Although there are currently not enough Indiana Republicans on board with the Trump administration’s midcycle redistricting pressure campaign to move forward with the redrawn maps, those who support President Trump’s midterms scheme are now bullying their colleagues to get in line.
Continue reading “Indiana MAGA Republicans Threaten Their Colleagues to Bow to Trump’s Gerrymandering Pressure”How Little We Really Know About What Trump Is Up to in Latin America
US Strikes Extend to Pacific
By its own admission, the Trump administration has expanded its lawless attacks on supposed drug-smuggling boats from the Caribbean to the Pacific.
The U.S. military has conducted two strikes that we know of in the Pacific, bringing the total number of attacks since the campaign began to nine, with a reported death toll of 37. The Pacific attacks took place in international waters, and at least one of them was off the coast of Colombia, according to reports.
Throughout the weeks-old campaign, nearly all of the publicly available information about the attacks has come from the notoriously unreliable Trump administration. The campaign has also happened in parallel with an administration purging of the reporters who usually cover the Pentagon, most of whom gave up their press credentials rather than accede to a restrictive new media policy. What remains to cover the Defense Department on-site is a hodgepodge of mostly right-wing media outlets that agreed to sign on to the new restrictions.
The combination of fewer reliable reporters at the Pentagon and compromised news outlets taking their place could hardly come at a worse time given the administration’s own struggles with truth-telling. Well before Trump, the national security realm was one of the hardest to cover for journalists, and the structure and traditions of American government gave overwhelming deference to secrecy and security at the expense of transparency and accountability.
Even now, the campaign is being waged on the basis of a secret memo from the Trump DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, and the president has issued a secret presidential finding authorizing the CIA to conduct covert operations in and around Venezuela. Congress and the American public have been kept in the dark about the legal basis for the attacks, their ultimate goal, the larger strategy, and the endgame.
Similar practices in past administrations have created enormous historic tensions between democratic processes and military/intelligence operations. But no past administration has launched military operations at the same time it is conducting a vigorous, sustained, and broad-based attack on the rule of law, the constitutional order, and the professional military like President Trump is.
It’s a bad combination at a bad time … something earlier opponents of government secrecy, deference to the military, and extrajudicial killings warned would eventually come back to bite us.
The Corruption: $230M and Counting
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is warning that President Trump may be able to settle his own $230 million claim against the federal government for the criminal investigations of himself without immediately divulging the settlement publicly.
“Our reading is that, even though this is a private settlement, it doesn’t have to be disclosed anywhere until there is an accounting of where all the money has gone at the end of the year,” Raskin tells Greg Sargent.
Raskin also cites the Emoluments Clause — which proved to be a weak tool in Trump I — as barring any compensation to the president from the federal government other than his salary.
CONFIRMED: East Wing Demolished
After a few days of weak dodging and poor deception, the Trump administration — first via an unnamed senior official and then by President Trump himself — confirmed what photographic evidence had made undeniable: It is demolishing the entire East Wing of the White House to make way for the president’s ballroom pet project.
Facing a groundswell of backlash over the unannounced demolition of one-third of the White House complex, Trump took to holding up mockups of the ballroom during an Oval Office press availability with the NATO secretary general.
Philip Bump writes of the demolition of the East Wing:
The metaphor of Trump crushing a portion of the White House as he aims bulldozers at democracy itself is almost too obvious to note. But it’s not just a symbolic parallel: both are rooted in the same indifference to what these American institutions mean to Americans and to America. Both are rooted in Trump wanting to treat those things as his own and now feeling empowered to do precisely that.
Also Demolished: CISA
“The Trump administration has effectively closed the division of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that coordinates critical infrastructure cybersecurity improvements with states and local governments, private businesses and foreign countries,” Cybersecurity Dive reports.
Wahoowhat? UVa Capitulates
Under pressure from the White House, Mr. Jefferson’s University of Virginia became the first public university to strike a deal with the Trump administration, agreeing to the imposition of certain race-based policies in order only to pause ongoing federal investigations.
For the Record
On Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) concluded a marathon 22-hour floor speech in which he warned it was time to “ring the alarm bells about authoritarian control.”
He’s Telling Us He’s Going to Do it Again
National Guard Case Confusion
Late yesterday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear en banc a decision that paused a lower court order that blocked National Guard troops from being deployed in California. A total of 11 judges joined in a powerful dissent by Judge Marsha Berzon, TPM’s Kate Riga reports.
To make sense of the three big National Guard cases — California, Oregon, and Illinois — and the current legal status of each case, I’ll defer to Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck who does a bang-up job this morning of sorting out the various moving parts.
ICYMI …
During oral arguments this week, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals appeared deeply skeptical of the Trump administration’s effort to detain and deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University student being punished for his political views.
Party Time!
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I hope you’ll pardon our undisguised pride at having made it through 25 years of political and industry turmoil, a small boat in a raging sea of chaos, uncertainty, and re-invention. We could not have done it without you. Thank you.
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Dissenting Judges Voice Dire Warnings for the Country As 9th Circuit Denies Rehearing of LA National Guard Stay
The full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear a panel’s order allowing National Guard troops to deploy to California, prompting the dissenting judges to pen lengthy warnings about the danger the United States now faces.
Continue reading “Dissenting Judges Voice Dire Warnings for the Country As 9th Circuit Denies Rehearing of LA National Guard Stay”Patron-Supported Journalism Can’t Be the Future of News
Writing about the failure of patron-supported journalism is itself a kind of confession. It hasn’t worked for me, and I struggle to weigh my guilt around that (should have worked harder!) against what I know is a structural problem. Patron-supported journalism (including newsletters) is both a throwback to the earliest mode of media production and, as it exists today, the newest way for capitalism to suffocate dissent.
Continue reading “Patron-Supported Journalism Can’t Be the Future of News “Oral Arguments Reveal Dangerous Haziness Around National Guard Powers
A panel of appellate judges spent considerable time Wednesday prodding at whether the National Guard troops currently deployed in American cities are subject to the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) — a worrying sign of the ambiguity around what power the Guard has.
Continue reading “Oral Arguments Reveal Dangerous Haziness Around National Guard Powers”Special Deal on Tickets to our Live Podcast Taping
If you’ve been considering joining us for the live taping of our podcast on November 6 in New York, we now have a limited number of tickets available at 50% off made possible by two new member-sponsors of the event. That’s $75 a ticket. These are for TPM members only. We know the full ticket price is a heavy lift for some TPM Readers. So if that includes you, I hope you’ll grab one while they last. Just click right here.
What Bret Stephens Is Getting Wrong About Zohran Mamdani
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens devotes his column to attacking New York Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani for his views of Israel and the Palestinians. I don’t want to assess Mamdani’s views except to say that mine are somewhat different, but that I share his opposition to what Israel has become and what it has done to the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel proper. What I want to comment on is a certain kind of criticism that Stephens makes in attacking Mamdani’s views — a criticism that is sometimes made of my own views.
Stephens writes, “One of the ways anti-Zionists tend to give themselves away as something darker is that the only human-rights abuses they seem to notice are Israel’s; the only state among dozens of religious states whose legitimacy they challenge is Israel; the only group whose suffering they are prepared to turn into their personal crusade is that of the Palestinians. What gives?” The question is: why has Mamdani focussed so much on the plight of the Palestinians? The answer, I’d argue, is fairly obvious: Mamdani is a Muslim, and the preponderance of Israel’s victims in Gaza and the West Bank are Muslims.
Continue reading “What Bret Stephens Is Getting Wrong About Zohran Mamdani”North Carolina GOP Acts on Trump Demand, Approves New Map That Flips Dem Seat
The Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature approved a new gerrymandered congressional district map this week, making North Carolina the latest state to cave to the Trump administration’s mid-cycle redistricting pressure campaign.
Continue reading “North Carolina GOP Acts on Trump Demand, Approves New Map That Flips Dem Seat”Trump Moves Into Full Twilight Zone ‘Anthony’ Phase
Yesterday, for me, was a mixed visual and reported tableaux. There were the visuals: Donald Trump literally bulldozing about a third of the White House complex. It’s not the main house itself, which goes back more than two centuries, albeit with a rather intense renovation. It’s not the the West Wing where most of the post-war history is. But still, Good lord, he brought in a bulldozer and tore the thing down. Then I saw the news reports that Trump is demanding that his toadies at the Justice Department cut him a check for $230 million. I couldn’t tell whether this was notionally to repay his legal expenses or to compensate him for the tort of being indicted for the crimes for which the Supreme Court let him off the hook. He didn’t seem clear himself. In an impromptu press availability yesterday he said he needed the quarter of a billion for “the fraud of the 2020 election”.
Continue reading “Trump Moves Into Full Twilight Zone ‘Anthony’ Phase”How Does Mike Davis Know Who a New Federal Grand Jury Will Target?
The Retribution: Mar-a-Lago Edition?
This gets a little convoluted, but it’s potentially quite important so stick with me for a moment here.
Bloomberg News has sleuthed out a federal grand jury in Florida that could be another thread of President Trump’s wide-ranging investigate the investigators retribution scheme.
The news that a grand jury is set to probe a bogus Democratic-led “grand conspiracy” against Trump was divulged by Trump ally Mike Davis — the rabble-rousing conservative legal activist who briefly clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch — during an appearance last week on the Charlie Kirk Show:
Asked by the host about next steps for an investigation into a “grand conspiracy” against Trump, Davis replied that US Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones — whom he described as “my buddy” — had received court approval for a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, that “should be fully up and running by January.”
Davis said that the court order he was referring to was a “public document.”
Those comments didn’t get much attention until Davis posted them on X yesterday. That appears to have prompted Bloomberg to go search for the public document Davis referenced.
Bloomberg hit pay dirt with a court order by U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga, the chief judge of Southern District of Florida, that was filed on Sept. 26. On a motion from the Justice Department, she ordered that two grand juries be empaneled beginning on Jan. 12, 2026, one in Ft. Lauderdale and the other in Ft. Pierce. As Davis put it in his X post: “We need a special grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida. That’s ground zero for the Mar-a-Lago raid.”
Davis declined to comment to Bloomberg, but in his Oct. 17 appearance on the Charlie Kirk Show, Davis warned “lawfare Democrats” that it was time to “lawyer up”:
After discussing the grand jury order, Davis spoke about the need for an investigation into whether a range of former public officials from the Biden and Obama administrations had conspired to violate Trump’s rights.
“I would say to these lawfare Democrats who waged this unprecedented, Republic-ending Russian collusion hoax conspiracy against President Trump, his top aides and his supporters over the last eight years, I would say to those lawfare Democrats to lawyer up,” Davis said.
While the court order Bloomberg found syncs up with what Davis claimed publicly, a lot remains murky and … odd, to say the least.
It’s not clear from the court order or any other publicly available information what the Ft. Pierce grand jury will be investigating. If it is slated to investigate some MAGA fever dream of a “grand conspiracy” against President Trump, it’s not evident what the precise flavor of this particular conspiracizing is, although the fact that it’s in the same division as the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case might provide a clue. It’s also not immediately apparent why the Justice Department would need such a long lead time before the grand jury begins its work in January.
But most of all, it’s highly unusual for someone like Mike Davis to have information about what a yet-to-be empaneled federal grand jury is up to, including who it will target, even if he is good buddies with the U.S. attorney. Or at least it would have been extraordinarily unusual before the Justice Department began being run out of the Trump II White House.
Bloomberg puts the nascent Florida grand jury in the broader context of its own prior reporting on another federal grand jury investigation of the investigators that Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly ordered over the summer after getting a criminal referral from DNI Tulsi Gabbard with claims of “a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government” against Trump.
“President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump,” DNI said in a July press release. That prompted a rare public rebuke at the time from an Obama spokesperson.
Davis’ use of “lawfare” might be telling. If the earlier grand jury was being used to target the intel side of the purported Deep State conspiracy against Trump, it’s plausible that the Ft. Pierce grand jury could be the companion vehicle for retribution against prosecutors and investigators. But we – or at least those of us not named Mike Davis – don’t really know.
Last week, the day before Davis’ remarks, Trump himself stood in the Oval Office next to Bondi, deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel and called for them to investigate former Special Counsel Jack Smith, former deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
“It’s time to drag every name into the light. Every last one will face justice,” Davis said on X.
The Retribution: IWWG Edition
A group of former intelligence, law enforcement and State Department officials warned that the Trump administration’s newly revealed Interagency Weaponization Working Group threatens to become “an American KGB,” Jeff Stein reports.
The Corruption: $230M Edition
President Trump has been pressing claims against the U.S. government since before he was re-elected, seeking compensation for the investigations and prosecutions he faced from the Justice Department. Now those claims — totaling some $230 million — could be paid to him by his own Justice Department, where he installed his personal lawyers as top officials.
Even Trump — not known to be sensitive to appearances — recognized the conflict of interest: “I’m the one that makes the decision and that decision would have to go across my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”
The Destruction: Literally
With new photographs emerging, it became abundantly clear yesterday that President Trump has ordered the demolition of the entire East Wing of the White House to make room for construction of his ill-fitting, gaudy ballroom.
“They’re wrecking it,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist and professor emeritus at Towson University told the WaPo. “And these are changes that can’t be undone. They’re destroying that history forever.”
The Latest on Venezuela
- New Yorker: The Real Target of Trump’s War on Drug Boats
- WaPo: Trump beats the drums of war for direct action in Venezuela
- NYT: Prosecutors in Ecuador decided not to charge a man who survived a U.S. strike in the Caribbean and have already released him.
Ingrassia Is Out
After some initial confusion over whether U.S. Special Counsel-nominee Paul Ingrassia was cancelling his appearance at his confirmation hearing tomorrow or outright withdrawing his nomination, the White House confirmed it was yanking him entirely in the wake of his I-have-a-bit-of-a-Nazi-streak text.
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