While New York Republicans can’t force Rep. George Santos (R-NY) to resign on his own – or get the rest of the House GOP’s thin majority to push him out – they are trying to ensure that Santos at least can’t profit off his lies.
Continue reading “New York GOPers Double Down With New Bill That’ll Ensure Santos Can’t Profit Off His Lies”Election Deniers Have A New Target In Big Lie Crusade: A Non-Profit That Does Voter Roll Maintenance
This week, three states caved to election deniers’ newest conspiracy theory and withdrew from a multistate voter-registration program—even though officials in at least one of the states recently admitted that it actually helped them root out double-voting issues.
Continue reading “Election Deniers Have A New Target In Big Lie Crusade: A Non-Profit That Does Voter Roll Maintenance”Abbott Has Spent Nearly $1 Billion To Complete Trump’s Wall. He’s Just Getting Started.
With nearly $1 billion spent, Texas officials are gearing up to dish out far more cash for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Continue reading “Abbott Has Spent Nearly $1 Billion To Complete Trump’s Wall. He’s Just Getting Started.”Biden Proposes Tax Hikes On Rich To Extend Life Of Medicare
President Joe Biden previewed a plan to extend the solvency of Medicare “at least into the 2050s” without cutting benefits Tuesday, an opening salvo as he prepares to release his full budget proposal later this week.
Continue reading “Biden Proposes Tax Hikes On Rich To Extend Life Of Medicare”How The ‘Holman Rule’ Allows The House To Fast-Track Proposals To Gut Government Programs Without Debate Or Much Thought At All
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
The slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives has just voted to give itself a streamlined way to fire civil servants and shut down federal programs it doesn’t like — outside the standard process of review and debate.
Continue reading “How The ‘Holman Rule’ Allows The House To Fast-Track Proposals To Gut Government Programs Without Debate Or Much Thought At All”Kevin McCarthy’s Dirty Deal With Tucker Carlson Plays Out Exactly As Planned
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
We All Saw This Coming
The challenge this morning is how to alert you to a big dump of new misinformation without amplifying and validating it. The good news: This is an easier task when Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson are involved because it is so transparent.
The speaker of the House gives special exclusive access to the security footage of the Jan. 6 attack on Congress to the leading propagandist minimizing, dismissing, and counter-programming the failed coup. What did you think was going to happen?
Monday night, Carlson began using the footage (much of which was already turned over to defense attorneys for the Jan. 6 rioters) to reinforce and continue to promulgate his made-up narrative that the attack consisted of peaceful “sightseers” touring the Capitol under escort:
More than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from in and around the Capitol have been withheld from the public, and once you see the video, you’ll understand why. Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim.
Reporters who have covered the Jan. 6 attack and the criminal justice aftermath spent Monday evening debunking the Carlson segment in various ways: the footage isn’t actually new or unseen, it was selectively presented by Carlson, things he claimed were new or unknown were old and known, etc.
But of course the game plan here isn’t for McCarthy to simply provide Carlson with new fodder for predictable if outrageous segments on his show. In a pattern we all know too well, the Carlson segment takes the raw material and transmogrifies into even better, more useful fodder for all manner of elected Republicans, Jan. 6 deniers, other right-wing news outlets, and MAGA world.
Like clockwork, Republican House members seized on the Carlson segment:
My favorite response though was this tweet from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene:
The punchline, in case you missed it: Jacob Chansley, the easily recognized QAnon Shaman, didn’t go to trial; he pleaded guilty.
The easily mocked Carlson segment was, well, easily mocked:
Pence Resists Grand Jury Subpoena
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday filed a motion to quash a federal grand jury subpoena of him in the Jan. 6 investigation on the grounds that it violates the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, CNN reported.
As previously reported, former President Trump’s legal team on the same day raised executive privilege arguments to block Pence’s testimony.
The filings are sealed and the arguments will play out in secret because this remains in the confines of a grand jury proceeding.
Trump Tries To Get Toothpaste Back In The Tube
This is a weird one. Apparently Trump is now asserting executive and attorney-client privileges to try to block Special Counsel Jack Smith from using the grand jury testimony of former White House lawyers Pat Cipollone, Patrick Philbin and Eric Herschmann, ABC reported.
The ABC report is a little hard to parse, but it suggests that Smith has taken this argument to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to resolve and oral arguments may happen in secret this week.
Passantino Faces The Music
Stefan Passantino, the one-time lawyer for former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson, is facing a bar complaint for his alleged misconduct in representing her.
Hope Hicks On The Spot In Hush Money Case
Former Trump aide Hope Hicks was at the Manhattan district attorney’s office yesterday as part of its investigation into the Stormy Daniels hush money scheme. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Hicks met with prosecutors or testified to the grand jury or both.
Fox Loses Its Top Lobbyist
As the fallout from the Dominion defamation suits continues, Fox Corp. is losing its top lobbyist. Danny O’Brien, who hails from Democratic circles and used to work for Joe Biden, is stepping down as EVP and head of government relations.
Why The SCOTUS Leak Investigation Failed
Former DOJ and DoD Inspector General Glenn Fine on why the Supreme Court’s investigation of the Dobbs draft leak was doomed from the start.
Biden Pushes Hard On Medicare
Biden is putting the social safety net at the center of his re-election campaign. With a NYT op-ed and a planned rollout today of a new plan for Medicare, Biden is drawing on the same tensions for the Republicans – they want to eliminate programs that are deeply popular among their aging political base – that he poked on Social Security in his State of the Union address.
Biden Considering Resuming Detaining Families At The Border
NYT:
The Biden administration is considering reviving the practice of detaining migrant families who cross the border illegally — the same policy the president shut down over the past two years because he wanted a more humane immigration system, officials familiar with the discussions said Monday.
Although no final decision has been made, the move would be a stark reversal for President Biden, who came into office promising to adopt a more compassionate approach to the border after the harsh policies of his predecessor, former President Donald J. Trump.
Moody’s Warns Of Crippling Effect Of Debt Limit Default
Moody’s Analytics chief economist of Mark Zandi is set to warn a Senate Banking subcommittee today that a debt limit default would crater the U.S. economy.
Elon Musk’s Latest Embarrassment
Platformer: How a single engineer brought down Twitter on Monday
America’s Great Home Heating Divide
What A Day That Was
Michelle Obama describes sobbing uncontrollably for 30 minutes aboard Air Force One after Trump’s inauguration.
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Where Things Stand: Pence Officially Moves To Block Jack Smith Subpoena
Vice President Mike Pence officially moved to block a federal grand jury subpoena for his testimony on events surrounding Jan. 6 on Friday, arguing, as he was expected to, that he is shielded by the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause from being compelled to testify about some of the topics that appear to be at the heart of special counsel Jack Smith’s probe.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Pence Officially Moves To Block Jack Smith Subpoena”Coalition Of Lawyers Push To Disbar MAGA Attorney Who Pressured Hutchinson To Stay Loyal To Trump
Thirty-plus prominent legal figures filed an ethics complaint with D.C.’s Board on Professional Responsibility on Monday to revoke Trump-world attorney Stefan Passantino’s license to practice law, claiming that he tried to influence his former client Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the House Jan. 6 select committee.
Continue reading “Coalition Of Lawyers Push To Disbar MAGA Attorney Who Pressured Hutchinson To Stay Loyal To Trump”Deep Archeology and the Powell Memo
One of the most apt critiques I read of my post on the deep archeology of Fox News focused on what we might call the counter-revolution of capital, and whether I’d ignored it in telling this thumbnail history of the Movement Conservative counter-establishment. I didn’t ignore it. It’s closely related to, but distinct from, the history I described. They’re like two separate rivers which flow together in the 1970s to create the rightward turn of American politics usually identified with the Reagan revolution. Many of you also referenced a now almost legendary document called the Powell Memo, a genteel call to arms which many now point to as the founding document of the business counter-revolution which began in the 1970s, a kind of Rosetta Stone for unlocking the origins of the modern American right.
Continue reading “Deep Archeology and the Powell Memo”The Staffers We’ve Been Waiting For …
I really want to echo David’s point from Friday about this Democratic staff report into Jim Jordan’s “weaponization” hearings. If you’ve been waiting a very long time for no nonsense Democrats to jump in front of Republicans, grab a whole buttload of facts and just pound them over the head with them … well, your moment may have arrived.
The document is more than three hundred pages long and the details are simply amazing. You probably didn’t figure that Jordan was going to unearth a lot of legitimate scandals or secret antifa cells at the FBI or other arms of federal law enforcement. But even if your bar was low, the levels of incompetence and pro-insurrectionist content is still pretty wild.
Continue reading “The Staffers We’ve Been Waiting For …”