Aileen Cannon Continues To Make A Mess Of The MAL Case

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

What Cannon Hath Wrought

Two developments yesterday that show what an absolute mess U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is making of the Mar-a-Lago case.

First, Donald Trump asked for a 10-day extension for him to file his replies on his motions to dismiss the case. It was a lame ask, a totally foreseeable deadline that had been in place for some time, and in a case with increasingly pressing time constraints, a clear effort to game the proceedings for more time. Despite that, Cannon quickly granted the request!

Second, in another troubling development, a key witness in the Mar-a-Lago case went public with CNN. Brian Butler, a former 20-year employee at Mar-a-Lago, is identified as “Trump Employee 5” in the indictment. Butler essentially confirmed what the indictment says about what he witnessed in the case. But for our purposes, it was most telling that Butler decided he’d rather come forward on his own terms than wait for Cannon to release prematurely the names of the witnesses in the case, as she keeps threatening to do.

Butler was primarily a witness to the coverup. It’s a good get by CNN. But it’s driven at least in part by Cannon’s mismanagement of the case. The only possible silver lining here is that some of the testimony that might otherwise not come out before Election Day due to Cannon’s slow-rolling of the case is getting to see the light of day.

Trump Is All About Delay, Delay, Delay

On the same day Trump won a deadline extension in the Mar-a-Lago case on the basis that he needed to prep for the New York hush money trial, we learned he was seeking to delay that trial, too. It’s a contradiction that Special Counsel Jack Smith pointed out to Judge Cannon, to no avail.

Trump, who didn’t raise a presidential immunity defense in a timely fashion in the New York case (and to the extent he did he lost), now wants the trial delayed until the Supreme Court rules later this year on his immunity argument.

The trial judge in New York was not amused by the last-minute filing, and while he didn’t rule yet he imposed new restrictions on pre-trial filings in the final days before trial is scheduled to begin on March 25.

Correction: This item has been updated to reflect that Trump sought the delay in the New York case in a March 7 filing, but we didn’t learn about it until yesterday.

Trump Launches Purge At RNC

Your recurring reminder that Trump is doing to the Republican Party what he wants to do to America. Any schadenfreude you may feel should be tempered by the knowledge that Trump would leave the country a husk of its former self, hollowed out by nepotism, cronyism, and graft.

Trump has promised a purge of the federal government if he is re-elected, and he’s practicing on the RNC:

  • Politico: Bloodbath at RNC
  • The Guardian: ‘Absolute bloodbath’ at RNC as new leadership loyal to Trump purges staff
  • NYT: Trump Aides, Taking Over R.N.C., Order Mass Layoffs

Can E. Jean Carroll Sue Trump Again?

Donald Trump repeated his defamatory comments toward E. Jean Carroll over the weekend in Georgia and again on CNBC Monday, teeing up the possibility that she could sue him again. The CNBC comments were particularly problematic for Trump, as George Conway noted.

Meanwhile, Carroll did not oppose the Trump appeal bond that received so much attention over the weekend.

Navarro Ordered To Report To Prison

Trump White House official Peter Navarro is ordered to report to federal prison in Miami on March 19 to serve his four-month sentence for contempt of Congress. His request to the appeals court to delay his sentence while he appeals his conviction remains pending.

Republicans Know Journalists Are Easy Marks

Another instance yesterday of the journalistic craving for “new” sometimes overwhelming good sense and judgment.

In the first example, House Republicans released a transcript of an interview the Jan. 6 committee did with a Secret Service agent who was driving then-President Trump from the Ellipse speech back to the White House.

The release was intended to show that he contradicted the account relayed by Cassidy Hutchinson that Trump lunged for the steering wheel. But the importance of the account was not the narrow question of whether Trump “lunged” but whether he wanted to accompany the mob to the Capitol. The transcript confirmed that!

The transcript also revealed that Trump said he wasn’t worried about his own security because the mob consisted of his own supporters, even though an hour later he was claiming it was antifa.

This is a product of the House GOP’s “investigate the Jan. 6 investigators” muddy-the-water exercise, and it’s working.

Biden Special Counsel Testifies On The Hill Today

Special Counsel Robert Hur is due to testify on the Hill today at the request of House Republicans. His last day at the Justice Department was yesterday. In advance of Hur’s testimony, the transcript of Hur’s interview with President Biden (Part I and Part II) was provided early to some new outlets. Anticipation is high for this appearance on both sides of the aisle. Stay tuned.

More On That Right-Wing Secret Society

The Guardian has its own version of the story TPM published over the weekend on the Society for American Civic Renewal and its ties to the Claremont Institute.

Ooof …

AP: “A Kansas judge ruled Monday that the state isn’t violating transgender residents’ rights under the state constitution by refusing to change their driver’s licenses to reflect their gender identities.”

2024 Ephemera

  • Trump called for cuts to Social Security and Medicare during an interview on CNBC.
  • President Biden seized on Trump’s remarks, telling an audience in New Hampshire: “Bottom line is, he’s still at it. I’m never going to allow that to happen.”
  • The Senate Majority PAC has reserved a total of $239 million in TV ad time to defend Democratic Senate seats in seven states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, and Montana.

How Much Longer Until Election Day?

A GOP event in Kansas, as first reported by the Kansas Reflector, got weird:

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Kari Lake Hopes You’ve Had Your Fingers In Your Ears The Last Four Years

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

After earning an endorsement from the National Republican Senatorial Committee at the beginning of the year, Kari Lake is trying to appear less insane to Arizonans who have had the unfortunate experience of being exposed to her politics since 2020.

Continue reading “Kari Lake Hopes You’ve Had Your Fingers In Your Ears The Last Four Years” →

Election Departments Partner With Local Police To Get Out Ahead Of Expected 2024 Threats

Posted on by Khaya Himmelman

Back in 2012, an elections official in California witnessed an Election Day skirmish between two candidates at a polling place. 

Continue reading “Election Departments Partner With Local Police To Get Out Ahead Of Expected 2024 Threats” →

Biden and Netanyahu Rush to a Breach

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I find it very hard to make sense of what the likely outcomes are. But I wanted to point your attention to a series of developments in the Biden-Netanyahu relationship and the U.S.-Israel relationship that could escalate dramatically very soon. First there’s this article in Haartez which says the U.S. might suspend the sale of offensive weaponry to Israel by later this month. (Unfortunately the piece is paywalled.) The tripwire is a national security memorandum Biden signed last month which gives Israel until March 25th to provide the U.S. with written assurances that weapons sales from the U.S. will only be used in accord with international law and that it will pledge to facilitate and not obstruct aid deliveries into Gaza.

That’s the calendar tripwire.

Continue reading “Biden and Netanyahu Rush to a Breach” →

What Are They Doing At the Claremont Institute?

Posted on by Josh Marshall

One of the big developments of the Trump years is the increasingly central role of a California outfit called the Claremont Institute as a kind of house think tank of Trumpism. If you haven’t had a chance yet to see our big exclusive from over the weekend (thank you, members!) you’ll want to get reading. Our Josh Kovensky got a trove of documents from the secret society planning and recruiting for a white, male, Christian government that will take over after the fall of the American “regime.” And a central player in that group is none other than the head of the Claremont Institute. Check our exclusive report out here.

Another Rising GOP Star Succumbs To Their Own Buffoonery

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt’s epic flop of a State of the Union response had something that the previous pratfalls of Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio couldn’t match: It was built around a whopper of a lie.

By the following day, former AP foreign correspondent Jonathan M. Katz had unpacked the essential falsity of Britt’s human trafficking anecdote that she used to blast Biden’s border policy. In a TikTok video that now has more than 2 million views, Katz showed how Britt twisted and misused the underlying episode, which actually happened in Mexico, nearly 20 years ago, when George W. Bush was president:

@katzonearth This isn’t going to make her like TikTok more. #katiebritt #sotu #stateoftheunion #lies #politicians #biden2024 #trump2024 #immigration #traffickingawarenes #mexico #bordersecurity #fyp ♬ original sound – Jonathan M. Katz

Britt’s star-crossed turn in the national spotlight went so poorly that she had to go on Fox News over the weekend to try to clean it up, and even there she got pushed.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect of this entire mini-scandal is the inept preening by the other Alabama senator, Tommy Tuberville, who for at least one news cycle wasn’t his state’s worst senator.

Scarlett Johansson Was On Fire

A SNL performance for the ages:

Can’t Get Enough Katie Britt?

Me either! Here ya go:

  • Fact checked: Katie Britt’s false linkage of a sex-trafficking case to Joe Biden
  • Harsh but fair: Katie Britt wasn’t speaking in a baby voice but in the more particular “Fundie Baby Voice,” Jess Piper argues.
  • Stunned into silence: The reaction of the hosts of this right-wing show was the pièce de résistance (start at the 2:26 mark):

An Absolute Must Read

TPM’s Josh Kovensky with a big new piece on a far-right secret society with connections to the pro-Trump Claremont Institute that envisions a future Christian-run government after a cataclysmic “national divorce.” It’s only for men and certain kinds of “trinitarian” Christians. Women, Jews, Muslims, and Mormons need not apply.

What sets the group apart from a lot of what we see on the far-right fringe is these seem to be people of means, with social capital and political connections. A Knights Templar of the country club, if you will.

For a bit more about the story behind the story, including the clever public records requests that Josh used to pull it together, I have you covered.

Trump Posts Appeal Bond In E. Jean Carroll Case

Donald Trump managed to come up with an appeal bond to cover E. Jean Carroll’s $83.3 million defamation judgment against him. Carroll has until 11 a.m. ET today to oppose the bond. In light of some of the reaction to this news (a mix of disappointment and suspicion), a few cautionary notes:

  • An appeal bond is good news for Carroll, and she celebrated it.
  • The insurer that provided Trump with the bond is owned by the multinational insurance giant Chubb, a legit company that is unlikely to be doing Trump a favor that puts it at a financial disadvantage. Yes, it does business in Russia, but it also does business in dozens of other countries and has no special or unique Russia connection.
  • Trump pays the insurer a fee for the bond and posts collateral to secure his obligation to pay the insurer if it is forced to pay Carroll. It’s a fair and reasonable question whether some other person or entity posted collateral or promised in some way to cover Trump’s obligation, but Trump does have significant assets so it’s not a sure thing that he was forced to rely on a third party to bail him out.

The more interesting question is how Trump comes up with the appeal bond in the New York civil fraud case, where the judgment against him is a whopping $454.2 million.

Trump Accountability Miscellany

  • New book: Trump campaign insider recounts failed hunt for 2020 fraud
  • Ilya Somin: What the Supreme Court Got Wrong in the Trump Disqualification Clause Case

Trump Calls Journalists ‘Criminals’

How is Trump taking Biden’s State of the Union tour de force? In the usual fashion:

The NYT summarizes the Rome, Georgia speech well:

Over nearly two hours, Mr. Trump lobbed sharp personal attacks at Mr. Biden’s mental and physical health and revived a litany of grievances against political opponents, prosecutors and television executives. He used inflammatory language to stoke fears about immigration, called the press “criminals” and repeated his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

On top of all that, Trump continued to defame E. Jean Carroll.

Trump Praises Orbán

Trump continues to delight in strongman-ism:

2024 Ephemera

  • Biden slams Trump-Orbán meeting.
  • Semafor: How ‘Project 2025’ became the Biden campaign’s favorite target
  • Biden says he regrets having referred to an undocumented immigrant as an “illegal” in his State of the Union address.
  • Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) re-ups his pledge not to support Donald Trump for president.
  • Cameron Joseph: How do you cover a candidate everyone knows—and no one remembers? 

Eating Their Own

Not even Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) is wingnut enough for the MAGA hordes, who claim they will submit the required signatures today to force a recall vote against Vos for not being sufficiently onboard with the 2020 Big Lie.

How Senate GOP Leadership Races Stack Up

As things stand now, the contests for the GOP leadership are shaping up as:

  • Leader: John Thune (SD) v. John Cornyn (TX)
  • Whip: John Barrasso (WY)
  • Conference Chair: Joni Ernst (IA) v. Tom Cotton (AR)
  • Republican Policy Committee chair: TBD

Thune is the current whip, Barrasso is the current conference chair, and Ernst is the current Republican Policy Committee chair.

Status Check: Hunter Biden

  • Special Counsel David Weiss says Hunter Biden invented “a conspiracy theory” to try to get the tax case in California dismissed.
  • WaPo: FBI informant accused of smearing Bidens had past credibility issues

Not Our Best Or Brightest

A State of the Union anecdote that offers a telling glimpse into the House GOP Crazy Caucus:

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Check Out This New Exclusive from TPM

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I hope you have a chance to check out our new exclusive from TPM’s Josh Kovensky. Josh got access to a trove of documents from a secret society of right-wing Christian men who are on a crusade to build a Christian government-in-waiting for after the right achieves “regime change” in the United States, either through a civil war or a “national divorce.” The group goes by a fairly anodyne name, the Society for American Civic Renewal. But that belies the extremism of the program.

Of course you and your three weirdo pals can call yourself a secret society. And we’ve seen examples of militia groups or boogaloo boys saying some of the same things. What’s different here though is that these aren’t people on the fringe. They are people who present as respectable business leaders, academics, think tankers. Indeed, one of their number is the President of the Claremont Institute, which, in recent years, has functioned as a kind of brain trust of Trump campaign intellectuals. It’s fascinating, disturbing and important story and your memberships made it possible. You can read it here.

UAW’s Southern Strategy: Union Revs Up Drive To Get Workers Employed By Foreign Automakers To Join Its Ranks

Posted on by John Light

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

Persuading Southern autoworkers to join a union remains one of the U.S. labor movement’s most enduring challenges, despite persistent efforts by the United Auto Workers union to organize this workforce.

To be sure, the UAW does have members employed by Ford and General Motors at facilities in Kentucky, Texas, Missouri and Mississippi.

However, the UAW has tried and largely failed to organize workers at foreign-owned companies, including Volkswagen and Nissan in Southern states, where about 30% of all U.S. automotive jobs are located.

But after the UAW pulled off its most successful strike in a generation against Detroit’s Big Three automakers, through which it won higher pay and better benefits for its members in 2023, the union is trying again to win over Southern autoworkers.

The UAW has pledged to spend $40 million through 2026 to expand its ranks to include more auto and electric battery workers, including many employed in the South, where the industry is quickly gaining ground.

Based on my five decades of experience as a union organizer and labor historian, I anticipate that, recent momentum aside, the UAW will face stiff resistance from Toyota, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and the other big foreign automakers that operate in the South. The pushback is also coming from Southern politicians, many of whom have expressed concern that UAW success would undermine the region’s carefully crafted approach to economic development.

Lauding the ‘perfect three-legged stool’

After the region’s formerly robust textile industry imploded in the 1980s and 1990s because of an influx of cheap imports, Southern business and political leaders revived the region’s manufacturing base by successfully recruiting foreign automakers.

The strategy of those leaders reflects what the Business Council of Alabama has described as the “perfect three-legged stool for economic development.” It consists of “an eager and trainable workforce with a work ethic unparalleled anywhere in the nation,” accompanied by a “low-cost and business-friendly economic climate, and the lack of labor union activity and participation.”

The prospect of a low-wage and reliable workforce has lured the likes of Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Kia, Honda, Volkswagen and Hyundai to the South in recent decades.

Although many of those companies negotiate constructively with unions on their home turf, the lack of union membership and the protections that go with it have proved a draw for them in the United States.

As journalist Harold Meyerson has noted, these foreign automakers embraced the opportunity to “slum” in America and “do things they would never think of doing at home.”

The absence of union representation is a major reason why.

Less than 5% of workers in six Southern states are union members, and only Alabama and Mississippi approach union membership levels above 7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That’s below the national average, which slid to 10% in 2023.

Blaming unions for bad job prospects

One way automotive employers in the South have blocked unions is by portraying them as outdated institutions whose bloated contracts and rigid work rules destroy jobs by making domestic auto companies uncompetitive.

Automotive leaders in the South argue the region has developed an alternative labor relations model that provides management with flexibility, offers wages and benefits superior to what local workers have earned previously and frees employees from any subordination to union directives.

Southern automakers also draw on another powerful resource in resisting the UAW: public intervention by top elected officials.

In 2014, when the UAW attempted to organize a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Bob Corker, Tennessee’s junior U.S. senator and a former mayor of Chattanooga, weighed in as voting commenced.

Corker claimed he had received a pledge from Volkswagen’s management to expand production in Chattanooga if workers voted against the union.

Three years later, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant similarly urged Nissan workers to reject the UAW.

“If you want to take away your job, if you want to end manufacturing as we know it in Mississippi, just start expanding unions,” Bryant said in 2017.

A majority of the autoworkers heeded their conservative leaders’ advice in both cases and voted against joining the UAW.

Making dire warnings

With the UAW ramping up its organizing efforts again, Southern governors are sounding alarms once more.

“The Alabama model for economic success is under attack,” warned Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.

She then asked workers: “Do you want continued opportunity and success the Alabama way? Or do you want out-of-state special interests telling Alabama how to do business?”

Unions “have crippled and distorted the progress and prosperity of industries and cities in other states,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster declared in his Jan. 24, 2024, State of the State address. He then issued an ominous call: “We will fight” the UAW’s labor organizers “all the way to the gates of hell. And we will win.”

The UAW counters that union membership means workers will get predictable raises, better benefits and improved workplace policies.

Changing context

Although these arguments from anti-union politicians haven’t changed much over the years, the context certainly has.

The UAW’s big wins on pay and benefits resulting from its 2023 strike against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis have increased its clout and credibility.

Many automakers with a U.S. workforce not covered by the UAW — including Volkswagen, Honda, Hyundai and other foreign transplants — responded by raising pay at their Southern plants. The union justifiably describes those raises as a “UAW bump.”

The UAW will presumably cite these pay hikes in its outreach to workers at Tesla and other nonunion companies involved in electric vehicle and battery production in which the industry is investing heavily.

“Nonunion autoworkers are being left behind,” the UAW’s recruiting website warns. “Are you ready to stand up and win your fair share?”

The pitch continues: “It’s time for nonunion autoworkers to join the UAW and win economic justice at Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Tesla, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, Mazda, Rivian, Lucid, Volvo and beyond.”

Some Southern autoworkers, meanwhile, have been expressing concerns over scheduling, safety, two-tier wage systems and workloads that they believe a union could help resolve.

It’s also clear they’ve been emboldened by the gains they have seen UAW members make.

Revving up

The UAW’s campaign is just starting to rev up.

In accordance with its “30-50-70” strategy, the union is announcing the share of workers who have signed union cards in stages. Once it hits 30% at a factory, the UAW will announce publicly that an organizing campaign is underway. At the 50% mark, it will hold a public rally for workers that includes their neighbors and families, as well as UAW President Shawn Fain.

Once it gains support from 70% of a plant’s workers, the UAW says it will seek voluntary recognition by management.

A recent National Labor Relations Board ruling provides unions with additional leverage in this process. If management refuses to recognize the union’s request, the employer would then be required to seek an NLRB representation election.

To win, unions need a majority of those voting. Under the new rule, if management is found to have interfered with workers’ rights during the election process, it could then be required to bargain with the union.

So far, the UAW has announced that it has obtained the support of more than half the workers at factories belonging to two of the 13 nonunion automakers it’s targeting: a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a Mercedes-Benz factory near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It has also obtained 30% support at a Hyundai plant in Alabama and a Toyota engine factory in Missouri.

I believe that the stakes are high for all workers, not just those in the auto industry.

As D. Taylor, the president of Unite Here, a union that represents workers in a wide range of occupations, recently observed: “If you change the South, you change America.”

The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’

Posted on by Josh Kovensky

A secret, men-only right-wing society with members in influential positions around the country is on a crusade: to recruit a Christian government that will form after the right achieves regime change in the United States, potentially via a “national divorce.” 

Continue reading “Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’” →

How Did Biden Do in the SOTU?

Posted on by Josh Marshall

With a day’s reflection my thoughts on last night’s State of the Union are pretty similar to what they were right afterwards. As I was telling my sons this morning, there are all sorts of objective standards about what counts as a good speech, good communication, good organization, etc. But those aren’t usually that relevant in a political context. It’s better to be a good public speaker than not, of course. But what’s good or not good really only has any meaning in a specific political context and as it relates to trying to achieve a certain goal.

Continue reading “How Did Biden Do in the SOTU?” →