As a tuxedoed former President Donald Trump stood on a stage in Manhattan on Saturday night and doubled down on past quips about being a “dictator,” at least one member of the audience had real ties to actual historical dictatorships.
Continue reading “The MAGA Movement’s Links With The Global Far Right Were On Full Display At Trump’s Latest Party”Spend the Election With Us
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Supreme Court Will Hear Biggest Abortion Case Since Dobbs
The Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it will hear arguments on the accessibility of the abortion drug mifepristone in the biggest abortion case since Dobbs.
Continue reading “Supreme Court Will Hear Biggest Abortion Case Since Dobbs”How The GOP Finally Went All In Against Ukraine
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, something surprising happened: Donald Trump went mostly silent on the topic.
Continue reading “How The GOP Finally Went All In Against Ukraine”Deep In A Hole, Rudy Giuliani Just Keeps On Digging
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Rudy G Is His Own Worst Disaster
We’re two days into the trial of Rudy Giuliani for defaming Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, and it’s hard to imagine things going any worse for him.
For those who haven’t been following the case, here’s the key thing to know: Giuliani has already been found liable for defamation by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell because he was such a scofflaw in failing to respond to discovery requests and even engage in the lawsuit at a basic level. So the judge entered a default judgment against him.
In that sense, Giuliani has already lost. The jury trial now is merely to determine damages and how much Giuliani will have to pay. The plaintiffs are seeking tens of millions of dollars from the former NYC mayor, who is a shell of his former self.
After the first day of trial, Giuliani walked outside of the courthouse and repeated some of the lies he’s told about Freeman and Moss, prompting the judge to damn near lose her mind when the trial resumed yesterday. “When the trial reconvened on Tuesday morning, an incredulous Howell said the comments ‘could support another defamation claim,” Kyle Cheney reported.
Giuliani’s attorney was defenseless in the face of his client’s self-destructive behavior.
After day 2 of the trial got underway, co-plaintiff Shaye Moss gave deeply compelling testimony about what Giuliani’s lies have done to her personal life and work life. She more than held her own on cross examination from Giuliani’s lawyer, and more than once she brought up Giuliani’s remarks on the courthouse steps the night before.
Then last evening, Giuliani pulled a similar stunt. In a rambling, incoherent rant he tried connecting plaintiff’s counsel with Hunter Biden and Burisma, and by that point I was expecting him to pull out the old GOP standby: B-E-N-G-H-A-Z-I. Give him time, the trial is still young.
Still Digesting Jack Smith’s SCOTUS Power Play
An interesting observation from Hugo Lowell about Special Counsel Jack Smith forcing Donald Trump before the Supreme Court more quickly than expected:
The problem for Trump is that his hands are tied. The former president would prefer the court to take up the case after the DC circuit rules because he’s eager to delay his impending trial as much as possible. But he can’t oppose the prosecutors’ request now and then make the same request in several months’ time.
Dems Could Learn A Thing Or Two From Jack Smith
When was the last time you recall a Democratic leader responding, like Smith or like Republicans, to a new development with a confident power play? Or seizing an opportunity to test and expose the depths of the institutional right’s bad faith before God and everyone?
Oh Damn
In a new interview, Atlanta District Fani Willis did a little flexing about whether she will handle the Trump trial in person:
“I don’t think anyone should ever be surprised if DA Willis enters a courtroom,” said Willis, adding that she is “a trial lawyer at my soul.”
Asked if she might make an appearance during the Trump trial, she responded, “I think it’s very possible.”
When Fani Willis starts talking about herself in the third person, look out.
Totally Normal … In A Mob Movie
CNN: Former Mar-a-Lago employee-turned-witness repeatedly contacted by Trump and associates before documents charges
The Long Twilight Struggle
Rather than Team Democracy battling back against and defeating Team Authoritarianism, or vice versa, in a final confrontation or series of final confrontations, we’re seeing something different. We have a new model in which we no longer have parties of government of right and left but rather a civic democratic party and an authoritarian populist party. There’s a good chance they’ll be contesting elections for a while, even as the authoritarian populist party is trying in various ways to end them or radically change how free they are. …
[W]e now appear to be living in what will likely be an extended period in which national elections pit a civic democratic party against a right-wing populist authoritarian one.
It’s Bogus Biden Impeachment Day For House GOP
A vote to open a sham, evidence-free, revenge impeachment inquiry of President Biden is expected today in the House. Make no mistake: Hanging the yoke of impeachment around Biden just as the 2024 general election is getting underway is 100% part of Trump’s campaign strategy — and has its roots in the Ukraine-based first impeachment and the ongoing prosecution of Hunter Biden (who is expected not to show up for a closed-door interview with House investigators, also scheduled for today). It’s all connected in the most corrupt possible way.
Ukraine Is A Victim Of MAGA Politics
- Key takeaways from Ukraine President Zelensky’s Tuesday trip to Washington
- The White House has reportedly gotten more directly involved in Senate negotiations over Ukraine aid (which is to say in the border security package which is now linked with Ukraine aid).
- Fiona Hill warns of the stakes: “[T]he bottom line is that we are at an inflection point, a juncture where it could very rapidly tip, in fact this month — December and January — into a losing proposition for Ukraine.”
Big Ooops
Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s attorney cited three non-existent cases in a motion seeking to end Cohen’s post-conviction court supervision, according to the judge:
On Tuesday, Judge Furman ordered Mr. Schwartz to provide the court with copies of the three decisions he had cited in the filing. If Mr. Schwartz could not do so within a week, Judge Furman said, the lawyer would have to produce a sworn declaration and a thorough explanation of “how the motion came to cite cases that do not exist and what role, if any, Mr. Cohen played in drafting or reviewing the motion before it was filed.”
The Latest Redistricting News
- New York: An enormously significant court decision, the state’s high court ordered a redrawing of the congressional district map that helped vault Republicans to the House majority in 2022 — giving Democrats a chance to pickup anywhere from two to six additional House seats in 2024.
- Texas: Over the objection of the three liberal justices, the Supreme Court let stand a district map for county commissioners in Galveston that federal courts have found to be a racial gerrymander.
The Cruelty Is The Point
TPM’s Kate Riga: In Sentencing Kate Cox To Suffer, The Texas Abortion Ban Is Working Just As Intended
COP Wraps Up With Tepid Agreement On Fossil Fuels
Not to rain on the parade, but while headlines are focused on the final agreement at COP being the first time fossil fuels have been explicitly targeted in a UN climate agreement, this is a watered-down version of the much sought-after fossil fuel “phaseout” language that the petrostates so vigorously opposed.
What Is Even Happening Anymore
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As They Admit There’s No Evidence, House Republicans Will Still Greenlight Impeachment Inquiry
There has been a wave of articles this afternoon surfacing remarks from Republicans, both members of Congress and senators alike, acknowledging publicly that House Republicans’ push for a vote to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry amounts to a political stunt.
Continue reading “As They Admit There’s No Evidence, House Republicans Will Still Greenlight Impeachment Inquiry”Supreme Court Lets Map That Two Courts Found To Violate Voting Rights Act Stand
Conservative justices on the Supreme Court Tuesday let a Galveston County, Texas map — which both federal district and appellate courts have found to be a racial gerrymander — stand Tuesday without explaining their decision.
The three liberals dissented.
Continue reading “Supreme Court Lets Map That Two Courts Found To Violate Voting Rights Act Stand”In Sentencing Kate Cox To Suffer, The Texas Abortion Ban Is Working Just As Intended
The case of Kate Cox, the 31-year-old mother of two in Texas who sued to end a nonviable pregnancy heaped with health risks to herself, has attracted nationwide horror for its sheer brutality.
Her fetus, at best, might have a brief and painful life; in the process of giving birth, Cox could be seriously sickened and left unable to have more children in the future.
Hers is not a singular tragedy, an unforeseeable aberration that left her in the cracks of a warm and generous Texas regime. The Texas abortion ban, no matter what anti-abortion activists and lawmakers say, was meant to prevent women like Cox from getting abortions as much as it was to ban young women from ending unwanted pregnancies early in the first trimester.
Continue reading “In Sentencing Kate Cox To Suffer, The Texas Abortion Ban Is Working Just As Intended”We May Be At This for a While
Frequently I will hear from TPM Readers who tell me that they fear and believe authoritarianism is on the rise both in the United States and abroad and, critically, that it is on the cusp of winning. This is an understandable fear and belief, and it may be right. But I do not think it is the most accurate assessment of the information before us. Rather than Team Democracy battling back against and defeating Team Authoritarianism, or vice versa, in a final confrontation or series of final confrontations, we’re seeing something different. We have a new model in which we no longer have parties of government of right and left but rather a civic democratic party and an authoritarian populist party. There’s a good chance they’ll be contesting elections for a while, even as the authoritarian populist party is trying in various ways to end them or radically change how free they are.
Continue reading “We May Be At This for a While”Is West Virginia Okay?
I’m not sure what can be done about West Virginia, a sad thing since it’s a state born in refusal to commit treason on behalf of the Confederacy, a good thing. In any case, the headline of this article is that the West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner is the state’s top elections officer. He’s now running for governor. And in a recent debate for the GOP gubernatorial nomination he said the 2020 election was stolen and … well, it was stolen by the CIA, folks.
But it gets worse.
Continue reading “Is West Virginia Okay?”