A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Keeping A Blacklist And Checking It Twice
The Heritage Foundation is funding the creation of a blacklist of federal government workers who MAGA loyalists claim might obstruct the Trump II agenda, the Associated Press reported Monday.
The work of compiling the list of names of some 100 government employees is being done by a Kentucky fellow named Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation. The work is being financed with the help of a $100,000 “Heritage Innovation Prize” from the Heritage Foundation, long a bastion of Reagan conservatism in DC but now fully in MAGA mode. Heritage announced the prize winner back in May, referring to “the presence of anti-American bad actors burrowed into the administrative state.”
In announcing the prize, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts touted it as effort to expose the “Deep State”:
“The weaponization of the federal government under President Joe Biden is only possible because of the deep state of entrenched Leftist bureaucrats in the White House and its agencies. I am proud to support the outstanding work of AAF in their fight to hold our government accountable and drain it of bad actors determined to undermine our constitutional republic and weaponize government against the American people, our economy, and our institutions.”
For his part, Jones is a former staffer to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who went on to run the Heritage Foundation, and to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). Jones also did oppo work for Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Notably, the plan is to publish the list online. A doxxing in the public square as it were, with all the obvious historical echoes, as the AP rightly notes:
The public list-making conjures for some the era of Joseph McCarthy, the senator who conducted grueling hearings into suspected communist sympathizers during the Cold War. The hearings were orchestrated by a top staffer, Roy Cohn, who became a confidant of a younger Trump.
As for the criteria used to determine who makes the list and how those criteria are applied, the AP provides this chilling methodology: “They’re relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including workers.”
Sobering …
WaPo:
[T]he nation is experiencing a lull in political unrest — in fact, one of the quietest periods that extremism researchers have recorded in recent years. Chief among the factors explaining the lack of political violence, analysts say, is a simple one: Trump’s supporters believe he will win the presidency. …
There’s little reason for pro-Trump extremist groups or radicalized MAGA fans to demonstrate when they foresee the presumptive Republican nominee coasting to victory over President Biden in five months and positioned to enact promised “retribution” against his enemies in seven, political violence trackers say.
This is consistent with what TPM’s Josh Kovensky found a couple of weeks ago when posed the question: Where Are the Proud Boys?
The problem, of course, is that the election is not rigged and it’s very close, so the risk is growing of the Furies being unleashed in the event of a very plausible Biden win.
Oy Vey
TPM’s Hunter Walker: Jan. 6 Prisoners Recorded A Podcast From Jail With A Camera Someone ‘Accidentally’ Gave Them
On My Reading List
John Ganz’s new book – “When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s” – is yielding book reviews that themselves are worthy of your time and attention. Among them, this reflection by historian Thomas Zimmer on the the origins of Trumpism.
House GOP Gonna House GOP
The usual performative stuff from the Crazy Caucus:
- Exhibit A: “Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) introduced a resolution Friday urging the Supreme Court to “intervene” in the hush money case against former President Donald Trump before the 2024 election — a move that experts say is a political stunt that faces significant legal obstacles.”
- Exhibit B: “This House GOP is about to add another item to their long list of abnormal events: voting to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in ‘inherent contempt.’ Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said she will force a vote this week on the rarely used tool, which would direct the House sergeant at arms to take Garland into custody.”
SCOTUS Will Consider Ban On Transgender Care
The Supreme Court will take up Tennessee’s ban on transgender care for minors in its next term. The Biden administration was seeking Supreme Court review, so this isn’t one of those cases where the high court aggressively reached out to insinuate itself into a still-percolating area of the law.
🚨 Red Alert 🚨
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern: Sonia Sotomayor Just Sounded a Dire Warning About Marriage Equality
Aileen Cannon Is Off The Chain
Another day, another pointless hearing (or two) in the Mar-a-Lago case, another tongue-lashing of a federal prosecutor by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. Because media access to the courtroom is so limited, we’re left to pick through after the fact accounts from journalists in attendance:
Primary Day
- NY-16: It’s put up or shut up time in the most closely watched primary today, where Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) is trying to hold off a strong challenge from Westchester County executive George Latimer (D) in a race in suburban NYC dominated by the Israel-Palestine conflict.
- CO-04: Don’t look now but Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) appears poised to win today’s GOP primary in the new-to-her district she opted to run in because she feared losing her existing seat.
- UT-Sen: For all intents and purposes, Utah will pick Mitt Romney’s replacement in the GOP primary today. Two candidates have emerged from the crowded field: Trump-backed local Mayor Trent Staggs and Rep. John Curtis, who is leading in the polls.
Officially Too Close To Call
The AP declared the final tally in the VA-05 GOP primary too close to call, with incumbent Rep. Bob Good trailing state Sen. John McGuire (R) by some 375 votes (some reports peg it at 373). Because the margin is less than 1%, Good is entitled to a recount but must pay for it himself because the margin is more than 0.5% threshold for a state-funded recount.
I Wondered About This …
How did Sen. Bob Menendez’s allegedly criminal water-carrying for Egypt play inside his Senate office? We got a glimpse of that in testimony yesterday from a former senior aide to Menendez at his ongoing federal corruption trial in Manhattan.
Right Wing Celebrates Assange Plea Deal
A court filing yesterday in the far-flung U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands revealed that Julian Assange will be pleading guilty to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material.
Assange is scheduled to appear in federal court in Saipan on Wednesday morning local time, where he is expected to plead guilty, be sentenced to time already served, and allowed to travel on to his native Australia, ending his decade-plus legal saga, much it spent in the Ecuadorean embassy in London and in a British jail.
How much things have changed since Julian Assange’s Wikileaks published its bombshells in 2010. It seems like a lifetime ago now. The political landscape surrounding Assange has been turned upside down (though a less generous reading might argue otherwise). To give you some sense of where the core of Assange’s support now comes from:
And of course Russia remains happy to tout Assange:
Just Say It!
A very lively and engaging read from CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir on the pressures local TV weatherfolk are under when it comes to speaking to their audiences candidly about climate change.
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