The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Monday that Ohio officials must rewrite parts of a ballot initiative state Republicans pushed to raise the threshold for passage of citizen-originated ballot proposals to 60 percent from its current simple majority.
Continue reading “Ohio Supreme Court Orders Partial Rewrite Of GOP Ballot Proposal Meant To Thwart Upcoming Abortion Initiative “Fox News Barr Interview Transcript
I posted the video of Bill Barr’s Fox News interview on the Trump charges over the weekend. I’ve had several of you ask to see the transcript itself. So here it is.
Continue reading “Fox News Barr Interview Transcript”Short Drive Update
With your support, we’ve managed to get to the 40% milestone on our way toward our goal in this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive. We’re now at $202,575, which is great for five days. Still a very long way to go. But we’re encouraged by the response so far. (Really, it’s hard to convey how much of a relief, a show of support, a validation and above all a big, big assist on our collective work that is.) We’ve got an overflow of news, which is kind of inconsiderate of the ex-President. But we’ll do our best to drive and news at the same time. If you’d like to support our efforts in this critical drive, just click right here.
A Cold Civil War Is Upon Us
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
The Incipient Threat Of Political Violence
In the wake of the Mar-a-Lago indictment there were echoes of Trump’s call to arms before Jan. 6, urging supporters to protest his first court appearance tomorrow.
There’s two levels of analysis here: (i) the immediate risk assessment of something bad happening Tuesday; and (ii) the broader threat posed by the injection of political violence – or even the threat of violence – into the public dialogue.
As for tomorrow, my general sense from people who track these things closely, is that there’s insufficient time and coordination among MAGA and other extremists groups to pull off a Jan. 6-like disturbance in Miami. Not no risk, but low risk.
Former DHS official Juliette Kayyem has a good representative sample of that line of thinking:
The bottom line is this week is more likely to see lone-wolf or one-off acts of violence inspired by heated rhetoric from Trump and others than an mob attack on the courthouse in Miami or on law enforcement there. But don’t take that as reassuring. It was shortly after the Mar-a-Lago raid last August that a gunman attacked the FBI field office in Cincinnati.
As for the broader emergence of political violence and rhetoric tinged with violence, we continue to be in a very bad place.
“Political violence experts say that even if aggressive language by high-profile individuals does not directly end in physical harm, it creates a dangerous atmosphere in which the idea of violence becomes more accepted, especially if such rhetoric is left unchecked,” the NYT reported.
What To Expect Tomorrow
3 p.m. ET: Trump to surrender to federal authorities in Miami and appear for his arraignment on the Mar-a-Lago charges
8:15 p.m. ET: Trump will make remarks from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Jack Smith Is Stuck With Aileen Cannon
The NYT’s Charlie Savage dug in deep on how U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ended up assigned the Trump criminal case in Florida. In short, there was nothing unusual or untoward about her receiving the assignment. But the key takeaway is that unless she decides to recuse herself, it looks like the case is with her for the long haul, not just initially, as was reported last week.
The Dog That Didn’t Bark
If you were looking for any early signs of Republicans breaking with the Trump cult of personality over the Mar-a-Lago indictment, sorry to disappoint. Neither Mike Pence nor Ron DeSantis could bring themselves to seize on the indictment even thought they’re running against Trump. In fact, they both attacked the indictment and the Justice Department.
Best Line
Jon Lovett on the MAL indictment: “It’s so funny it feels as though DOJ crossed the writer’s picket line.”
The Worst Client In History
Bloomberg: Trump Indictment Highlights the Perils of Being His Lawyer
NYT: Trump Indictment Shows Critical Evidence Came From One of His Own Lawyers
Unbelievable
I’d prefer if my ex-criminal defense attorney would, to use the legal term of art, shut the fuck up. But former Trump lawyer Tim Parlatore has been out there for days now doing stuff like this:
Great Thread
Jeff Shalet has a must-read thread from Saturday dissecting Trump’s first post-indictment speech in real-time. Really worth a moment of your time:
Fake Outrage
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tried on the fake umbrage, in-your-face, confront-the-media-to-show-your-own-strength that Donald Trump perfected and Ron DeSantis imitates. The problem – besides it being ridiculous and transparent – is Graham is terrible at it:
Keep An Eye On This
The proceedings to strip Trump coup architect John Eastman of his law license in California are ramping up.
Things You May Have Missed Friday
I know you were gobbling up the Trump indictment in all its glory Friday afternoon, so let me flag a couple of things you may have missed in the MAL tsunami:
- Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has appealed a judge’s decision to release publicly the names of the co-signors on his $500,000 bond that is keeping him out of jail before his trial on federal charges.
- The chief federal judge in DC partially unsealed his secret April decision and briefs on whether former Vice President Mike Pence had to testify to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury investigating Jan. 6 and the Trump-led effort to overturn the 2020 election. Pence, who subsequently testified to the grand jury on April 27 won a small concession from the judge that the Speech or Debate Clause did shield him from questioning in his role as president of the Senate, but in practice that left very little off-limits for Smith.
Still Stuck On The Civil War
The leading non-Trump contenders for the GOP nomination for president are touting their neo-Confederate bona fides, promising to drop the name Ft. Liberty and restore Ft. Bragg:
The Grand Wizard … Oops … I Mean Governor
Quite a moment at the Tony’s:
Like Morning Memo? Let us know!
NC GOP Censures Thom Tillis For Backing LGBTQ+ Rights, Gun And Immigration Reform
The North Carolina state Republican Party voted on Saturday to formally censure Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) for supporting and backing policies around LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and gun reform that it considered to be insufficiently conservative.
Continue reading “NC GOP Censures Thom Tillis For Backing LGBTQ+ Rights, Gun And Immigration Reform”Barr on Fox
It’s a funny thing pointing to Bill Barr as an authority on anything. But it’s worth watching this interview with Barr about the Trump indictments on Fox News.
Learning to Say F- It to the Trump FlimFlam
A few of you wrote in in response to my post on the sheer “normalness,” the “mundaneness” of the prosecution of Donald Trump. You took me to task, arguing that this is all far from normal. It’s a crisis, in fact. Nothing about Trump’s time on the political stage is normal.
I think we are speaking past each other.
Continue reading “Learning to Say F- It to the Trump FlimFlam”Who Is On Trial Here?
From TPM Reader JS …
Continue reading “Who Is On Trial Here?”I’m getting so enraged by all of these headlines in the NYT and WaPo that claim this is “bad for Biden” or a “test for the rule of law.’ No.
Trump and the Clown-Wowza Reality Distortion Field
I sort of held my tongue through most of the revelations and hijinks yesterday. I will share some thoughts later on the particulars of the indictment. (You can do no better than reading Josh Kovensky’s global wrap-up here.) But for now I wanted to share one thought.
That is the sheer ordinariness of the whole story. That may seem like an odd thing to say: ex-President facing multiple federal felony indictments for the first time ever, the bizarre details of this antic clown’s Florida Villa-cum-Hotel stuffed with banker’s boxes of classified documents, the bathroom chandelier, the power glitz jammed together with gaudy dime store aesthetic. But we grant Trump too much by lavishing, wearying too much in the purported weightiness of the moment. It’s very normal. Yes, powerful people get away with a lot. But if you commit crimes repeatedly and brazenly you’re very likely to get charged with one or more crimes, particularly if you’re in the public spotlight.
Continue reading “Trump and the Clown-Wowza Reality Distortion Field”How Baseless Anti-Trans Claims Fuel ‘Crime-Control Theater,’ And The Adoption Of Harmful Laws
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
It has been seven years since North Carolina made headlines for enacting a “bathroom bill” — legislation intended to prevent transgender people from using restrooms that align with their gender identity.
Continue reading “How Baseless Anti-Trans Claims Fuel ‘Crime-Control Theater,’ And The Adoption Of Harmful Laws “