Special Counsel Jack Smith hit back at Donald Trump’s attempt to have the Jan. 6 case against him dismissed in a stark Monday reply, characterizing the former president as committing crimes without parallel in American history.
Continue reading “Smith: Trump ‘Stands Alone In American History For His Alleged Crimes’”That Scary Biden-Trump Poll
As many of you have likely seen, over the weekend The New York Times and Siena released a poll showing that President Biden is running behind Donald Trump in all the big swing states with the exception of Wisconsin. Meanwhile a “generic Democrat” is polling ahead of Trump basically everywhere. Not surprisingly this has again released flurries of questions about whether Biden should be running at all or whether he should be replaced with another candidate younger and with less baggage. TPM Reader LD wrote in to ask, “Is TPM’s position still that we need to sit down and shut up if we have doubts about Biden’s appeal to the coalition necessary to win?”
Let me first respond to LD’s grievancy gripe. The dynamics of the online world make us all reflexively assume the posture of fed up little guy in a battle with the elites. But the truth is that I never said any such thing. (By the way, LD and I talked it over and now I think we’re back to being best pals.) What I said is that I don’t think anyone but Joe Biden will be the nominee and I don’t think we have any realistic way to change that. (Just why I think that you can see in the earlier posts.) So I’m focused on getting this guy reelected rather than imagining some alternative, usually fantastical scenario. As I told LD in my initial, slightly volcanic response, by all means go out and advocate for Biden to step aside. I’ll be here in what I take to be the real world trying to get him reelected. I don’t control people. I certainly don’t control Biden. This is just my interpretation of the situation before us.
But this isn’t the whole story.
Continue reading “That Scary Biden-Trump Poll”On-Going Observations
I wanted to share some thoughts on a miscellany of topics that have come up over the weekend in Israel/Palestine. Most aren’t the ‘big picture.’ Partly I’ve run out of things to say about the big picture and, to an extent, the emotional energy to say it.
These are just observations on topics just beneath the headlines.
Continue reading “On-Going Observations”The Supreme Court Will Decide If Domestic Abuse Orders Can Bar People From Having Guns. Lives Could Be At Stake.
This article was originally published at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments this week in a pivotal firearms case that could have profound implications for how police and courts deal with domestic violence.
The question: Should people who are placed under domestic violence protection orders also lose access to their guns?
Continue reading “The Supreme Court Will Decide If Domestic Abuse Orders Can Bar People From Having Guns. Lives Could Be At Stake.”No One Will Be Safe From Trump’s Retribution Tour
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Trump And His Allies Plot Revenge
On the heels of a similar story from the NYT, the WaPo details the planning going on to operationalize Trump’s “I am you retribution” promise if he wins election in 2024:
Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.
All of this is part of the so-called Project 2025 being run by Trump loyalists and a network of DC think tanks. The WaPo story identifies specific targets of Trumpian revenge:
In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.
I’ve seen criticism that the NYT and WaPo don’t connect the dots between the kinds of things Trump was already doing while in office and what he’s promising to do in a second term. Fair, as far as it goes, but I do take some solace in mainstream coverage that treats using the office of the presidency for retribution and revenge as ominous and not normal. I would also note that the WaPo identifies former Trump DOJ flunky Jeff Clark as “leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025.” So there is some recognition of the continuity here.
My question is more along the lines of this: At what point does a presidential campaign conspiring to weaponize the federal government against its political enemies become fair game for criminal investigation? It’s a delicate and complicated question, but one we best be asking ourselves sooner rather than later.
Good Read
TPM: Trump’s Violent Rhetoric Echoes The Fascist Commitment To A Destructive And Bloody Rebirth Of Society
Trump Appointee Sentenced In Jan. 6 Attack
Ryan Reilly: “A former Donald Trump political appointee at the State Department who tried to storm the Capitol and assaulted law enforcement officers on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to 70 months in prison on Friday.”
Hilarious
Daily Beast: Mark Meadows’ Publisher Sues Him for Millions Over Election Lies in Book
Special Counsel Calls Out Trump’s Delay Tactics
Special Counsel Jack Smith is becoming more animated and less circumspect about Trump’s delay tactics. A new filing in the Jan. 6 case offers the most recent look at Smith’s new, more blunt language: “The defendant’s misleading criticism of the way the Government produced emails exposes that he is grasping at straws for an excuse to delay these proceedings.”
MAL Delays And A Spanking
Early on, I cautioned not to overreact to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in the Mar-a-Lago case until we had more to go one. I hope readers of Morning Memo recognize by now that we have plenty to go on.
The two main developments Friday: (i) Cannon wrongly smacked prosecutors for a good-faith courtesy filing alerting her to Trump’s latest antics; and (ii) Cannon okayed another delay in the pretrial schedule.
For more details:
- TPM: Judge Cannon Knocks Jack Smith For A Filing Calling Out Trump’s Delay Tactics
- Joyce Vance: “The reality is that Judge Cannon lacks the temperament to be a federal judge.”
Trump Takes The Stand Today In NY Fraud Case
Pass the popcorn: 6 things to watch.
NY Judge Issues New Gag Order
Things got prickly Friday in the NY fraud case when Trump’s lawyers again targeted the trial judge’s law clerk, prompting the judge to expand the gag order from Trump to his lawyers.
GOP Gov’t Shutdown Alert
Reminder: The current CR runs out on Nov. 17.
The Most Ignorant Man In DC?
TPM alum Cameron Joseph with an exhaustive profile of Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville
Israel-Gaza Watch
- WSJ: Israeli Military Poised for Battle for Gaza City
- Michigan Democrats criticize Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for invoking “from the river to the sea.”
- HuffPo: Republicans Introduce Bill To Expel Palestinians From The United States
Illinois Assault Weapons Ban Upheld
Chris Geidner: “Late Friday afternoon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld Illinois’s ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines — a major decision applying the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision striking down a New York gun law to uphold a different gun restriction.”
2024 Ephemera
- NYT/Siena Poll: President Biden is trailing Donald Trump in five of the six most important battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania).
- Dan Pfeiffer: How to Respond to the Very Bad NYT Poll
- David Leonhardt: What Can Biden Do?
- KMOV: Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R), a candidate for governor, implies that if voters enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution he’d have to resign as governor rather than violate his oath of office.
Getting To Know Speaker Mike Johnson
- Rolling Stone: Mike Johnson Admits He and His Son Monitor Each Other’s Porn Intake in Resurfaced Video
- WaPo: How Speaker Mike Johnson’s plans for a Christian law school unraveled
- AP: Mike Johnson was founding dean of a planned law school in Shreveport. It never materialized.
NYC Has Some Of The Best Political Scandals
The straw donors probe of NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign gets better and better:
New York City police officers were sent to the home of Mayor Eric Adams’ chief fundraiser — at the request of an internal affairs official — just hours before it was raided by the FBI in a campaign-finance corruption probe tied to Turkey’s government, The Messenger has learned.
The NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau official called the 77th Precinct headquarters in Brooklyn around 7 p.m. Wednesday and requested a “wellness check” at the home of Brianna Suggs, 25, a law enforcement official familiar with the matter said.
- Who is Brianna Suggs and why did Eric Adams tap an inexperienced 23-year-old recent college grad to run his campaign’s fundraising?
- NYT: Did Fake Donors Give the Mayor Real Money?
The Fight Continues …
Wow. Zelenskyy wraps up his Meet the Press interview by saying "we are not ready to give our freedom to this f—— terrorist Putin." pic.twitter.com/UkcClPracs
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 5, 2023
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Louisiana’s ‘In God We Trust’ Law May Violate Establishment Clause Of The First Amendment
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
When Louisiana passed a law in August 2023 requiring public schools to post “In God We Trust” in every classroom – from elementary school to college – the author of the bill claimed to be following a long-held tradition of displaying the national motto, most notably on U.S. currency.
Continue reading “Louisiana’s ‘In God We Trust’ Law May Violate Establishment Clause Of The First Amendment”Trump’s Violent Rhetoric Echoes The Fascist Commitment To A Destructive And Bloody Rebirth Of Society
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric has regularly bordered on the incitement of violence. Lately, however, it has become even more violent. Yet both many in the press and the public have largely shrugged their shoulders.
Continue reading “Trump’s Violent Rhetoric Echoes The Fascist Commitment To A Destructive And Bloody Rebirth Of Society”All The Ways Republicans Tried To Game The Ohio Abortion Vote
The future of abortion access in Ohio will be decided on Tuesday, when voters thumbs up or down a ballot proposal to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
The abortion rights supporters have money, polls and the recent history of other red-state abortion proposals on their side; the opponents have various schemes of essentially legalized cheating on theirs.
Continue reading “All The Ways Republicans Tried To Game The Ohio Abortion Vote”Are American Jews Caught in a Tide of Anti-Semitism?
It’s hard to analyze public questions with dispassion and wisdom in today’s brutal cacophony of social media driven public conversations. It’s hard to do that when you bring deeply felt and even personal commitments to the questions at hand, though I seldom write about things I don’t have strong beliefs about. I wanted to share a few thoughts about the current arguments about anti-Semitism and Zionism.
There are a lot of American Jews at this moment who feel like they are seeing a wave of unconcealed anti-Semitism that they haven’t seen in their lifetimes.
Is that really true?
As the Israel-Hamas war grinds forward an emanation of that conflict is playing out in the United States with protests and counter-protests, fights over symbolic public actions, manifestos and public letters. Each in turn spurs a public debate about just what was going on in this or that social media viral video. Social media amplifies and accelerates every cut and thrust. What is anti-Semitic, what is simply protests against a war with harrowing numbers of civilian casualties? We see the same well-worn public debates, or rather yelling matches, about what’s anti-Zionism and what’s anti-Semitism, whether anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
It may help to start with some definitions and history, their relevance and often irrelevance.
Continue reading “Are American Jews Caught in a Tide of Anti-Semitism?”Judge Cannon Knocks Jack Smith For A Filing Calling Out Trump’s Delay Tactics
The Florida federal judge overseeing the Mar-a-Lago case seemingly shot back at federal prosecutors on Friday. After they warned the judge that Trump was trying to “manipulate” her by seeking further delay, she came back with a curt response: their warning was too long.
Continue reading “Judge Cannon Knocks Jack Smith For A Filing Calling Out Trump’s Delay Tactics”