In case you were feeling too rosy about the state of the world, it’s worth reading this new article by Zvi Bar’el in Haaretz (sub.req.) about “day after” scenarios in Gaza. You can believe, as I do, that Israel is and was justified in and in fact obligated to destroy Hamas’s de facto army in Gaza after the events of October 7th. Here Bar’el goes into some depth about the utter lack of any realistic plan about what comes after that happens, assuming it does happen.
I’ve already noted the malign role of the disgraced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is of course ideologically opposed to any move toward self-rule or statehood for any of the Palestinian territories. At the moment what is equally important is that he sees leaving the military and “day after” questions unresolved being in his personal and political self-interest.
A divided federal appellate panel took a pipe to the knees of the Voting Rights Act Monday, handing down an eyebrow-raising decision that would severely curtail the effectiveness of the landmark civil rights law.
A federal appeals court Monday struggled with whether and how to lawfully restrict criminal defendant Donald Trump’s pre-trial speech given his history of targeting court personnel and witnesses with vitriol that prompts his followers to threaten and harass those he names.
Over the weekend I had an exchange with TPM Reader AB that I’d like to share with you. AB is a dedicated listener to our podcast (and you should be too!) as well as a reader and he flagged an exchange in which my cohost Kate Riga discussed Donald Trump’s recent “vermin” comments, which mapped quite closely to a lot of Nazi rhetoric from the 1920s and 1930s. The comments would have gotten more attention, she said, had they happened in the heat of the campaign instead of 9 months or a year prior. AB insisted that we need to be vigilant. We need to be sounding Red Alerts. We can’t be complacent thinking the actual election is a year off and everything will change for be better.
To be clear, this was an aside from Kate in part of a longer discussion. And AB himself seemed to recognize this. So I raise this not to disagree with anyone or call anyone out. I note it because it illustrates an impulse and dynamic I think countless Democrats (and others who simply oppose Donald Trump) are finding themselves caught up in. I won’t belabor the foundational point. Trump 1.0 was really bad. Trump 2.0 promises to be much worse. A year out, polls suggest Trump and Biden are tied or with Trump slightly ahead in the popular vote. That makes something really unthinkable seem like a very real possibility.
That’s bad. Really bad. So get to sounding the Red Alerts. Break the glass and pull the alarm. Pick your metaphor. These are all very understandable and logical responses, not so much — in my mind at least — because of the percentage chances of one candidate winning over the other but because of the consequences of a bad outcome.
A ‘faith-based’ leader of Moms for Liberty in Philly turns out to be (subscription required) a registered sex offender. But don’t worry: He says he was framed. It was part of a squabble from when he was part of the LaRouche movement back in Chicago, he claims.
The news will slow a bit this week as we celebrate Thanksgiving, but we are only weeks away from the beginning of the 2024 GOP presidential primary, which looks assured of anointing Donald Trump as his party’s standard bearer yet again.
You can hear his rising fascist rhetoric, the roar of his crowd when he calls for retribution against his perceived enemies, and his own exuberance as he casts aside any hint of restraint in favor of the most toxic attacks.
The upcoming primaries are heightening tensions, concentrating the calls for violence, and distilling Trumpism into its most corrosive form.
There’s no one defining story from the weekend, but you’ll see in the mix of news items below the dire stakes.
Judge Rules Trump Engaged In Insurrection, But …
A Colorado state judge ruled that Donald Trump may stay on the 2024 ballot, rebuffing efforts to disqualify him under the Constitution’s Disqualification Clause. But in doing so, she found that Trump had engaged in insurrection.
The judge read the Disqualification Clause as not applying to the presidency for two reasons: (i) The president is not an “officer of the United States,” as the clause requires; and (ii) The presidential oath of office only promises to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, not “support” it, in the language of the clause.
As I hope is obvious, those are very technical, perhaps even cramped, readings of the Disqualification Clause that will give appeals court plenty to chew on.
Trump Loses Bid To Distance Himself From Jan. 6 Attack
In a feeble effort to try to disentangle his indictment over his 2020 election subversion effort from its most incendiary element, Donald Trump recently asked Judge Chutkan to strike those parts of the indictment which tied him to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Chutkan denied that request late last week in a brief, muted three-page order that said Trump failed to carry his burden.
Chutkan took only one light, parenthetical jab at Trump in the order: “Defendant’s sixteen-page Reply In Support of the Motion, despite making numerous inflammatory and unsupported accusations of its own … (“President Biden directed the Department of Justice to prosecute his leading opponent for the presidency through a calculated leak to the New York Times.”), devotes only a single paragraph to the prejudice requirement.”
Democrats might lose this twilight battle to drive Trump out of the body politic, and if they do, they’ll scour the devastation for the governing failure or political error that did them in. Was it inflation? Was it “wokeism”? Was it Biden’s age? But if it happened today, my money would be on this explanation: Their choices and emphases allowed the human process of forgetting to proceed as normal. And that in turn has allowed Trump to gain advantage, or narrow his disadvantage, on things like temperament and fitness for office that should be his defining liabilities.
Appeals Court Hears Trump Gag Order
The DC Court of Appeals has oral arguments scheduled for 9:30 a.m. ET today on the limited gag order imposed on Donald Trump by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in the Jan. 6 criminal case.
Fani Willis Seeks August 2024 Trial Date
Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis has formally asked the judge overseeing the sprawling RICO case to set the trial to begin in August 2024. She had already said that she expected the trial to drag into 2025.
Neo-Nazis March In Madison
A small group of neo-Nazis marched between the University of Wisconsin and the state capitol, stopping for a time in front of a local synagogue.
Global Right Scores Another Win
Usually comparisons of foreign leaders to America presidents are inapt and unenlightening, but when I was in Argentina earlier, this year like-minded Argentinians were in despair (a familiar emotion there) over the potential of electing their own Donald Trump in the form of Javier Milei. The similarities are striking, and Milei has now won the presidency.
The Abortion Fight Is Never Truly Over
Republican state officials in Ohio are already trying to find ways to undermine and weaken the newly passed constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights.
Welp …
A pastor who coordinates “faith-based” outreach for the Philadelphia chapter of Moms for Liberty is a registered sex offender.
Rosalynn Carter, 1927-2023
PLAINS, GA – JUNE 2: Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter sits in a rocking chair that her husband, former President Jimmy Carter, had built in his home work shop. Mrs. Carter is posing for a portrait in her back yard to promote her new autobiographical book, “First Lady From Plains”, on April 3, 1984 at the Carter home in Plains, GA. (Photo by John McDonnell/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The former first lady died Sunday afternoon at age 96, thus ending her remarkable 77-year marriage to Jimmy Carter. When a long-lived marriage like theirs comes to an end, I have the urge to congratulate the surviving spouse on their accomplishment. It never seems quite appropriate to do so in the midst of loss and grief, but it is achievement in its own right, one to be celebrated and admired.
Back in 2002, Jimmy Carter offered a glimpse of the gratitude it takes to make a marriage like theirs work:
AI and who runs the company-cum-non-profit OpenAI is far from much that concerns TPM. But I felt I had to return at least once to the topic of the previous post. Because it did turn out to be “quite a story” but a story of a totally different sort than I’d imagined. The abruptness of CEO Sam Altman’s ouster, the potential loss to investors of tens of billions of dollars and the apparent claims of malfeasance in the company’s announcement made it seem certain that some vast scale of wrongdoing must be at the heart of the story. But now it doesn’t seem like that was the case at all. We still don’t know quite what happened or why. But the weight of evidence now points to some kind of non-wrongdoing-based spat between Altman and certain members of the board. Within a day, the board was trying to get Altman to come back and be CEO again. They’re currently negotiating to see if they can get him to come back. But he may choose to just start his own company with another employee who was canned.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
On Jan. 25, 2024, Peter Navarro is scheduled to be sentenced – perhaps to prison – after his swift conviction by a jury on contempt of Congress charges. He has joined Steve Bannon as the first defendants in decades to be held criminally liable by the U.S. Department of Justice for refusing to provide information in response to congressional subpoenas.
While many in the state were still sweeping up the metaphorical confetti from a red-letter win on protecting abortion rights, Ohio Republicans immediately began insisting that the amendment’s passage was illegitimate.
You’ve probably seen the news that Open AI, which created ChatGPT, has fired CEO Sam Altman because the board concluded he was “not consistently candid in his communications with the board.” Yikes. He was sacked as CEO and removed from the board. I come at this with no knowledge of the inner workings of the company or Altman. But when a board out of the blue fires a CEO at the helm of a company that has skyrocketed to around $80 billion in value and is at center of huge bets about future economic gains across the economy you have to assume that something really, really bad must have happened.
