An Ode to Corruption: Announcing 2025’s Golden Duke Winners

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

The lawless no man’s land between the holidays and the New Year are an apt time to announce the winners of the 17th Annual Golden Duke Awards, TPM’s yearly toast to the toads who took venality and nonsense to new heights.

In 2025, the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, those who specialize in political corruption, shameless capitulation and unabashed betrayals of public trust had ample opportunity to shine. And shine they did.

Continue reading “An Ode to Corruption: Announcing 2025’s Golden Duke Winners” →

Update on Free TPM Ultra-Merch for New Subs and Upgrades

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I wanted to let you know that we are now out of free TPM 25th anniversary baseball caps and t-shirts that we were giving away as inducements for people to become members of TPM or upgrade their memberships. Thanks to everyone who took us up on the offer. Your ultra-merch should either be in your hands or on the way.

I wanted to add an important additional point. This isn’t the last chance. A number of you wrote in asking if you could simply purchase a piece of ultra-merch or why newbs were getting first dibs while years-long-members were shut out. Here’s the deal.

The ultra-merch we commissioned for the 25th anniversary was also basically a proof of concept. We wanted to find good suppliers and get a sense of pricing and so forth for a different quality tier of clothing, something a few notches above the standard made-to-order, meh-quality stuff that any substack can set up to sell in a few minutes, stuff that is essentially a novelty. We wanted stuff that that was of quality you’d feel good wearing as a simple garment. That’s a different part of the clothing commission industry; pricing is different, fulfillment is different. And what we found is really nice stuff. Like the high end version of the kind of baseball cap you might buy from an MLB team or the kind of well-made t-shirt you might buy at a real clothing store. So it was done with the expectation that we would start selling similar ultra-merch in the new year. So there’s more coming and that was the point all along.

The Trump Opposition Needs Its Second Wind

Posted on by Josh Marshall

In a number of recents posts I’ve been trying to make sense of the climate of drift and enervation that now seems to suffuse the Trump administration and, in a way, the country. Making sense of these things isn’t just interesting in the abstract or an opportunity to dunk on the administration. It’s important to know just where we are, what’s possible now that might not have been possible in the Spring or even a few months ago. And that’s important because we’re all kind of worn out. It’s not just the Trump administration. In a way the opposition to Trump is, too, albeit in a very different way. It’s been a really long year.

I first proposed my DOJ-in-Exile idea back in April. If you’re not familiar with the DOJ-in-Exile concept, this post explains the idea. But the main points I’m about to make don’t require knowing those details. As I’ve mentioned a few times here and to a number of you in email correspondence, it was harder going than I anticipated. For a mix of reasons, I did not want to run it myself or even be involved. I wanted to find a group that wanted to do it and hand the idea and the name off to them. But people were scared. Without my really asking, various TPM Readers came forward with soft pledges totaling probably upwards of a million dollars. So money wasn’t going to be a problem. But the kind of people who would run it or take responsibility for it were scared. People in the key do-gooder groups were scared. People who are hard-chargers were scared. Sometimes they wouldn’t quite say as much in calls but I could read their intonations and I realized a conversation wasn’t going to go anywhere.

Continue reading “The Trump Opposition Needs Its Second Wind” →

DOJ: Jan. 6 Bomber Suspect Believed 2020 Election Conspiracy Theories, Acted Out of ‘Frustration With the World Around Him’

Posted on by Josh Kovensky

One of Jan. 6’s enduring mysteries, that of who planted pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC, has, according to the DOJ, been solved. Prosecutors charged Brian Cole, a Virginia man, over the incident; per a Sunday filing in his case, he confessed to FBI agents after his arrest.

Continue reading “DOJ: Jan. 6 Bomber Suspect Believed 2020 Election Conspiracy Theories, Acted Out of ‘Frustration With the World Around Him’” →

Trump’s Takeover of Education Is Taking A Page From the Confederacy

Posted on by Layla A. Jones

The thread of partisan power and control is stitched through America’s public education system. In the name of the revisionist Lost Cause history — which holds that the South fought the Civil War over states’ rights and not to maintain the institution of slavery — the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in the early 20th century leveraged the group’s considerable political influence and went after school curricula. The UDC lobbied for ahistorical, pro-South school materials, and its members joined Southern state textbook commissions where they helped control which books would be deemed suitable for children and which would not. For the next several decades, nearly 70 million Southern students were taught that the enslaved were actually servants and that the Confederates fought merely to preserve a Southern way of life.

Continue reading “Trump’s Takeover of Education Is Taking A Page From the Confederacy” →

Republicans Will Need Democrats’ Help to Fund the Government Again In Early 2026

Posted on by Emine Yücel

Another possible standoff over government funding may be brewing on Capitol Hill. Congress has until Jan. 30 to pass the remaining appropriations bills to fund the federal government for the remainder of this fiscal year, or to vote on a new continuing resolution to keep the government open.

Continue reading “Republicans Will Need Democrats’ Help to Fund the Government Again In Early 2026” →

Inside the North Carolina GOP’s Decade-Long Push to Seize Power From the State’s Democratic Governors

Posted on by Allegra Kirkland

This post first appeared at ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.

In November 2024, Democrat Josh Stein scored an emphatic victory in the race to become North Carolina’s governor, drubbing his Republican opponent by almost 15 percentage points.

His honeymoon didn’t last long, however.

Two weeks after his win, the North Carolina legislature’s Republican supermajority fast-tracked a bill that would transform the balance of power in the state.

Continue reading “Inside the North Carolina GOP’s Decade-Long Push to Seize Power From the State’s Democratic Governors” →

A Minor Observation About the Epstein Files Release

Posted on by Josh Marshall

When Congress passed the Epstein Files law, the common and undoubtedly correct assumption was that the Trump DOJ would simply weed out the Trump stuff. And as we’ve seen, they’ve gone to town releasing everything about … say, Bill Clinton but in many cases obviously filtered out Trump stuff. So this basic part of the story is predicted, unsurprising and confirmed. But there’s a more complex if no less corrupt story coming into focus.

A few pretty damaging things have come out. I’m not sure for instance whether that purported jailhouse Epstein letter is real. But it’s pretty clear the White House/DOJ doesn’t have any evidence or hasn’t yet found any evidence that it’s fake. If they did, they’d release it. The best discussion of the authenticity question I’ve seen is this short piece in New York Magazine’s Intelligencer. The gist is that, based on what we know in the public record, there’s no clear evidence pointing either to its authenticity or fraudulence. There are a couple potential red flags. But these have relativity straightforward explanations based on how the prison mail system works. They could be evidence of fakery but not necessarily. A handwriting analysis was done and that could at least point in one or the other clear direction. But we haven’t seen that report.

Continue reading “A Minor Observation About the Epstein Files Release” →

Judge Calls Trump DOJ’s Bluff On Todd Blanche’s Testimony

Posted on by David Kurtz

Put Up or Shut Up Time

A complicated dance is underway in the criminal case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia over his claim of vindictive prosecution by the Trump DOJ, so let me give you the toplines first:

The bad news … We may not get to hear live testimony from three top DOJ officials: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, associate deputy attorney general Aakash Singh, and acting principal associate deputy attorney James McHenry.

The good news … The judge may not need that testimony to go ahead and rule that Abrego Garcia is the victim of a vindictive prosecution and dismiss the case.

That’s the upshot of a new order from U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. of Nashville, in which he scratched the existing Jan. 27 trial date from the calendar and instead scheduled a Jan. 28 evidentiary hearing on the vindictive prosecution claim.

It’s time for the Trump DOJ to put up or shut, though Crenshaw put it more nicely than that.

That’s the simplest way to explain it. Now let me see if I can give you a more thorough version without making your eyes cross.

Crenshaw already ruled in October that there was “a realistic likelihood of vindictiveness” against Abrego Garcia. Most importantly for our purposes, that decision created a presumption in Abrego Garcia’s favor that this is a vindictive prosecution and shifted the burden to the government to now rebut that presumption “with objective, on-the-record explanations” that it had a legitimate basis for charging Abrego Garcia, as Crenshaw explained in yesterday’s order.

If the government succeeds in rebutting the presumption of vindictive prosecution, then the burden shifts back to Abrego Garcia to “prove that the offered justification is pretextual and that actual vindictiveness has occurred,” Crenshaw ruled.

With that as background, here’s the kind of sneaky genius thing that Crenshaw did.

Crenshaw decided to bifurcate the proceedings by holding the Jan. 28 evidentiary hearing only on the initial question of whether the Trump DOJ can rebut the existing presumption in Abrego Garcia’s favor that this is a vindictive prosecution. If the Trump DOJ fails, then that may very well spell the end of the criminal case because dismissal is one remedy for vindictive prosecution.

If the Trump DOJ succeeds, then the burden shifts back to Abrego Garcia to show actual vindictiveness. In that case, Crenshaw would then rule on the outstanding question of whether Blanche and the other DOJ officials must comply with Abrego Garcia’s subpoena for their testimony. At the moment, the Trump DOJ has a motion pending to quash those subpoenas as part of what has been a raging battle over how much discovery into the vindictive prosecution Abrego Garcia is allowed to have.

(Most of that discovery dispute has been under seal, so our visibility into it has been very limited. But in a separate order this week, Crenshaw said he will unseal a crucial order he issued on Dec. 3 — but not until Dec. 30, presumably to give the administration time to ask an appeals court to keep the order sealed.)

The Trump DOJ may try to get the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene before any of this plays out the way Crenshaw has planned, but by bifurcating the proceedings he has reduced the risk of that happening because he’s pushing off decisions on some of the most sensitive privilege-laden discovery issues.

For his part, Abrego Garcia has been arguing that the evidence the Trump DOJ plans to present to show it’s not a vindictive prosecution — testimony from Homeland Security Investigations Supervisory Special Agent John VanWie of Baltimore, HSI Special Agent Rana Saoud of Nashville, and maybe the testimony of Nashville acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire — is insufficient to rebut the presumption and that Crenshaw should just dismiss the case.

While we might savor the chance to see top Trump DOJ officials squirm on the witness stand, Crenshaw is telegraphing quite a bit here about how he sees this case. Sure, there’s good practical reasons for him to punt on ruling on the motion to quash. Why decide something you may not need to decide yet? But the overall thrust of Crenshaw’s two orders this week suggests a judge who after reviewing in his chambers over 3,000 internal government documents in the case is very open to the vindictive prosecution claim and very skeptical of the Trump DOJ’s arguments against it.

BFD

President Trump is blocked from deploying federalized national guards to enforce the law unless regular armed forces are insufficient for the task, the Supreme Court held in a major ruling yesterday.

Mass Deportation Watch

  • WaPo: ICE documents reveal plan to hold 80,000 immigrants in warehouses
  • Reason: DHS Says Recording or Following Law Enforcement ‘Sure Sounds Like Obstruction of Justice’

Judges Under Threat

NBC News:

As a result of the various threats and intimidation, judges have had to adapt their daily lives, according to NBC News interviews with six sitting judges, as well as former judges and others familiar with the current threat landscape.

One judge moved house. Another had to freeze her credit cards after a security breach.

Other judges have taken actions to adapt to the changing landscape by upgrading home security systems, changing the route they drive to work and ensuring family members limit personal information they post online, according to the current and former judges.

Venezuela Watch

  • NYT: U.S. Is Adding to Its Military Buildup in the Caribbean
  • WSJ: U.S. Moves Troops and Additional Special Operations Aircraft Into Caribbean

The Corruption: All Day Long Edition

  • The Guardian: Thanks to Donald Trump, 2025 was a good year … for white-collar criminals
  • WSJ: Lobbyists close to President Trump say their going rate to advocate for a pardon is $1 million, but some pardon-seekers have offered success fees of as much as $6 million.
  • NYT: Hundreds of Big Post-Election Donors Have Benefited From Trump’s Return to Office

Good Read

WSJ: How Putin Got His Preferred U.S. Envoy: Come Alone, No CIA

Quote of the Day

Adam Serwer:

Neo-Nazi Terror Group Steps Up US Ops

The Guardian: “In the shifting political climate of the second Trump administration, where the FBI has openly rerouted resources away from investigations of far-right extremists, the Base appears free to organize and prepare for their stated objective of fomenting an armed insurgency against the US government.”

An Eventful Geologic Year

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the current Kilauea eruption, and on cue it resumed overnight with the 39th episode in the sequence of lava effusions. Last night’s lava fountaining reached heights of 1,400 feet before the episode ended after just shy of six hours.

I geek out over this stuff mainly because I’m dazzled by the natural phenomenon, but I also have a deep-seated need to keep time by some measure other than the frenetic pace of modern human life.

While we’ve been obsessing over a white Christian nationalist presidency and the searing path of destruction his impulsivity leaves behind, Kilauea has spent the last year steadily filling the gaping crater that its 2018 summit collapse left behind (this data set does not include last night’s episode):

Outside of the summit crater, wind-blown volcanic fragments have created a new geologic feature on the downwind edge of the crater rim: a 130-foot-tall mound of tephra. The growth of the tephra mound has been dramatic at times. Individual eruptions have added as much as 25 feet in height to the tephra mound in only a few hours.

And, no, this isn’t some clumsy meta-reflection on creation emerging from destruction. In politics, unlike geology, destruction is just destruction.

New Year’s Plans?

Join me for the first Morning Memo live event, on Jan. 29 in D.C. We’ll have a panel discussion on DOJ weaponization, take audience questions, and mingle at a reception afterwards. Tickets are available here. I hope to see you there!

Happy Holidays!

Morning Memo will be on hiatus until Jan. 5.

If news demands it, I might put out intermittent special holiday editions. But the plan is to pick back up when the news does in the new year.

I’m making my first visit back to my home state of Louisiana since 2014. Looking forward to renewing old connections, exploring past haunts, and gorging myself on dearly missed cuisine — all in 70-degree weather.

Wishing you peace and joy this holiday season however you may celebrate it.

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.