I first encountered Niall Ferguson in a real way when I was writing a review essay for The New Yorker at the end of 2003. The editors had sent me a small stack of books about what we might call the “neo-imperial” moment that took hold of Washington, D.C. in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. One of these books was by Ferguson, a fairly rousing and unabashed celebration of the British Empire. If anything it was among the more indirect and implicit versions of the story told by the various authors, celebrating the glories of empire and leaving it to the reader to draw the conclusion it was time to bring them back. As I’ve read columns of his here and there over the last couple decades, the historianness has receded as the tendentious provocateur has moved to the front. But something different struck me about the piece he published in The Free Press earlier this week (subscription required) about Trump’s Gaza peace plan: that was how much it matched in key outlines the piece I wrote on the same topic last week. If you recall, I wrote that the Trump plan was actually a fairly big deal and one that for a variety of reasons only Trump was in a position to pull off. The basis of the agreement is the common authoritarianism and corruption that now knits together Washington, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and other regional capitals through the personal relationships binding together Trump family and the princely families of the Gulf.
Continue reading “Niall Ferguson, the Gulf Princes and Their Man, Donald Trump”Jury Acquittal Hands Jeanine Pirro a Big L
Three-Time Loser
In a closely watched case, a federal jury acquitted a woman Thursday on charges of assaulting a federal law enforcement officer over the summer during a transfer of detainees to ICE outside of the D.C. jail.
Federal grand juries had declined three times to indict Sydney Reid on felony charges for the incident. Rather than dropping the case, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro charged it as a misdemeanor and took it to trial. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said it may have been the first time any criminal defendant has been charged federally in D.C. with misdemeanor assault on a federal officer, WUSA’s Sophie Rosenthal reports.
While the case has widely been seen as an example of jury nullification, it’s more accurately categorized as on overcharged case. The evidence against Reid was weak, but that didn’t matter. Pirro had ordered her prosecutors to impose the stiffest federal charges possible during Trump’s retaliatory surge of law enforcement into D.C. Some federal judges have balked at some of the cases that have wound up in federal court that might normally have been pursued in D.C. Superior Court — or not pursued at all.
For prosecutors, seeking maximum charges has made winning cases harder. But in Reid’s case, prosecutors did themselves no favors.
Prosecutors — and the two federal officers who were the purported victims in the case — were late in turning over discovery. Some discovery was never turned over at all, leading to admonitions from Judge Sooknanan during trial this week. “These are games,” Sooknanan told prosecutors at one point.
The discovery failures by prosecutors ultimately led Sooknanan to give a curative instruction to the jury:
Before the jury even got the case, Sooknanan acquitted Reid of the misdemeanor as to one of of the federal officers because of insufficient evidence she’d assaulted him. The officer in question had testified to the grand jury that Reid has initiated physical contact, but video of the incident showed that wasn’t true, Sooknanan said in court.
That left the jury to decide whether Reid had assaulted the other officer, the sole witness for the prosecution. That officer didn’t turn over some of her text messages about the case until the first day of trial, and even then one was missing. “The missing message was only discovered in the middle of cross-examination,” WUSA reported.
The prosecutor argued that the missing message was the result of a mistake the officer made while screenshotting the messages. But Judge Sooknanan was out of patience. “That seems to be a common theme with all your witnesses. Did they lie, or did they continuously make mistakes?” Sooknanan told the prosecutor.
Reid issued a statement after the jury verdict:
To sum it up, Pirro lost three times:
- three grand jury no bills;
- one acquittal by the judge;
- one acquittal by the petit jury.
Juries are doing their jobs, but it should never come to this.
The Bolton Indictment Is Still Crooked
As expected, the federal indictment of John Bolton in Maryland was more solid, evidence-based, and plausible than the bogus charges wielded against the other indicted Trump nemeses, James Comey and Letitia James. There’s no evidence that career prosecutors balked at the charges, and the acting U.S. attorney in Maryland is herself a career prosecutor.
In addition, Bolton comes off in the indictment as downright dumb in additional to careless and even reckless in how he allegedly handled classified information, sharing while Trump’s national security adviser more than 1,000 pages of “diary-like” entries with two family members, reported by the WSJ to be his wife and daughter. This alleged exchange is peak WTF:
![35. On or about July 23, 2018, BOLTON sent Individuals 1 and 2 a message that stated,
"More stuff coming!!!" A few minutes later, BOLTON sent Individuals 1 and 2 a 24-page
document which described information that BOLTON learned while National Security Advisor.
Less than three hours later, BOLTON sent Individuals 1 and 2 a follow-up message that stated,
"None of which we talk about!!!" In response, Individual 1 sent a message that stated, "Shhhhh."
Individual 2 then sent a message that stated, "The only interesting thing is what [senior U.S.
Government official] might have said from [foreign language] interpreter, which you didn't tell
us..." Approximately two minutes later, Individual 1 sent a message in response that stated, "More
to come with cloak and dagger...or something. So he says...."](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/bolton-indictment.jpg?w=804)
But plausible criminal charges by themselves do not eliminate the stink that Trump has put all over this investigation. I’d go further than Joyce Vance, who writes that Trump has “undercut the integrity of the criminal justice system.” John Bolton would not have been indicted but for his role as a critic of Trump. The investigation, which began in Trump I, had been closed under the Biden administration, but was revived once Trump took office again. It’s a travesty of justice that this case is being brought at this time in this way.
The WaPo drops a little tidbit in its story on the indictment:
John Eisenberg, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, was at the White House on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. His division has been involved in the Bolton investigation, which is typical for cases involving classified documents.
In Trump I, Eisenberg was a deputy White House counsel and legal advisor to the National Security Council, starting before Bolton arrived, who was involved in some key first term moments. The WaPo story implies but doesn’t outright say that Eisenberg was briefing the White House on the Bolton indictment. But at this point, I’m not sure fleeting accounts of DOJ officials being sighted at the White House carry the same weight as they used to. As Morning Memo has noted repeatedly, the Justice Department is being run out of the White House.
The same day Eisenberg was at the White House, Attorney General Pam Bondi, deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel together made an Oval Office appearance with President Trump in which he publicly called for them to target former Special Counsel Jack Smith, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, and former deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.
Mass Deportation: Chicago Edition
The Trump administration’s assault on Chicago — which lives in the Republican mind as a post-apocalyptic hellscape beset by urban (read: Black) violence and decay — is running hard up against federal judges:
- A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals consisting of Trump, Obama, and Bush I appointees unanimously upheld a district court injunction barring the deployment of the National Guard in Illinois.
- U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis of Chicago said she will order federal immigration enforcement officers to wear and use body cams.
- U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis of Chicago ordered prosecutors to ship back from Maine on a flatbed trailer the vehicle of a Border Patrol agent involved in a hotly contested incident in which he shot a woman after their vehicles collided earlier this month. Defense attorneys demanded that it be returned to the Chicago area so that they can examine it.
Trump’s Venezuela Misadventure
In the latest developments:
- Adm. Alvin Holsey is stepping down as head of the U.S. Southern Command after less than a year in what is typically a three-year term. Holsey has overseen the buildup of forces in the Caribbean and the unlawful U.S. attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats. Holsey’s impending departure comes after he “raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats,” the NYT reports.
- Only one of the 27 people killed in the U.S. high seas attacks in alleged drug-smuggling boats has been tentatively identified publicly. “[D]espite the mounting death toll, no authority has come forward to publicly release the names of any of the dead,” the NYT reports.
- Analysis by the WaPo shows that the U.S. military’s elite Special Operations aviation unit has likely been operating in Caribbean waters off the coast of Venezuela in recent days.
- Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is making a show of deploying his forces to fend off any U.S. attack.
Thread of the Week
The federal budget apparatus is exceedingly complicated and byzantine, but one of the reasons for that is the constitutional structure that is meant to keep the power of the purse from becoming a tyrannical tool. Now President Trump and his OMB are tearing at the fabric of those constitutional restraints in new and dramatic ways:
Propagandist-in-Chief
The drumbeat of stuff like this out of the White House is constant and never-ending, polluting the political atmosphere with a steady stream of propaganda and disinformation:
Special Offer for Morning Memo Readers
Our big celebration of TPM’s 25th anniversary has officially begun with the publication of the first in a series of 25 essays by a group of A-list contributors on the history of digital media.
We’re going to be marking the milestone over the next three weeks, culminating with a two-day extravaganza in NYC on Nov. 6-7. Tickets for both nights are on sale now.
Morning Memo readers can get 33% off tickets to the live show on Thursday, Nov. 6 by using the code “MorningMemo” at checkout. I’ll be joining other TPMers past and present on stage that night for a reminiscence of our shared history and hijinks.
Please join us and hang for one or both nights. I’m looking forward to meeting more of you in person, but I especially delight in watching y’all get to meet each other.
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
DC’s Access Journalists Turned the News Into a Luxury Good
Before the internet, what would today be called a “paywall” was just a place where people could buy a newspaper or magazine. Your subscription or newsstand purchase didn’t pay for every far-flung reporter; media outlets subsidized access to readers with advertising and other revenue streams. But though the barrier to entry was relatively low, it was still a barrier. You had to acquire the physical object hosting the material, and unless you went to the library every day or got your hands on a discarded copy in a coffee shop, you would have to pay for it.
Once all articles got posted on websites, tension grew between the idea that information wants to be free and the need for reporters and editors and production teams to afford food and shelter. At first, legacy subscriptions and digital advertising covered the nut; I remember the New York Times and Washington Post segmenting stories into sections so readers had to click repeatedly to finish them, ringing up more ad impressions. But Google and Facebook robbed publishers of the ad revenue that made this (sort of) work, and ever since, media companies big and small have been grasping for an alternative.
They have mostly failed. Between 2004 and 2022, over 2,100 newspapers have gone out of business, according to data from the University of North Carolina. New media pivots from words to video and back again have proven disastrous. Layoffs have touched everyone in this industry; friends and colleagues habitually call me asking for advice or referrals for hiring.
Those of us remaining to report the news have settled on a noble idea: A community of readers can pay to get the information they need. Sometimes the “reader” is one rich person keeping things alive, but that usually ends in tears. A broader base of support is far more sustainable, and there are several outlets, from my site The American Prospect to the one you’re reading right now, that are making this work.
In some ways, it’s a throwback to the pre-internet era, or even the premodern era of patronage. But the pay-to-play trend in journalism is happening at a time of runaway income and wealth inequality, when the top 10% of income earners account for nearly half of all the spending. This has created a strange paradox: The average news consumer today has more available to read than at any time in human history, yet less ability to understand what’s really going on.
Continue reading “DC’s Access Journalists Turned the News Into a Luxury Good”The Trump Admin’s Very Telling Decisions About Which Gov’t Programs to Fund
In the hours immediately after the government first shut down earlier this month — which happened only after Republicans refused to work with Democrats to extend Obamacare subsidies in order to secure their votes to keep it open — the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress began publicly hand-ringing about the funding that would quickly run out for active duty military pay and for funding WIC, a federal supplemental nutrition program for low income mothers.
Continue reading “The Trump Admin’s Very Telling Decisions About Which Gov’t Programs to Fund”7th Circuit: ‘The Administration Remains Barred From Deploying the National Guard of the United States Within Illinois’
A 7th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled unanimously Thursday to maintain the district court’s block on National Guard deployment in Chicago.
Continue reading “7th Circuit: ‘The Administration Remains Barred From Deploying the National Guard of the United States Within Illinois’”House Speaker Dismisses Concern About Restraining Order Against Rep. Cory Mills
This story was originally reported by Grace Panetta of The 19th. Meet Grace and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.
A judge has granted an order of protection barring Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida from contacting a former girlfriend who said he harassed and threatened her, and so far, Republican House leadership has dismissed concerns about the accusations.
On Tuesday, Judge Fred Koberlein Jr.in Florida granted a protective order against dating violence that Mills’ ex-girlfriend, Lindsey Langston, a Republican state committeewoman in Florida and the reigning Miss United States, filed for in August. Langston claimed that after she ended their relationship, Mills barraged her with harassing communications, including threatening to release intimate photos and videos of her and threatening her with violence.
Koberlein wrote in a 14-page order that Mills caused Langston “substantial emotional distress considering her professional commitments” as Miss USA.
“She described herself as being physically ill, curled in the fetal position, requiring family assistance, suffering hives, seeking professional therapy, and being prescribed Xanax and Lexapro, which she took on multiple occasions due to the Respondent’s actions,” the order said.
The judge found that Langston “does have a reasonable cause to believe that she is in imminent danger of becoming the victim of another act of dating violence without an injunction being entered.”
The order, which bars Mills from contacting Langston or coming within 500 feet of her home, is in effect through January 1.
Mills, elected to the U.S. House in 2022, has been the subject of multiple controversies, including a House Ethics investigation into whether he committed campaign finance violations and entered into government contracts while serving in Congress. Mills was also investigated by police in Washington, D.C., over a domestic dispute involving another woman in February. That woman later walked back her claims, the investigation was closed, and Mills did not face charges.
At a news conference on Wednesday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he didn’t know the details of the allegations against Mills and dismissed the line of questioning.
“You’ll have to ask Representative Mills about that. I know he’s been a faithful colleague here. I know his work on the Hill, I don’t know all the details of all the individual allegations and what he’s doing in his outside life,” Johnson said. “Let’s talk about some things that are really serious.”
The U.S. House is out of session for the third week in a row as the federal government marks the 15th day of a shutdown after congressional leaders reached an impasse on funding the government.
Langston’s lawyer Bobi J. Frank told reporters Wednesday that she hopes Mills will be disciplined and sanctioned by his colleagues in Congress. House members are subject to being stripped of committee chair or leadership posts upon being charged with a felony, and face expulsion from the House if convicted, but Mills has not been charged with a crime.
House Democrats ripped Johnson and House GOP leadership for what they said was dismissiveness about intimate partner violence during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which is recognized in October.
“Domestic violence is a serious issue in this country for women all throughout America. And the notion that House Republican leaders would dismiss the seriousness of what is clearly emerging as an untenable and frightening situation relative to Representative Mills is irresponsible,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a news conference Wednesday.
“Congress should be better than that level of dismissiveness that has been on display among my Republican colleagues,” he added.
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark called the allegations against Mills “disturbing” and connected Johnson’s response to the ongoing shutdown fight, which concerns Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire this year unless Congress acts.
“It is the same way he has approached this entire health care issue,” she said. “And it is a crisis that will be felt by every single hard-working American in this country, but it is going to be felt first and hardest by women in this country.”
Under President Donald Trump’s administration, several federal agencies and programs dedicated to combating domestic violence and sex trafficking have also faced funding cuts and layoffs.
“And that message to American women, and just writing off these serious allegations against a sitting member of Congress as something frivolous and a ridiculous question speaks volumes of where they value their constituents and especially women, in this month,” Clark said.
Will SCOTUS Rig the House?
I read a group email from Capitol Hill yesterday essentially predicting the extinction of the Democratic Party after what is predicted to be a decision from the Supreme Court overturning what remains of the Voting Rights Act. A less apocalyptic but still daunting version of this argument appeared in an evening piece published by Nate Cohn in the Times. Before getting to the partisan and vote count implications, let’s first discuss what this means, which is essentially ending African-American political representation in the states of the old Confederacy. Most if not all majority-minority districts disappear and Republican state legislatures are free to draw up districts which spread/dilute African-American voters into safely Republican districts. Cohn thinks it’s plausible that Democrats could permanently lose (as much as anything can ever be permanent) 12 House seats. And this is on top of the strong-arm restricting happening in a number of states across the country. The overall scenario is one in which the House becomes an even bigger electoral challenge than the Senate, one that is possible to win but only in a generational wave style election.
Is this plausible? Is this true?
Continue reading “Will SCOTUS Rig the House?”What Made Blogging Different?
Whether I like it or not, the first line of my obituary will probably be that I was the founding editor of Gawker.com, the flagship site of Gawker Media, a sprawling blog network that was put out of business by Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan in 2016. Nick Denton and I started Gawker in 2002 and I left in late 2003 to go to New York Magazine, so I missed some of Gawker’s greatest hits and biggest misses, but the early ‘00s were what I now think of as the heyday of blogging. (Talking Points Memo was started in 2000.)
Continue reading “What Made Blogging Different?”The Original Sin of Digital Media Was the Belief That Digital Journalists Were Part of the Tech Business
I want to begin this introduction to our 25th anniversary essay series by telling you what an exciting and must-read collection it is. Our team has commissioned 25 essays on the history of digital media, which more or less overlaps with the 25 years we’re celebrating here at TPM this year. We solicited contributions from a wide range of contributors — people who first made their mark at different points in the history of digital media, people who’ve worked in different parts of the digital beast, people from very different political persuasions. We have Semafor’s Dave Weigel on Elon Musk and X; Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara on the rise of Substack; Gawker founder Elizabeth Spiers on blogging; Marisa Kabas of the Handbasket on journalists as personal brands; Marcy Wheeler (Emptywheel) on troll culture and the rise of Trumpism. That only scratches the surface on the series we’re kicking off today, and running through our two-day anniversary event in New York City on Nov. 6 and 7.
Continue reading “The Original Sin of Digital Media Was the Belief That Digital Journalists Were Part of the Tech Business”In Oval Office Screed, Trump Shows Who’s Really Running DOJ
DOJ Officials ‘Smiled, Nodded and Shuffled’
One of the many challenges of the current moment is that the depravities and depredations become so routinized and regular that they cease to be new in the news sense.
At this point, I’ve written dozens of Morning Memos that headline President Trump’s politicization and weaponization of the Justice Department. It remains the linchpin of all of Trump’s rule of law violations because without a functioning, professional, independent Justice Department, no federal laws will be reliably enforced. To anyone paying attention, this is no longer news but an established fact, a premise from which to proceed.
And yet … each week brings some new extreme — in either intensity, extent, or brazenness —that warrants documenting again the descent into authoritarianism.
Yesterday in an Oval Office event ostensibly focused on combatting violent crime, President Trump’s lawless abuse of the Justice Department was on full display in the immediate presence of the attorney general, deputy attorney general, and FBI director.
In response to a question, Trump lashed out at former DOJers who, much to his chagrin. have not yet been criminally charged as part of his campaign of retribution. Clearly annoyed by former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s most extensive public remarks to date, Trump zeroed in on the interview Smith gave to former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann last week in London:
“Deranged Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal. His interviewer was Weissmann. I hope they’re going to look into Weissmann too. Weissmann’s a bad guy. And he had somebody, Lisa, who was his puppet, worked in the office really as the top person — and I think she should be looked at very strongly. There was tremendous criminal activity…They have committed massive political crime. I hope they’re looking at Shifty Schiff. I hope they’re looking at all these people. And I’m allowed to find out — I’m, in theory, the chief law enforcement officer.”
Lisa is a reference to former deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, the No. 2 during the Biden administration. Trump has already demanded that Microsoft fire her from a senior position with the company. The video of Trump’s screed:
Trump has said these things before, but the setting and the presence of the three most significant DOJ officials is the clearest, most unmistakeable sign we have yet that the Justice Department is being run out of the White House. “They smiled, nodded and shuffled in place as he spoke,” the NYT reports.
Even if Trump veils his remarks ever so slightly by couching them in terms of what he “hopes” the three officials standing next to him will do, we know better that to treat that as any more than window-dressing.
Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, and Kash Patel may be fools but they’re not foolish. They know their marching orders, whether they’re given with a sly wink in public, or in private direct messages mistakenly posted publicly, or barked directly in closed Oval Office meetings. Their muted acquiescence in Trump’s Oval Office set-piece shows the center of gravity in their world is no longer Main Justice but the White House.
The retribution campaign is in full swing with the indictments of Jim Comey and Letitia James. No one is safe from a weaponized Justice Department or, as it turns out, a weaponized IRS.
Trump Moves to Weaponize the IRS
Anyone who endured the many months of manufactured Republican outrage over the IRS supposedly (but not actually) targeting conservative groups during the Obama administration can be forgiven for pulling their hair out as the Trump administration moves to make it easier for the IRS to target liberal groups.
Senior IRS official Gary Shapley is already compiling a list of “potential targets that includes major Democratic donors,” the WSJ reports:
The undertaking aims to install allies of President Trump at the IRS criminal-investigative division, or IRS-CI, to exert firmer control over the unit and weaken the involvement of IRS lawyers in criminal investigations, officials said. The proposed changes could open the door to politically motivated probes and are being driven by Gary Shapley, an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Shapley was the longtime IRS criminal investigator who became a darling of the MAGA right for purportedly blowing the whistle on what he claimed was the slow-rolling of the Hunter Biden investigation. In the Trump II presidency, Shapley has been promoted to a more senior role.
Shapley also wants to make changes to the IRS’ criminal investigative processes that would reduce the role of the IRS chief counsel’s office, the WSJ reports.
Quote of the Day
“Charlie’s death is like a domestic 9/11. Just as after 9/11, and Osama bin Laden, the ultimate culprit, was captured, we are operationalizing the Treasury, and we are going to track down who is responsible for this.”–Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, invoking the assassination of Charlie Kirk to launch a War on Terror-style campaign against progressive nonprofit groups
It Was Good Knowing Ya, Voting Right Act
A grim day at the Supreme Court where the Roberts majority is poised to further weaken — though maybe not outright scuttle — what remains of the Voting Rights Act, a seminal piece of Civil Rights-era legislations.
Thread of the Day
Trump’s Caribbean Jingoism Takes a Darker Turn
Major new developments in Trump’s brewing Latin American misadventure:
- CNN: At least one of the five U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean targeted Colombian nationals on a boat that had left from Colombia.
- NYT: Trump has issued a presidential finding authorizing the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela, including lethal operations, and in the Caribbean.
- WaPo: Trump confirms that he authorized covert CIA action in Venezuela.
Pentagon Reporters Walk Out En Masse
Journalists covering the Pentagon surrendered their credentials and walked out as a group yesterday rather than sign a new restrictive Pentagon media policy.
Swastika Spotted on GOP Hill Aide’s Zoom Call
An aide to Rep. Dave Taylor (R-OH) appeared on a Zoom call with a small American flag altered to show a swastika pinned up behind him:
It’s not clear what or why Capitol Police are investigating, but a spokesperson for Taylor (who denounced the swastika ) called the incident “vile vandalism.”
Stay tuned …
The Corruption: Ballroom Edition
President Trump last night hosted a dinner at the White House for donors to his gaudy White House ballroom project. The WSJ published the list of expected attendees.
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