Buying Himself Time
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) went on Fox News on Sunday to speak to an audience of one.
Continue reading “Johnson Looks for Meaningless Ways To Satisfy Trump, Far-Right on Birthright Citizenship”A Response to Matt Yglesias About ‘Fight’ in Democratic Candidates
This morning on Bluesky Politico’s Josh Gerstein flagged to me and others a piece by Matt Yglesias in which, he said, Matt “says progressive Dems [are] too obsessed with fighting Trump rather than winning in marginal states/districts [and] picks fight with Josh Marshall over it.”
It turns out Yglesias is responding to a piece I wrote a couple weeks ago entitled “Centrists, This Is on You.” I sat down and read Matt’s piece and found myself kind of baffled because he has me saying perhaps not the diametric opposite of what I wrote but pretty close to the opposite of it. I always try to be sensitive to the possibility that when someone so thoroughly misunderstands what I wrote that it may be that I just wasn’t clear. There’s the additional factor that I usually write assuming familiarity with the stream of posts I’ve written on the same topic in recent days and weeks. People read a single post and some of my meaning might not be clear. Here though I can’t help but think that Matt zipped through the post in question, zeroed in on a few buzzwords like “fight” and then just plugged those into his existing framework and didn’t actually pay attention to my argument. Because, as I said, he’s just arguing against these stock arguments that I never made.
Still, there are some illuminating things that can be drawn from the misunderstanding and/or disagreement.
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TPM Readers on Platner
From TPM Reader WM …
Continue reading “TPM Readers on Platner”Three thoughts on Platner from a coastal Maine resident and why while I’m mad as hell, I’m not feeling all that pessimistic — yet:
Kentucky Gov. Requests McConnell Update the Public on His Health Amid Weeks Long Hospitalization
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) formally requested an update on Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) health on Wednesday amid the senator’s recent and ongoing hospitalization.
“Over the last several weeks, Kentuckians have grown increasingly concerned about the current state of your health and wellbeing, and ability to hold office in the United States Senate,” Beshear wrote in a Wednesday letter to the senator. “As Governor, I request that you fully update Kentuckians regarding the current status of your health.”
Continue reading “Kentucky Gov. Requests McConnell Update the Public on His Health Amid Weeks Long Hospitalization”Trump Admin Lobs Wild New Threats at States Over Election Rules
Do Trump’s Bidding on Elections or Else …
In a pre-election blitz, the Trump administration has issued sweeping new threats to red and blue states alike if they don’t fall in line with the president on how to run their own elections:
- Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon sent similar letters to all 50 states and D.C. threatening election officials with criminal prosecution if they don’t take certain steps to crack down on the myth of noncitizen voting. Dhillon gave states five days to respond with details on how they intend to comply.
- FEMA has told states that they will lose 20% of their antiterrorism grants unless they transition to paper ballots, verify citizenship of voters and make other changes to election procedures, the NYT reports. The forced changes are part of the laundry list of dubious election rules that President Trump has pushed through executive order, proposed legislation, and endless misleading rhetoric.
The one-two punch of threatening criminal prosecution and making unrelated federal funding contingent unless states comply with Trump’s wishes represent a new level of coercion just four months before Election Day.
Trump’s previous efforts along these lines have been thoroughly rejected by federal courts on the obvious grounds that the Constitution leaves the running of federal election in the hands of the states and gives the president no authority in the election realm.
Some of the demanded changes at this late date, like switching to paper ballots, are absurdly impractical. Nearly all of the demands emerge from Trump’s relentless efforts to discredit free and fair elections, which has given rise to extensive conspiracizing on the right.
The latest moves are yet another way that Trump has harnessed the powers of the federal government to buttress his political position and seek retribution for his 2020 defeat.
In related news: Detroit election officials are pushing back against the DOJ’s plan to send voting monitors to the city for Michigan’s Aug. 4 primary.
Quote of the Day
“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution. I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts. This is truly bizarre behavior by the federal agency that is supposed to be protecting civil rights.”—Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson (R), Utah’s top election official, on Harmeet Dhillon’s letter
Judge Quashes 2020 GA Election Subpoena
U.S. District Judge William M. Ray II, notably a Trump appointee, quashed a wide-ranging federal grand jury subpoena into the 2020 presidential election in Fulton County, Georgia as too much, too late.
The subpoena for personal information on every county employee who worked on the 2020 election was “staggering” in its breadth, Ray ruled.
It was part of President Trump’s never-ending quest for retribution for his loss, a point that Ray made explicitly: “Thus, perhaps it makes sense that the DOJ, now unquestionably under the current President’s control, is seeking to identify individuals who might possess information or opinions in support of his claim that the 2020 Election was not legitimate.”
In a spicy footnote, Ray directed his scorn toward the DOJ’s tactic of using out-of-state prosecutors in the case, rather than the local U.S. Attorney’s Office: “To be clear, no evidence has been presented to the Court that the actual Grand Jury in the Northern District of Georgia seeks this information, as opposed to the out-of-district prosecutors who the DOJ has appointed to lead this inquiry who have served this Subpoena in the name of the Grand Jury.”
In the end, Ray based his decision to quash the subpoena on the rather narrow but sturdy contention that “the statute of limitations for any possible crime arising from the 2020 Election has long expired” and therefore the subpoena “would not lead to information that could be used to charge anyone with anything, at least not any viable charge.”
Inside the Fight Over MN Subpoenas
Documents from the intense fight over federal grand jury subpoenas of Democratic elected officials in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge are slowly being unsealed after U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz of Minneapolis quashed the subpoenas last month, Minnesota Public Radio reports.
The Trump DOJ engineered and defended the retaliatory subpoenas on the grounds that state elected officials were illegally interfering in ICE enforcement operations, an argument Judge Schiltz rejected: “The fact that connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation range from extremely weak to nonexistent only adds to the overwhelming evidence that these subpoenas were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate.”
ICE Shoots and Kills Houston Immigrant
An ICE agent shot and killed an undocumented Mexican national who had reportedly been in the United States for nearly 35 years during an attempted traffic stop arrest in Houston on Tuesday morning.
ICE, which has been notoriously unreliable in providing accurate details of shooting incidents, issued a statement from its acting director with an interesting caveat that seems like a nod to its troubling track record (emphasis mine): “From information we are receiving, he rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”
The shooting is being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s office.
In an unrelated case in Nebraska last week, a Venezulean man pleaded guilty to one count of forcibly resisting arrest causing bodily injury as part of a plea agreement after the case against him for attempted murder of a federal officer fell apart. While DHS and federal prosecutors originally claimed that he had “violently attacked an ICE agent,” including choking her and slamming her head into the ground, video evidence of his arrest later contradicted those claims, Nebraska Public Radio reported.
The allegations made in the initial complaint were “at worst a misrepresentation and at best complete negligence,” U.S. District Court Chief Judge Robert Rossiter said during sentencing, adding that he found the law enforcement reports “embellished” and “troubling.”
The Latest on Iran …
- NYT: U.S. Strikes Iran and Reimposes Sanctions in Retaliation for Tanker Attack
- WSJ: Trump Says Ceasefire With Iran Is Over After Latest Attacks
- NPR: New lawsuit alleges U.S. shared asylum application details with Iran
Trump Shakes NATO With New Threats
President Trump arrived at the NATO summit in Turkey and immediately resumed the bombast and threatening behavior that has weakened NATO to Vladimir Putin’s advantage:
- Trump reasserted his spurious claims to Greenland, saying “Greenland is very important for the U.S. but it’s not important for Denmark.” That prompted a strong reaction from Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen: “We are ready to defend every inch of NATO, including our own territory.”
- Trump improbably purported to halt U.S. trade with Spain.
What’s at Stake in Europe
One of the things I came away with from my trip last week to Denmark, where I got a good refresher on 20th century European history, was a new appreciation for how misguided America’s conceit about NATO is. The idea that Trump embodies isn’t new, but rather is the same self-serving notion that if we just leave NATO to its own devices we’ll get all of the benefits of the alliance without all of the cost.
That conceit is premised on the deeply flawed notion that NATO is a default arrangement, rather than the historical anomaly it is. Denmark, for instance, had a long history of maintaining neutrality, including during the First World War, until the cataclysm of the Second World War prompted it to become a founding member of NATO. For it’s part, Finland didn’t join NATO until 2023. There are innumerable other examples of how NATO represents a dramatic break from past statecraft on the continent.
The U.S. abandoning NATO now doesn’t mean Europe will revert to a 1914 mindset; too many economic, cultural, and political threads have been sewn together in the post-WWII period for it to revert to that arrangement. But it is a distinctly American myopia to think Europe will stand pat, won’t evolve on its own as it manages all of its own competing interests, makes it own internal compromises, and responds to the domestic political realities of each country.
The U.S. isn’t just abandoning NATO; it’s abandoning having a hand in managing those dynamics and minimizing their impacts on its own national interest — which is another, albeit more nuanced, way of saying Trump is putting his own interest above the nation’s.
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The Brief: State Party Wants Platner to Have ‘No Role’ in Picking Replacement
Platner Replacement Battle Begins to Take Shape
In the hours after multiple outlets published stories on Jenny Racicot’s allegation that Graham Platner had raped her in 2021, we saw a lot of predictions that he would swiftly step aside. That has not come to pass. His team, according to the state party, is trying to assert some influence over who replaces him — using leverage that his presence on the ballot continues to create, but that many Democrats say he has no right to exercise.
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like,” Devon Murphy-Anderson, the executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, said in a video posted Tuesday evening. She said Platner would have “no role” in picking his replacement.
Platner’s team denied trying to put a “thumb on the scale.”
There is an irony here that Democrats are trying to navigate delicately: attempts by both Platner’s team and the party to simply choose a replacement could backfire, taking away voters’ ability to pick who they vote for in a critical race for Senate control this November.
Some potential candidates are calling for a kind of mini-primary. “What matters more than anything right now is that the process to select the nominee be as open and transparent as possible,” Nirav Shah, a candidate in the gubernatorial primary and the former head of the state health agency, said in a video posted yesterday. “For example, there should be debates and town halls to make sure that Mainers know who they are selecting to take on Senator Collins.”
Shah said he is considering a bid to replace Platner, as did Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state and a former gubernatorial candidate. A third gubernatorial candidate, former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, filed paperwork to form an exploratory committee. Punchbowl reported this morning that outgoing U.S. House Rep. Jared Golden (D) will not enter the race.
Whoever the replacement is, Nate Cohn writes that they would start as a “modest favorite against Susan Collins.”
A White Nationalist Group’s July 4 March Sends Ripples Through D.C.
The white nationalist group Patriot Front marched through Washington, D.C. this past weekend, a grim spectacle amid an already surreal observance of our nation’s first quarter millennium.
- The march set various powerful right-wingers conspiracy theorizing, Hunter Walker reports. Elon Musk and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) speculated that the group was a leftist or a law enforcement front, an echo of similar theories about the January 6 insurrection, which some elected Republicans attempted to excuse by baselessly casting it as the work of “antifa” or the FBI.
- Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) took things further, proposing that a congressional committee she is on could probe the group while also theorizing that something fishy was going on. “What I find odd about Patriot Front is how under Biden they were never investigated,” Luna wrote on X. “Well funded. Never investigated.”
- Meanwhile, also at TPM, Christopher Mathias traces how an idea espoused by the founder of Patriot Front and various other far-right activists — the “remigration” of immigrants — has in a few short years become official Trump administration policy, with a dedicated office at the State Department. The term, he writes, is a “euphemism with the clearest, most traceable of fascist lineages, designed just over a decade ago to soften or obscure the atrocities associated with its actual meaning: ethnic cleansing.”
Tabs
- Ed Kilgore describes the SAVE America Act bait-and-switch I examined yesterday as a kind of “consolation prize” for Trump, which feels about right.
- A Trump-appointed federal judge blocked a grand jury subpoena for information about 2020 election workers in Georgia.
- Mitch McConnell appears to be talking — and, after a series of age-and-health related scandals in Congress, his allies really want us to know about it. Majority Leader John Thune said he and McConnell had a “lengthy and substantive conversation.” Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) said he and McConnell spoke for “roughly 20 minutes.” Conservative talking head Scott Jennings also said he spoke to McConnell for “just shy of 20 minutes.”
Man of the Hour
It’s Ken Paxton. “Despite his own warnings, Paxton appears to have used an address where he did not live while voting in six elections in the past two years, including in May’s runoff that made him the Republican nominee for U.S. senator,” ProPublica reports.
Are We At War?
The Fight Over Trans Girls’ Sports Participation Moves to the November Ballot
This story was originally reported by Brooke Migdon of The 19th. Meet Brooke and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
Legislatures in left-leaning states have consistently rejected bills that would bar transgender student-athletes from participating in sports in line with their gender identity. But this November, the question of whether to exclude them will go straight to voters in two blue states, Colorado and Washington, and one swing state, Arizona.
The groups behind the ballot measures say they see energy behind the issue, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision last week upholding similar laws in West Virginia and Idaho.
Continue reading “The Fight Over Trans Girls’ Sports Participation Moves to the November Ballot”TPM Readers Tell Us Why They Contribute #3
From TPM Reader CS …
Continue reading “TPM Readers Tell Us Why They Contribute #3”I contributed some cash money to the TPM fund and you asked people to let you know why we did, so…
I support TPM because I agree with you about the current importance of independent media. Major media (if that’s the correct term) now seems entirely captured by the billionaire class that has demonstrated a clear lack of concern with civic democracy and an active interest in mass opiates. So independent media is a critical bullwark for civic democracy at a time when voices opposing the status quo are being systemically eliminated with a historical efficiency (see: AI and social media).
TPM Readers Tell Us Why They Contribute #2
From TPM Reader TS …
I have been a member of TPM for 10 years and a reader for more than 20 years. I gave this year and I try to give every year because your work brings me joy. Yes, it informs me and educates me, but it also gives me great joy. And not just as a reader who craves smart and thoughtful news and commentary, but as a fellow business owner. I have had my law firm for over 22 years (we are now 7 lawyers and 3 staff), and I have learned that culture, openness, and transparency are the keys to success. I treat my team and my clients like grown-ups, and it fosters an environment of respect and general fulfillment (is it a job after all!). I see the same thing with TPM, and it shows in everything you do. I get my news from many sources that I respect, but TPM is one of the few that I support financially because I feel like I am part of something positive with good people on your team and among your readers. Thank you and keep up the good work.