A Michigan judge on Thursday heard arguments from groups seeking to knock Donald Trump off the ballot, the only swing state in which a serious Disqualification Clause case against the former President has been filed.
Continue reading “Michigan Judge Presses Group Seeking To DQ Trump”Listen To This: Guess Democrats Don’t Suck After All
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the slate of 2023 elections and how they square with the sky-is-falling 2024 punditry.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
The Polls Or Your Lyin’ Eyes
Tuesday was another example of an election where polls had raised a lot of doubts about the environment for Democrats. But election results told a different story. Democrats ended up doing quite well. Of course “polls” covers a lot of ground. The “polls” that have atmospherically sent shivers down Democrats’ spines and launched a thousand media think pieces tend to be ones not about Democrats or signature Democratic issues but President Biden. Indeed, just as the results were starting to come in Tuesday night CNN published a poll showing Biden down four points to Trump. So are the polls wrong? Or is reality wrong?
With these questions in mind, it was with no little curiosity that I read this piece by Nate Cohn in The New York Times: Tuesday Was Great for Democrats. It Doesn’t Change the Outlook for 2024.
Continue reading “The Polls Or Your Lyin’ Eyes”Reader Beware
There’s a report out there which claims that reporters from AP, Reuters and stringers for CNN, NYT et al were actually embedded with the Hamas death squads that swept into southern Israel on October 7th. If they were embedded they had some foreknowledge of the operation. They might even have been able to stop it.
I first saw this story posted by a writer for The National Review and I read the report. I was highly skeptical but I was curious to see what the argument or evidence was.
In short, the whole ‘report’ was a crock. I wouldn’t even say it contains false information per se. It’s really just a matter of a pile of leading questions or questions framed as leading inevitably to very dark conclusions when that’s not the case at all. It basically amounts to saying, hey there were photos and video of Hamas fighters with hostages or streaming through the barrier fence. How did the reporters know to be there? How did they get into Israel from the Gaza Strip? Did they go through the fence too?
Continue reading “Reader Beware”Jack Smith Is Poised To Hang The Capitol Attack On Trump
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Incitement Is Back On The Table, Sorta
When Special Counsel Jack Smith unveiled his indictment against Donald Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, it looked all the world like he had taken a prudent and careful approach by dodging the tricky legal question of whether Trump was guilty of inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol.
But I want to bring your attention a filing Monday by Smith that suggests the government’s case in chief will not dodge the Capitol riot at all, but rather use it to paint a picture of a crowd summoned to DC by Trump, urged to march on the Capitol by Trump, and understood by the rioters themselves to be following Trump’s orders.
Among the journalists who have picked up on the filing is Kyle Cheney, who has a sophisticated look this morning at what it means and the broader context within which this is happening.
For a more granular look, Marcy Wheeler has dissected the key elements of the Monday filing.
One final point that I have only started to appreciate in recent months. While DOJ may have been slower than I would have liked in initiating the Trump phase of the Jan. 6 investigation, the result is that the Trump prosecution looks like and in fact is an organic extension of the hundreds of other Jan. 6 cases already brought to successful conclusion.
The judges in DC know the cases, the issues they raise, and the legal parameters very well. Defenses have been asserted, tested, and ruled on countless times, mostly unsuccessfully. There is a lot of water under the bridge, and while Trump is determined to place his case in the bogus context of political retaliation and election interference, it’s going to be difficult for him to escape the larger context that he is merely one of more than 1,000 Jan. 6 defendants.
The Latest In the Jan. 6 Case Against Trump
- In another Solomonic decision, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan simultaneously granted Trump the more generous deadline he was seeking to declare that he would mount an “advice of counsel” defense but denied him additional time to provide discovery to Special Counsel Jack Smith in support of that defense. I’m not going to say much more about that here because the odds of Trump actually raising that defense are quite small. There’s little to no factual basis for it, and the risks (including the necessary waiver of attorney-client privilege) are too great to make it viable.
- As for the gag order Chutkan has imposed, Trump filed his appeal brief with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Don’t expect this to go anywhere either.
Manhunt For Jan. 6 Suspect Continues
The FBI and local law enforcement continue to search central New Jersey for a man wanted in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Gregory Yetman is a former military police sergeant in the New Jersey National Guard.
Trump Can Stay On Minnesota Primary Ballot
The Minnesota Supreme Court essentially punted on the Disqualification Clause case against Donald Trump:
- Trump can stay on the 2024 primary ballot.
- The case is dismissed, but the court left the door wide open for it to be refiled later.
- The court all but invited the plaintiffs to refile their challenge for the general election ballot next year.
It was a weird but not outrageous decision by the court. Not to be too practical-minded, but this gave the court a way out now while preserving the option to get involved later. Given the ambivalence the justices showed during oral arguments, I suspect they were happy to take this off ramp and hope that other courts, specifically the Supreme Court, get involved before they have to.
The Stakes
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance:
Americans, it turns out, like our form of democracy—a Constitutional Republic. So far, it has endured despite Trump, but it’s essential for people to be aware of what he intends to do if reelected. He is a malignant threat to democracy, and that has to be taken seriously. The singular challenge of the next election will be keeping the Republic in the face of Trump’s plans to take hold of power in a way that suggests he will never relinquish it.
2024 Ephemera
- That debate, y’all. This is no way to elect a president. I’m giving you a free pass to ignore it. But if you insist, our LiveBlog of it highlights the tedium.
- Josh Marshall: Will Republicans Take No For An Answer On Abortion?
- Molly Ball: Republicans Still Don’t Know How to Talk About Abortion
The Next Step For The Anti-Abortion Movement
Anti-abortion group sues to block Michigan’s voter-approved constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights, claiming abortion violates the 14th Amendment.
Our Best And Brightest
I anticipate an overabundance of titillating coverage of the “high-end brothel” that the Justice Department says was operating adjacent to the corridors of power in DC and in Massachusetts. The race is on to identify who were among the prominent patrons, which a federal prosecutor in Boston described this way in a press conference:
They are doctors, they are lawyers, they are accountants, they are elected officials, they are executives of high tech companies and pharmaceutical companies, they are military officers, government contractors, professors, scientists. They are the men who fuel this commercial sex ring.
But I keep getting stuck on this part of the allegations (emphasis mine): “Alleged prospective sex buyers in this scheme first had to respond to a survey and provide information online, including their driver’s license photos, their employer information, credit card information, and they often paid a monthly fee to be part of this.”
For real?
Making Sense Of The Senseless
Journalist and historian Gershom Gorenberg visited Kibbutz Be’eri three and half weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. His dispatch is grimly specific in its detail and supremely reflective despite the horrific scene:
I’ve heard people call the attackers “monsters,” “inhuman,” “animals.” This is too lazy a way out. They were entirely human. Human beings have the capacity for good and for evil. They are most capable of evil, it seems, when they’ve convinced themselves that they are serving the good.
Take a moment to read it.
‘From The River To The Sea’: What It Means
Flashback to this 2018 essay by David Schraub unpacking the slogan and providing much-needed context:
[W]hen Jews respond poorly to a statement that you read as simply an uncontroversial call for freedom, you can either think (1) “wow, Jews sure do hate freedom!” or (2) “wow, there’s probably something more complicated going on here — I should investigate!” This post is dedicated to those who take door #2.
It’s worth your time.
It’s Coming From Inside The House
On anti-Semitism, Kanye West, and Jim Jordan:
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‘You’re Just Scum’: Republicans Debate For Second Place
With the stage narrowed to five, a handful of candidates not named Donald Trump met Wednesday for the third GOP debate.
It was heavily focused on foreign policy, with little conversation about how to recalibrate the party after Tuesday’s electoral shellacking. Nikki Haley’s “you’re just scum” to Vivek Ramaswamy may have been the only moment of the night that sticks — to the extent that it matters.
Minnesota Supreme Court: It’s Too Early To DQ Trump From 2024 Ballot
The Minnesota Supreme Court cleared the way on Wednesday for Trump to run in the state’s Republican primary next year, deferring a ruling on whether the Constitution’s Disqualification Clause renders him ineligible to be on the general election ballot.
Continue reading “Minnesota Supreme Court: It’s Too Early To DQ Trump From 2024 Ballot”Sorry To This Man
Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) joined many other Republicans and those in the right-wing media in acknowledging reality on Wednesday.
Continue reading “Sorry To This Man”Will Republicans Take No For An Answer On Abortion?
A couple pod episodes ago I told Kate Riga that I didn’t quite understand what was going on in the Virginia legislative races. It was being treated as a very close run thing in which Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin stood a very real chance of getting the full control of the state legislature he needed to pass a 15 week abortion ban. Was that really plausible since Virginia is basically a blue state, with maybe a few shades of purple, and abortion bans have been a loser pretty much everywhere? As she rightly explained, that was the consensus. But it was more vibes than data. There wasn’t much polling. (There seldom is for state legislative races since news organization don’t have the incentive or the money to poll multiple key races.) It was mainly based on the continuing perception of Youngkin as an electoral golden boy who managed to win the governorship in what is now a reliably blue state.
And yet, he put it all on the line and got … well, smoked. He didn’t capture the Senate and Democrats have also taken back the House of Delegates. In electoral terms, abortion remains a way that Republicans abort themselves. And a lot of them keep doing it. Moths to a flame, really. And here we are.
Continue reading “Will Republicans Take No For An Answer On Abortion?”Please, Please, It’s Too Much Winning. We Can’t Take It Any More.
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
High On Their Own Copium
Republicans are licking their wounds and surveying the carnage from yesterday’s election, but there’s no sign that it will break Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP.
You probably remember Trump’s immortal line from 2016: “We’re going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning.” The next line in that riff is the pièce de résistance: “Please, please, it’s too much winning. We can’t take it any more.”
Here’s how all that winning is looking right now 😭😭😭 …
- Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) on Newsmax: “It was a secret sauce for disaster in Ohio. I don’t know what they were thinking. Thank goodness that most of the states in this country don’t allow you to put everything on the ballot because pure democracies are not the way to run a country.”
this Newsmax copium is actually hitting pretty good pic.twitter.com/7UpFEar53Y
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 8, 2023
- Sean Hannity on Fox News: “Democrats are trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don’t want abortion legal under any circumstances.”
- Newsmax anchor: “It does seem like the Republican Party generally has a real problem with winning.”
aw yeah this is the good shit pic.twitter.com/ivRA8AitOT
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 8, 2023
Headline Of The Day
“Democrats romp, Youngkin flops“
A Quick Recap
- Ohio: Voters enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution in another major backlash to Dobbs.
- Virginia: Democrats hold the state Senate and flip the state House to deny Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) statehouse control and to keep Virginia as the only Southern state without an abortion ban.
- Kentucky: Gov. Andy Beshear (D) was re-elected in a red state while campaigning for abortion rights.
- Mississippi: Gov. Tate Reeves (R) won re-election after a serious challenge from Democrat Brandon Presley.
- New Jersey: Democrats defied expectations and expanded their legislative majorities in both chamber.
Dobbs, Dobbs, Dobbs
- Semafor: Democrats’ post-Dobbs winning streak continues
- WSJ: Abortion-Rights Supporters Rack Up Victories, Putting GOP in Bind for 2024
- Politico: Abortion rights backers extend post-Dobbs winning streak in Ohio
- NYT: Abortion Rights Fuel Big Democratic Wins, and Hopes for 2024
2024 Ephemera
- The five remaining GOP presidential candidates sans Trump meet for their third primary debate tonight at 8 ET in Miami.
- CNN Poll: Trump leads Biden 49%-45% among registered voters.
- More real talk from Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA):
House Censures Tlaib
Nearly all House Republicans were joined by 22 House Democrats in censuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the only Palestinian-American in Congress, for her criticisms of Israel generally and her defense of the rallying cry: “From the river to the sea.”
A Deeply Compelling Interview
I missed this from a couple of nights ago. CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviews Cali Callahan, a nurse with Médecins Sans Frontières who was trapped in Gaza when the war broke out and only made it out in the last week:
A Grim Farce
TPM’s Kate Riga on yesterday’s Supreme Court oral arguments over whether the government can ban domestic abusers from possessing firearms.
Ivanka’s Turn
Ivanka Trump is scheduled to testify today in the New York civil fraud trial against the Trump biz empire.
Still Nothing To See Here
Here’s what Hunter Biden Special Counsel David Weiss told the rabid Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee yesterday:
News You Can Use
Brian Beutler pulls back the curtain on one of political journalism’s biggest deficiencies:
The bad news, though, is that most political journalists are themselves political dorks who have hobbyist interest in p.r. strategy and political dark arts. And (as an ancillary benefit) so long as they’re focused on how various tactics and developments will affect opinion polling (Donald Trump wants to imprison his enemies—how will this go over in the Rust Belt?) they don’t have to trouble themselves with the nettlesome civic goal of helping to create an informed citizenry.
Preach, brother.
Behold!
The first images from the Euclid space telescope:
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