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”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?”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”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
The two adult Trump sons flailed their way through their testimonies in the NY civil fraud trial against their so-called business empire. It didn’t go well.
The upshot of their testimonies was best captured by a spoof account on Twitter: “According to Junior and Eric, the Trump Organization is a ‘massive organization,’ which they ran without any involvement whatsoever in running it.” Indeed.
The evidence against the Trumps is overwhelming, the judge didn’t appear to find them to be credible witnesses, and their defenses wilted under the slightest cross examination, often when presented with documentary evidence that directly contradicted their testimonies.
The day’s testimony ended with another clash between Trump’s counsel and the judge over the judge’s law clerk. MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin has a pet theory for why Trump attorney Christopher Kise would go to such lengths to antagonize the judge in a judge-tried case: It steered the news coverage away from the debacle of Eric’s testimony.
Ivanka Trump added a comic footnote to the day, asking an appeals court to delay her testimony next week on the grounds that it falls “in the middle of a school week.” The appeals court promptly denied her request.
Donald Trump went to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals late yesterday seeking an emergency stay of the gag order against him in the Jan. 6 case. He’s seeking an immediate pause of the gag order and then a stay while his appeal is pending. Trump asked the appeals court for a decision by Nov. 10, and if he loses he plans to take the case to the Supreme Court.
The Minnesota Supreme Court didn’t give a clear read during oral arguments Thursday on how it will rule on the Disqualification Clause case pending against Donald Trump.
The prospect of Donald Trump fleeing the country rather than facing trial and conviction has always seemed quite plausible to me. The Justice Department rationale for not making him surrender his passport or barring him from traveling overseas seems to be rooted in the fact that he has Secret Service protection which would make any attempt to run almost comical. And yet … can we be so sure?
Here’s a well-edited exchange that includes former FBI Special Agent Chris Favo talking about Trump’s flight risk:
The Brooklyn home of NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ chief fundraiser was raided by the FBI early Thursday morning in what the NYT reports is a broad public corruption investigation into whether his 2021 election campaign conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations.
Cryptoking Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted by a federal jury in New York on all seven counts against him arising from the collapse of FTX:
1. Wire fraud on FTX customers
2. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on FTX customers
3. Wire fraud on lenders to Alameda Research
4. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders to Alameda Research
5. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on FTX investors
6. Conspiracy to commit commodities fraud on customers of FTX in connection with purchases and sales of cryptocurrency and swaps
7. Conspiracy to commit money laundering
The jury deliberated for just over an hour before reaching its verdict.
Overt acts of anti-Semitism have exploded since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack:
House GOP passes Israel aid package that targets IRS funding and is going absolutely nowhere in the Senate.
There comes a time, maybe every six to eight generations, where the world changes in a very short time. … And I think what happens in the next two, three years are going to determine what the world looks like for the next five or six decades.
Joe Biden
Famed climate scientist James Hansen has a new, dire prediction.
Congress will never be as good as when MTG and Lauren Boebert were still BFFs:
You voted to kick me out of the freedom caucus, but keep CNN wannabe Ken Buck and vaping groping Lauren Boebert and you voted with the Democrats to protect Terrorist Tlaib.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) November 2, 2023
You hate Trump, certified Biden’s election, and could care less about J6 defendants being persecuted. https://t.co/OIgUvndXek
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Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) managed to guide an Israeli aid bill to passage in the House Thursday that’s dead on arrival in the Senate, but will appease his right flank.
Continue reading “House Passes Dead-On-Arrival, Poison-Pilled Israel Aid Bill”ICYMI, Republicans’ irritation with Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-AL) months-long military promotion blockade blew up on the Senate floor last night, as a handful of Senate Republicans tried to hold a series of individual votes on nominees to bypass him.
He blocked each one.
Continue reading “Tuberville Shoves Staffer Into Moving Traffic (Rhetorically)”Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) confirmed Thursday that the committee will vote next week to authorize subpoenas for a few powerful right-wing players known to have intimate, monetary relationships with Supreme Court justices.
Continue reading “Republicans Threaten To Filibuster Subpoena Enforcement And Quash SCOTUS Oversight”Justices on the Minnesota Supreme Court greeted arguments to disqualify President Trump from the ballot with a mixture of skepticism and interest at a Thursday hearing, leaving the path forward for the effort an open question.
Continue reading “Minnesota Justices Stay Coy On Whether They Can DQ Trump”In August of 2023, Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted in Georgia in a sweeping RICO case arising from various attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Since then, several defendants have reached plea agreements. We’ve noted them here and will continue to update this list.
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss Mike Johnson’s early days on the job and major upcoming elections in Ohio and Virginia.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
