As a 2024 candidate who used the first half of his second term as governor of Florida to pass far-right messaging bills that would ultimately boost his 2024 bid, Ron DeSantis likes the chaos he’s seeing in Congress right now. And he wants to hijack the far-right House Republicans’ hijacking for his own purposes.
Continue reading “DeSantis Bets Backing Gov’t Shutdown Will Get His 2024 Bid Off Life Support”What’s the Deal With These Gun Charges and the Whole Hunter Biden Situation?
I want to follow up on David’s post below about Hunter Biden being hit with federal gun charges. Tax charges are presumably coming in another jurisdiction. But the gun charges are frankly weird. As David notes, it is very uncommon, perhaps as much as unheard of, for someone to be charged with lying about substance abuse when buying a gun unless it’s part of prosecution for some other felony. So maybe you buy a gun, use it to commit a felony and then prosecutors charge you for that felony and also hit you for lying about your drug use when you bought the gun. I haven’t spoken to anyone who can think of another example. Former DOJ Inspector General Michael Bromwich said simply today, “It doesn’t happen. DOJ will need to produce data in discovery, which will show this is the most selective of prosecutions.”
Continue reading “What’s the Deal With These Gun Charges and the Whole Hunter Biden Situation?”Wisconsin Republicans Vote To Oust State’s Top Election Official Amid Authoritarian Tear
Wisconsin Republicans voted to fire the state’s election chief Thursday, a lingering outgrowth of Donald Trump’s 2020 big lie campaign.
Continue reading “Wisconsin Republicans Vote To Oust State’s Top Election Official Amid Authoritarian Tear “Supreme Court Grants Brief Administrative Stay In Biden Social Media Case
House Dems And McCarthy Agree On One Thing: The Speaker Doesn’t Know What His Caucus Wants
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) acknowledged to reporters on Thursday that the growing list of demands from his far-right flank is getting to be a lot to keep track of, between impeachment, far-right appropriation bill riders and their opposition to a short term spending bill.
Continue reading “House Dems And McCarthy Agree On One Thing: The Speaker Doesn’t Know What His Caucus Wants”What A Fight This Is Going To Be
Hunter Biden has been indicted today in Delaware on federal gun charges that mirror the ones he previously had entered into a plea agreement to resolve. That plea agreement, as you know, fell apart in a dramatic way in open court.
Biden, through his legal team, continues to maintain that at least as to that part of the plea deal that addressed the gun charges, he had entered into a binding non-prosecution (or diversion) agreement and he’s going to hold the government to it.
I had half-expected Special Counsel David Weiss to sidestep that issue and charge the tax case instead. That was not to be. (Weiss doesn’t have jurisdiction in Delaware for the tax charges, so I would still anticipate those being filed in DC or California.)
Continue reading “What A Fight This Is Going To Be”Drones, Artillery and Connectivity
In a way we’ve gone down a bit of a rabbit hole in our recent discussions of Starlink, Elon Musk and Ukraine. But it’s a fascinating one and – unlike a rabbit hole proper, which is judged to be beguiling yet ultimately pointless – it actually connects up with many of the most critical issues of our time. TPM Reader VN followed up with more about Starlink and its very real military applications even for the United States. The subject matter gets dense and sometimes technical below. But it’s worth following along. Because it touches on some really big, big issues.
Continue reading “Drones, Artillery and Connectivity”Listen To This: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Impeach
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss Wisconsin Republicans’ authoritarian bender, Kevin McCarthy’s newest debacle and the panic around President Joe Biden’s age.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Aileen Cannon Finally Does Something!
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Time Keeps On Slippin’, Slippin’, Slippin’
I wrote in Monday’s Morning Memo about the slow pace of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in the Mar-a-Lago case, but I anticipated we might finally see some movement this week. Here’s what happened:
- Cannon held a sealed hearing under CIPA on Tuesday that wasn’t scheduled on the docket in which she apparently heard arguments on the protective order the government was seeking to govern the handling of classified information in the case.
- On Wednesday, she finally entered the protective order under CIPA. The government’s motion for the protective order had been pending for months. Now prosecutors can finally begin turning over classified discovery to Trump’s legal team.
- On balance, her protective order was normal. It didn’t grant Trump’s insane request to re-install a SCIF at Mar-a-Lago, and it didn’t give his co-defendants unbridled access to classified information since they weren’t charged with mishandling it.
- One weird wrinkle was she issued a separate order asking for extensive briefing on the parameters of CIPA, and it’s not clear what issue(s) she’s trying to address with that request.
Despite the movement, let’s not forget two things: 1) The government had been poised since mid-July to turn over classified discovery to Trump but Cannon’s lack of a ruling stalled that discovery production for more than two months; and 2) Cannon still hasn’t scheduled a hearing on the government’s Garcia motion to address the conflicts of interest of two defense counsel.
The clock keeps ticking.
Things Are Moving Fast For Mark Meadows
Yesterday’s developments in the Georgia RICO case include:
- The federal judge who declined to remove Mark Meadows’ case from state court refused to pause that ruling while Meadows appeals.
- The 11th Circuit moved quickly to consider Meadows’ request for a pause, setting oral arguments for this Friday.
What To Make Of Scott Perry’s Phone?
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals publicly released its previous ruling on whether Special Counsel Jack Smith can access the contents of the phone of Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA). It’s mostly a bad ruling for Smith under the Speech or Debate Clause, but with two caveats: 1) It may not be quite as bad as we thought when the docket entry on the sealed ruling first came out; and 2) It’s still not clear how critical Perry and his phone are to the broader investigation.
2024 Ephemera
- WaPo: Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) will not seek re-election
- Politico: Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) ditches the MAGA thing back home
- Washington Post-Monmouth University poll of South Carolina GOP primary: Trump 46%, Haley 18%, Scott 10%, DeSantis 9%.
- WaPo: DeSantis took undisclosed private flights and lodging through wealthy donors
Mitt With His Finger On the Pulse Pre-Jan. 6
Oy …
The accounts of the conduct of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) before she was escorted out of a weekend performance of the “Beetlejuice” musical in Denver are amazing, as is this surveillance video compilation:
Paxton’s Mistress Ends Up Not Testifying
Quite a lede from the WaPo:
AUSTIN — The star witness swept into the Texas Capitol on Wednesday, red coat and flashy Balenciaga-emblazoned handbag tucked under her arms, her white sheath, red lipstick and signature platinum pixie all a dramatic contrast from the somber-suited individuals who have testified for the past week in the historic impeachment trial of state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Until Laura Olson, it had mostly been former Paxton staffers and law-enforcement-turned-whistleblowers on the stand in the Senate, recounting the actions that led to him being charged with bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of office. Olson served a different role in his life: former mistress.
Oof …
The FBI has stood up a new unit to investigate threats against agents and prosecutors for not being tough enough on Hunter Biden, NBC News reports.
Photos From Morocco Earthquake
We’ve compiled some of the best photojournalism of the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Morocco:
Reckoning With The Devastation In Libya
The death toll from this week’s flood is estimated to be as high as 20,000:
SCOOP!
WSJ: Inside Exxon’s Strategy to Downplay Climate Change
55% Chance Warming Will Top 1.5C This Year
It depends on which baseline for pre-industrial warming you’re using, but by one such measure there’s a slightly-better-than-even chance earth will bust through the 1.5C degree barrier in 2023:
65 countries had their warmest August on record, including (among others): Brazil, China, Colombia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tanzania, Turkey, and Venezuela. pic.twitter.com/QcHyoVhDwv
— Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) September 13, 2023
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Wisconsin Voters Don’t Want Their Election Results Overturned
Republicans in Wisconsin’s GOP-dominated state legislature are pulling out all the stops to keep their state’s new liberal-majority Supreme Court from weighing in on two redistricting cases brought before the court quickly after Justice Janet Protasiewicz was sworn in this year.
Continue reading “Wisconsin Voters Don’t Want Their Election Results Overturned”