent days.
Continue reading “Trump Admin’s Nationwide Gerrymandering Assault Faces Setbacks”So Actually …
With the big and (for me) really gratifying and enjoyable events we put on last week all wrapped, I was kind of seeing the whole TPM 25th anniversary thing in the rearview mirror. But with new pieces up on the site today in our 25th anniversary essay series, I remembered that the actual anniversary is tomorrow, Nov. 13. And here’s an interview which just came out this morning that the Columbia Journalism Review did with me about the 25th anniversary. I actually haven’t read it since I just got the link a few moments ago. But here is the link. Hopefully I didn’t say anything dumb.
How Trump Has Exploited Pardons and Clemency to Reward Allies and Supporters
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The beneficiaries of President Donald Trump’s mercy in his second term have mostly been people with access to the president or his inner circle. Those who have followed the rules set out by the Department of Justice, meanwhile, are still waiting.
Continue reading “How Trump Has Exploited Pardons and Clemency to Reward Allies and Supporters”Big Coverup Exposed in Bogus Mortgage Fraud Cases
A Scandal Within a Scandal
The Trump DOJ’s bogus prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James just got a lot more difficult to pull off, with what appears to be a major administration coverup of the origins of the case against her.
In a new report, the WSJ has fleshed out a Reuters account from last week about the ousting of the acting inspector general at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. It gets a little complicated, but stick with me. It’s important.
As you well know by now, FHFA director Bill Pulte is the instigator of the bogus mortgage fraud investigations of James, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA). The Trump administration has seized on Pulte’s bogus claims to, variously, indict James, attempt to fire Cook, and launch a criminal investigation of Schiff.
It’s the James case that’s of most interest here. She is seeking to dismiss the indictment against her on the grounds that it is a vindictive and selective prosecution. The new revelations bolster her arguments for dismissal.
Watchdogs at Fannie Mae had been looking into whether Pulte had “improperly obtained mortgage records of key Democratic officials,” including James, the WSJ reports:
Fannie’s ethics and investigations group had received internal complaints alleging senior officials had improperly directed staff to access the mortgage documents of James and others, according to the people. The Fannie investigators were probing to find out who had made the orders, whether Pulte had the authority to seek the documents and whether or not they had followed proper procedure, the people said.
The investigation into who was rifling around in the personal mortgage records of prominent Democrats was serious enough, apparently, to bring it to Joe Allen, the acting inspector general for FHFA, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (For those keeping score at home, Pulte is not just just the director of FHFA, he’s also chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.)
That’s where things get interesting, according to the WSJ: “The acting inspector general then passed the report to the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia, some of the people said.” The Eastern District of Virginia is where recently-installed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan is prosecuting James.
Still with me?
Last week’s Reuter’s report went further in describing the connection between Allen’s work and the James prosecution (emphasis mine):
Allen received notice of his termination from the White House after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors in that office, according to four sources. The information he turned over was constitutionally required, two of them said, while a third described it as being potentially relevant in discovery.
The description by Reuters is vague, but it suggests that Allen was attempting to give exculpatory evidence to the prosecution team, which, generally speaking, the government is legally required to share with the defendant — in this case, James.
In her motion last Friday to dismiss the case for vindictive prosecution, James referenced the Reuters’ report and indicated that she had not received from prosecutors whatever it was that Allen had turned over:
“The defense is left guessing at what other prosecutorial vindictiveness discovery exists in the government’s hands,” James’ lawyers wrote.
Allen wasn’t the only one ousted. About a dozen officials within Fannie Mae’s ethics and internal investigations unit were fired on Oct. 29 in the wake of the probe into origins of the bogus mortgage fraud claims and who had access to the personal mortgage records of James and others.
To sum up: Internal government watchdogs who were looking into the origins of the bogus mortgage fraud claims emanating from the Trump administration were fired en masse, but not before the acting inspector general for the FHFA managed to turn over what appears to be exculpatory evidence to federal prosecutors in the James case.
Stay tuned on this one.
Kash Patel and the ‘Boondoggle Ranch’
In a story headlined “Kash Patel’s ‘Effin Wild’ Ride as FBI Director,” the WSJ brings together the worst of his recent transgressions and adds a new boondoggle:
- Patel allegedly disrupted a counterterrorism investigation by prematurely posting about arrests in Michigan on Halloween: “Two friends of the alleged terrorists in New Jersey and Washington state caught wind of the arrests and moved up plans to leave the country, according to court documents and law-enforcement officials familiar with the investigation.”
- Patel used his government plane to attend his country music singer girlfriend’s performance of the national anthem in Pennsylvania and then fly to her Nashville home – in the middle of the government shutdown.
- Patel used the Gulfstream G550 to visit a “hunting resort” in Texas called the Boondoggle Ranch.
This mostly pales next to Patel purging the FBI of agents who investigated Trump and allowing the bureau to be used to target Trump foes for retribution, but it is the kind of conduct that can get you in trouble in MAGA world if you’re not the president.
Ed Martin Tries to Save Tina Peters
Former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters was convicted on state charges for trying to prove the 2020 Big Lie, so a presidential pardon from Donald Trump won’t help her, but U.S. pardon attorney Ed Martin is continuing to advocate for some sort of federal intervention on her behalf, CNN reports:
Martin has continued to advocate for relief for Peters in recent weeks, several people familiar with the push told CNN, even though it is extremely unusual for the Justice Department to intervene in a state case this way. The department has already involved itself in a long-shot federal case, known as a habeas petition, that Peters filed in March, and urged a federal judge to free her from state prison while she appeals her conviction. That matter is still pending, but a decision is expected this year.
In the meantime, Martin says the Justice Department is trying to get Peters moved to federal prison.
Trump’s Attack on Higher Ed: Berkeley Edition
A protest Monday night in Berkeley at event held by Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA has gotten the attention of the Trump DOJ. Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the civil rights division, tweeted the announcement of her “investigation” while propagandizing about “Antifa.”
Every protest on a college campus is now a pretext for the Trump administration to “investigate” the university.
The Destruction: CFPB Edition
The Trump DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel has taken the position that the funding mechanism for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unlawful, leaving the agency with only enough cash to continue operating until early 2026, Politico reports.
Tracking Trump’s Domestic Military Deployments
Lawfare has a new tracker of the size, location, and purported legal authority for President Trump’s various domestic military deployments:
Venezuela Watch
- The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group has arrived in the Caribbean region as part of the Trump administration’s saber-rattling directed toward the government of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.
- Venezuela has responded with a mass mobilization.
- The United Kingdom — one of the Five Eyes countries — has suspended sharing intelligence with the United States about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean because it does not want to be complicit in what it regards as illegal U.S. strikes, CNN reports.
$3M and ‘Sincere Regrets’
The Kansas newspaper raided by local law enforcement in August 2023 has reached a $3 million settlement with Marion County that includes a public apology.
Quote of the Day
“Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”–Jeffrey Epstein, referring to Donald Trump in a January 2019 email
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The 8 Dissenters Did Democrats a Favor
The House can be expected to pass the government funding bill tonight, which, after President Trump signs it, will end the shutdown. The eight senators — seven Democrats and an independent — who voted for cloture to end the shutdown have been widely condemned. “America deserves better,” likely presidential candidate Gavin Newsom declared. But in my opinion, the eight senators did the right thing and did the Democratic Party a favor.
Continue reading “The 8 Dissenters Did Democrats a Favor”The Fitness Influencers Who Tried to Make Me Like Trump
It was March 2020 and suddenly I had much more free time on my hands. Presumably you did, too.
All the hours we’d otherwise have spent commuting, traveling, or socializing were suddenly ours to fill with other diversions. In hindsight, it’s striking how much we gave over to screentime. That includes all the restless evenings wiled away in the infinite scroll. But even bringing our favorite hobbies and goods and services home entailed logging on.
How do you make sourdough starter? Ask the internet.
What’s the best recipe for your favorite cocktail? Ask the internet.
How do you exercise in your living room with bodyweight or minimal equipment? Ask the internet.
With these questions, we gave precious details about ourselves over to the companies that control the information our computers feed to us.
And it was through this give and take that I eventually realized our information ecosystem had undergone a transformation. Where the digital-media universe had, for most of its existence, resembled a content archipelago divided by niche, somewhere along the line it had become an amorphous blob, and politics had suffused everything — often in subliminal, insidious ways.
Continue reading “The Fitness Influencers Who Tried to Make Me Like Trump”Anti-Feminist Media Is Trying to Make Young Women Turn on Birth Control
In the aftermath of the 2024 election, explanations for Donald Trump’s decisive victory abounded. One narrative that quickly took hold was Trump’s popularity with online “manosphere” influencers — Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, Adin Ross, the NELK Boys, Theo Von — and their massive audiences of young men, many of whom are reeled in to their content by seemingly apolitical interests, then radicalized over time by these creators’ takes on feminism and “wokeness.”
But we’ve seen far less attention paid to how young women are also being radicalized in digital spaces, similarly lured by seemingly apolitical content — about celebrity gossip, “natural” birth control, “clean girl” aesthetics, and dating — only to eventually be persuaded that our rights to abortion, contraception, even to vote or own bank accounts, were all a mistake. Billionaire-backed, anti-feminist women’s media outlets and viral female lifestyle influencers are increasingly shaping young women’s politics, too.
As a reporter at Jezebel and now at the newsletter Abortion, Every Day, I’ve watched TikTok and other social platforms become hotbeds for birth control disinformation. For years now, conservative outlets like the National Review have baselessly characterized birth control pills as “carcinogenic,” and anti-abortion organizations frequently lie that hormonal contraception can cause infertility and a range of other adverse health outcomes. But it wasn’t until the last several years, with the rise of women’s lifestyle influencers who don’t outwardly identify as right-wing, that anti-birth control content reached mainstream audiences.
Continue reading “Anti-Feminist Media Is Trying to Make Young Women Turn on Birth Control “No Podcast This Week
Kate is out on a much-deserved vacation, so there will be no episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast this week!
We will be back next week, and in the meantime, be sure to check out last week’s live show in honor of TPM’s 25th Anniversary. See you soon!
The Status Interview—Or How To Write Up a Senate Purge List
Over the last couple days I’ve argued both that the denouement of the shutdown standoff was a flub and an embarrassment and also that the overall situation is going reasonably well. This isn’t defending the members of the Democratic caucus. I don’t need to defend or attack them because I’m mostly indifferent to them. I’m looking to a half-dozen year or more time horizon in which almost all the current senators need to be convinced to take a dramatically different approach to politics or purged from the ranks of elected office. Let’s call it Change or Purge. To me, from March to now was a big step forward. The way of operating during this shutdown was very different from what happened in March. And the way it ended — here I know many disagree with me — doesn’t negate what happened during the last five weeks, either in terms of the changed behavior or what was accomplished. This is a multi-course treatment. The results of the first course were encouraging. So, on to the remaining nine.
Since I’ve focused on this Change or Purge framework in this post I’d like to flesh out some of what that means. Of course a lot of this is either characterological or a way of using power. That can be hard to capture in bullet points or outside the context of a specific political situation. But there are a series of things senators support or don’t support that gives a clear indication of whether they are serious about confronting the challenge of the moment or battling back from Trumpism.
Continue reading “The Status Interview—Or How To Write Up a Senate Purge List”