Under pressure from an impending snowstorm (translation for non-D.C. weather babies: a predicted couple-inch sprinkling), both chambers of Congress Thursday passed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded until early March.
Continue reading “Congress Boots The Government Funding Can Down The Road, Again”WTF? Or, The Latest on Fani Willis
A Georgia state judge has scheduled a hearing on allegations that Fulton County DA Fani Willis had an affair with one of the lawyers she appointed to work as a lead prosecutor in her prosecution of Donald Trump and others.
The Post write-up says that the hearing is is about whether Willis “engaged in an improper relationship and mishandled public money.” When I read this I thought it wasn’t clear if the relationship was actually improper aside from the allegations of misuse of public money. But my momentary double take captures the uncanny dualism of this story.
Continue reading “WTF? Or, The Latest on Fani Willis”Is DeSantis’s Crew Getting Whacked?
Over eight years Donald Trump has made it clear that if you cross him your career in Republican politics will be over. With Ron DeSantis’s campaign flatlining, Donald Trump seems to be moving ahead with settling the family’s outstanding business. What jumped out at me here was that his target is not a Mitt Romney (one of the only exceptions to the rule) or Adam Kinzinger or Liz Cheney. Next up appears to be one of the diehardest members of the rump of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Bob Good of Virginia.
Continue reading “Is DeSantis’s Crew Getting Whacked?”Listen To This: The Hawkeye View Of Trump’s Glaring Weakness
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh analyze the Iowa caucuses and what the results tell us about the rest of the primary season and beyond.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Ouch! Trump Lawyer Takes An Absolute Drubbing By The Judge
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Alina Habba Had An Unforgettable Day In Court
I can’t recall a lawyer having a worse go of it in open court than Trump lawyer Alina Habba did yesterday in the damages trial against Donald Trump by E. Jean Carroll.
Habba had the unenviable task of cross-examining Carroll, the 80-year-old victim of Trump’s sexual assault and subsequent defamation. But Habba made things so much worse for herself. So much worse.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, a 79-year-old veteran jurist, shot Habba down so many times that I started to wonder if her misguided strategy was to somehow make the jury hate her more than her client. What good that would do, one can only imagine.
I counted at least five times that the judge ordered Habba: “Sit down.”
But there was also the one time that he ordered her to stand up: “Ms. Habba, when you speak in this courtroom or any other courtroom you’ll stand up.”
Habba struggled to make proper objections during Carroll’s direct testimony. She struggled to introduce evidence on cross. She struggled with the hearsay rule. It was epically bad.
I don’t usually like to clutter up Morning Memo with numerous tweets from the same thread, but these are so good (thanks to the work of Matthew Russell Lee) and so many of you are no longer on X/Twitter, that I’m going to make an exception today. Here’s a choice sample, in chronological order:
RW: Let's show this–
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) January 17, 2024
Habba: Objection
Judge Kaplan: Ground?
Habba: It's prejudicial.
Judge Kaplan: All evidence is prejudicial against the party it is offered against
Habba: She said too different things about Montana
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) January 17, 2024
Judge Kaplan: She said it's great and before she said, it's not boring – that's your difference?
Habba: I can ask another question.
Judge Kaplan: That would be a good idea.
Habba: You were a regular at Elaine's, right?
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) January 17, 2024
Carroll: Yes.
Habba: It's hard to get into, isn't it?
Carroll: No, not hard.
Judge Kaplan: It doesn't exist anymore. That's why it's hard to get into
Habba: Do you know if there is a communications team at the White House?
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) January 17, 2024
Carroll: I don't know.
Habba: I represent to you that it does –
Judge Kaplan: You're not going to be representing anything, or you'll be a witness.
Habba: How do you suggest I proceed?
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) January 17, 2024
Judge Kaplan: Show it to her, ask if she recognizes it.
Habba: Do you recognize it?
Carroll: Yes.
Judge Kaplan: It's not marked. It should be marked. Do it appropriately. Do it overnight. They. Need. To. Be. Premarked.
Habba: Ms. Carroll, are you aware it is illegal to delete evidence?
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) January 17, 2024
Carroll's lawyer: Objection
Habba: I move for a mistrial, evidence has been deleted
Judge Kaplan: Denied and the jury will disregard everything Ms. Habba just said
They're back.
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) January 17, 2024
Habba: Have you deleted text message and not just emails?
Carroll: When I see threats I delete them.
Habba: Can we have a sidebar?
Judge Kaplan: No.
If you’ve spent most of the last decade yearning for someone to bring Trump to heel, perhaps you can vicariously enjoy Habba’s drubbing as a proxy for Trump himself.
Trump Almost Bounced From Court
As for Trump, Judge Kaplan confronted him directly for making comments about the proceedings that were audible to the jury in the courtroom.
If Trump continued to act out, Kaplan told him, he would forfeit his right to be present for the trial.
That led to a brief but charged back and forth between Trump and the judge.
Trump Self Bounces
Quote Of The Day
I think a lot of people in this country are out of touch with reality and will accept anything Donald Trump tells them. You had a jury that said that Donald Trump raped a woman. And that doesn’t seem to be moving the needle. There’s a lot of things about today’s electorate that I have a hard time understanding.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT)
Maine Disqualification Clause Case Paused
A state court in Maine has ordered Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to hold off on implementing her decision to remove Donald Trump from the GOP primary ballot until after the U.S. Supreme Court decides the Disqualification Clause case out of Colorado.
Yesterday’s Biggest News
In oral arguments Wednesday, the Supreme Court conservative supermajority looked poised to radically rewrite its own precedent on administrative law, firmly grasping the brass ring the conservative legal movement has been reaching for for decades.
If that doesn’t sound particularly serious, let me be clear: It likely portends a fundamental reordering of public and private life in America that will endure for decades and be felt in more ways than we can possibly envision from our current vantage point.
Time To Step Up
Greg Sargent: Trump Pocketed Millions in Foreign Payments. Why Won’t Senate Democrats Investigate?
Rinse And Repeat
Brian Beutler: The Democrats’ Alarming Nonchalance About The Juggernaut Of Reactionary Media
For Your Radar
Iran and Pakistan have traded airstrikes this week in a dangerous and destabilizing tit-for-tat. This week alone, Iran has carried out strikes against Iraq, Syria, and now Pakistan.
Greenland Is Sending Out A Warning
The Greenland ice sheet is melting faster than previously thought, according to a new study that finds previous analyses underestimated the loss of ice by as much as 20 percent.
Iceland May Be In For A Long Eruption Cycle
As you may have detected by now, I enjoy the mind-fuck of geology, especially trying to wrap my head around geological time frames.
The latest eruptive cycle on the Reykjanes Peninsula comes after an 800-year period of quiescence. We’re four years into the current eruptive cycle, and rather than being a singular explosive eruption that quickly dissipates, the geological record suggests that Iceland could be in for decades of disruptive eruptive activity along the peninsula.
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Rubber Hitting the Road
I wanted to flag to your attention some new developments in Israel-Palestine. From the beginning of the war there’s been discussion of the “day after,” what comes after the fighting and whether that “day after” plan provides any opening to move beyond the cycle of recurrent war and death. The U.S. has been increasingly insistent on this with its Israeli counterparts. The Biden White House wants a “day after” plan first because it thinks concrete steps toward a Palestinian state is the only viable solution to the conflict but also because in an international diplomatic context it needs something tangible to show for its steadfast support for Israel’s increasingly unpopular war.
Now, however, we’re seeing the first signs that the Netanyahu government’s unwillingness to address “day after” issues is beginning to have concrete operational effects in Gaza. Israel’s Channel 13 reports that IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has told the prime minister, Defense Minister Gallant and others that “we are facing the erosion of gains made thus far in the war because no strategy has been put together for the day after.” The IDF “may need to go back and operate in areas where we have already concluded fighting.”
Continue reading “Rubber Hitting the Road”Judge In E. Jean Carroll Trial Is Wondering Whether It’s Time To Kick Trump Out
Donald Trump was aggravated by his lawyer’s advice that he not appear in person during the last E. Jean Carroll trial — so much so that he is attending this week’s trial to determine damages in the second case in which he was found to have defamed the writer, and may even testify, ABC New reported.
Continue reading “Judge In E. Jean Carroll Trial Is Wondering Whether It’s Time To Kick Trump Out”Gorsuch Gleefully Leads Right-Wing Cohort In Fulfilling Their Federalist Society Quest
In Wednesday’s oral arguments, the right-wing legal world reached an inflection point it had been working towards for decades.
The 6-3 supermajority conservative Supreme Court got the chance to scrap Chevron deference, a pillar of agency power. Chevron deference is the principle that when laws are silent or ambiguous on the particulars of how they should be enacted, courts should let regulatory agencies and their experts fill in that gap, as long as their interpretation is reasonable.
Continue reading “Gorsuch Gleefully Leads Right-Wing Cohort In Fulfilling Their Federalist Society Quest “Dean Phillips ‘Gimme Some Lovin’ Campaign Hits Silicon Valley
It seems like longshot presidential wannabe and Problem Solver caucus stalwart Rep. Dean Phillips (D) can’t decide whether endorsing Medicare for All or denouncing DEI and other “woke” nostrums is the way to get over three percent in the national polls. I’m sure some disagree with me. But “DEI” is just a label. What matters is a candidate’s record and what policies they pledge to implement or support in the future. What is significant in Phillips’ case is that he appears to have scrubbed his campaign website of “DEI” language right after receiving a $1 million dollar campaign pledge from plagiarism influencer Bill Ackman who has become something of an anti-DEI crusader.
Phillips’ campaign didn’t say directly that it pulled the language based on Ackman’s criticism and cash. But Ackman is saying that. And Phillip’s campaign isn’t disagreeing.
Here’s a paragraph from Politico …
Continue reading “Dean Phillips ‘Gimme Some Lovin’ Campaign Hits Silicon Valley”Another GOP Vote ‘Irregularity’ Freak Out Goes Bust
From Northern Virginia we have another one of those stories about significant election irregularities that you’ll likely never hear about since they don’t fit into the MAGA storyline that is all most political reporters seem to care about. I didn’t know about it myself until I got a note from longtime TPM Reader LB.
Our story starts in November 2020 in the Northern Virginia county of Prince William. The General Registrar in Prince William was Michele White. She resigned at some point in 2021, possibly because of the feral Trumper harassment that led so many election officials to quit during that period. She was replaced by a new registrar, Eric Olsen. Olsen found irregularities in down-ballot races in the 2020 election — but not ones great enough to affect the outcome of any race. Olsen then reported those irregularities to newly elected Republican state Attorney General Jason Miyares.
Continue reading “Another GOP Vote ‘Irregularity’ Freak Out Goes Bust”