There’s Plenty Of Debt Ceiling Drama. Don’t Fall For The Fake Kind.

Posted on by David Kurtz

`A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

No, Today’s Meeting Is Not An Epic Showdown

I don’t want to turn into a curmudgeon about the news coverage of the GOP’s debt ceiling hostage-taking, but the bigs aren’t making it easy!

Here’s how they’re portraying today’s White House meeting between President Biden and the congressional leadership:

NYT: “critical face-to-face confrontation”

WaPo: “urgent bid to avoid default”

WSJ: “high-stakes meeting”

I’ve mentioned before that I find news coverage of negotiations of any kind to be painful. Contract negotiations, labor negotiations, legislative negotiations – it doesn’t matter which. The coverage ends up overdetermined, overwrought, and often just plain wrong. It’s not hard to see why.

Every negotiation is different, but rarely do they satisfy the demands of news coverage for movement, dynamism, and incremental developments. Instead, negotiations are typically slow, tedious, and not much happens until suddenly it happens.

In contrast to what’s actually happening, news coverage tends to want to frame negotiations as steady movement toward a resolution, or as a hardening of positions that shows everyone involved to be unreasonable.

What’s actually happening instead? It’s invariably two sides at loggerheads for an extended time until the pressure builds and a complex combination of factors – fatigue, resignation, clarity about what’s really at stake, and miscalculations coming home to roost – wears the parties down.

That’s what we should expect in the coming weeks in the debt-ceiling standoff. Today is the beginning, not the end. It’s the start of the public-facing phase of the hostage-taking. The White House meeting is neither critical nor determinative.

On top of all the other problems with the coverage of negotiations, journalists and editors experience their own fatigue and resignation covering them and end up becoming cheerleaders for a resolution of some kind, any kind, the substance be damned. Just make it be over already! That’s not news coverage.

The coverage of the GOP’s manufactured debt-ceiling crisis is no different, except the stakes are so high and the culpability of the Republican Party so obvious that the usual bad coverage tropes are more damaging, less informative, and skew the public debate in especially misleading and destructive ways.

I’m sorry to report that we have weeks more of the same ahead.

Jury Gets The Carroll Case Today

Closing arguments concluded yesterday in the civil rape and defamation trial of Donald Trump, and the jury is set to begin deliberations today. No big surprises in closing arguments. Here’s a good succinct thread summarizing the day:

Judge Ties Trump’s Thumbs

The judge in Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case issued a protective order barring Trump from distributing discovery materials handed over to him by prosecutors, including on social media.

Stewart Rhodes Wants Time Served

Ahead of his upcoming sentencing for seditious conspiracy, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes is asking the court for leniency, seeking to get away with only the jail time he’s served so far. He’s been jailed since January 2022. Prosecutors are seeking a 25-year jail term for Rhodes.

Still Seeking Accountability For Sidney Powell

Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell faces a new ethics complaint in Michigan for a “frivolous” challenge to the state’s results in the 2020 presidential election.

Great Read

S.V. Date: Call It Trump’s Coup Attempt, Because It Damned Well Was

Dick Durbin Is On The Case!

After hitting the snooze button for a few weeks, the Senate Judiciary Committee has finally roused and taken off its sleep mask.

Mirroring the move that the Senate Finance Committee made two weeks ago, Senate Judiciary is asking billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow for a complete accounting of the gifts he’s given to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Welcome To The Party!

The NYT catches on to Republicans’ nationwide voter suppression agenda.

Disney Expands Its Lawsuit Against DeSantis

Disney has amended its lawsuit accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and other state officials of illegally retaliating against it for opposing the “Don’t Say Gay” law. It is now alleging that a new law signed just Friday is part of the retaliation campaign.

Texas Outlet Mall Shooter Had Nazi Sympathies

The gunman in the weekend shooting in suburban Dallas had an extensive social media record that showed him fantasizing over race wars.

But sure Republicans, go ahead and prattle on about the mental health crisis in America.

SUV Driver In Texas Charged With Manslaughter

Authorities still don’t have a motive for why the driver of an SUV barreled through a crowed of migrants outside a shelter over the weekend. They haven’t ruled out it being intentional. He’s been charged with eight counts of manslaughter, 10 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and reckless driving

Ft. Hood Is No More

The Army base in Texas will be renamed Fort Cavazos today, part of the broad initiative to remove the names of Confederate military heroes from U.S. military installations.

First They Came For Christmas

Household appliances are the focal point of the latest ginned-up fake culture war:

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Yellen Shows Her Hand

Posted on by Josh Marshall

We’ve had this running question for months about just what happens if the U.S. Treasury runs out of funds to meet all the government’s spending obligations. To be clear, those include ordinary spending as well as servicing of the principal of and interest on the U.S. debt. Secretary Yellen went on CNBC this afternoon and I think we got the first piece of an answer. It was a long interview, mostly about other aspects of the economy. But she discussed the debt ceiling standoff at the beginning. Here’s the key passage.

Continue reading “Yellen Shows Her Hand” →

Where Things Stand: GOP Resurrects Decades-Long War On PBS Because Of An LGBT Cartoon Character In ‘Clifford’

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

Take the fact that the Republican Party doesn’t have a policy platform beyond red-meat one-sided culture wars and pair it with the fact that Republicans have raised defunding PBS every few years for the last three decades or so and it becomes perhaps inevitable that conservative politicians would try to get “Clifford The Big Red Dog” canceled.

Continue reading “Where Things Stand: GOP Resurrects Decades-Long War On PBS Because Of An LGBT Cartoon Character In ‘Clifford’” →

Douthat’s Elegy for Meatball Ron

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Ross Douthat makes several decent points in this column on 2016 déjà vu before coming around to what seems to be his real point: Trump’s getting a leg up because “the press” actually wants him back. “[A]t some half-conscious level the mainstream press really wants the Trump return. It wants to enjoy the Trump Show’s ratings; it wants the G.O.P. defined by Trumpism while it defines itself as democracy’s defender.”

To be fair to Douthat, he does say leading up to those lines that if Trump is renominated it’s ultimately on GOP primary voters. Fair enough. But I really don’t buy this. Yesterday, HuffPost’s S.V. Date wrote that the U.S. press has failed its responsibilities by not putting front and center in all coverage of the man the reality of Jan. 6. This is true. Every general press account of Trump should begin with a descriptor something like “Donald Trump, the former president who staged an unsuccessful coup after being defeated in the 2020 election …”

But even this failure isn’t the same as wanting him back. I simply don’t think this is true even for the silliest and most conventional of national political reporters.

Continue reading “Douthat’s Elegy for Meatball Ron” →

Congress Has Pushed US Toward ‘Constitutional Crisis’ On Debt Limit, Yellen Says

Posted on by Emine Yücel

If the White House is forced to cite the 14th Amendment as it navigates House Republicans’ debt-ceiling hostage-taking gambit, we will have entered a “constitutional crisis,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday, days after President Biden left the option open as some members of Congress continue to signal they may well shoot the hostage.

Continue reading “Congress Has Pushed US Toward ‘Constitutional Crisis’ On Debt Limit, Yellen Says” →

Trump Chickens Out Of Testifying In Carroll Trial

Posted on by David Kurtz

`A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Carroll Judge Calls Trump Bluff

The 5 p.m. ET deadline came and went Sunday without former President Trump changing his mind and deciding to testify in his own defense in the trial of E. Jean Carroll’s rape and defamation claims.

The judge set the deadline after Trump made noises that he was returning early to the States from a trip to Ireland in order to confront his accuser. Trump’s lawyers had already told the court he would not be testifying, but the judge turned the knife by giving Trump the unusual chance to change his mind.

Bluff called.

Closing arguments are expected to begin today. The jury should get the case tomorrow.

Great Read

TPM alum Ryan Reilly with the story of how the Jan. 6 rioter in a pink beret was finally caught:

The breakthrough in the FBI investigation started inside a Joann Fabric and Crafts store. Last weekend, a clothing designer was standing in the checkout line waiting to purchase a needle for his sewing machine when his buddy saw something funny on his phone.

It just gets better from there.

DOJ Is Going Hard At The Oath Keepers

The sentencing memo the Justice Department filed Friday in the Oath Keepers case reflects a deep appreciation for the historic significance of the Jan. 6 insurrection, for what real accountability looks like, and for the ongoing threat to the rule of law that Trump and the far-right represent.

Prosecutors are seeking a 25-year jail sentence for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy.

A key passage from the memo:

Here, the need to deter others is especially strong because these defendants engaged in acts that were intended to influence the government through intimidation or coercion—in other words, terrorism. And they were leaders of such efforts. Because these defendants not only contributed to the attack on the Capitol but helped to organize it, their sentences will be noted by those who would foment such political violence in the future.

Sentencing for the Oath Keepers is scheduled in late May and early June.

What The Proud Boy Jurors Thought

Vice News’ Todd Zwillich interviewed one of the jurors in the four-month-long Proud Boys trial.

Immunity Deals For Eight Fake Electors In Georgia

Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis is still at it. She’s reportedly doled out immunity deals to eight fake electors in the Trump-led effort to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. But I should point out that the news of the immunity deals came via an unusual channel, so I’m hesitant to interpret this as I typically would offers of immunity.

Is Bragg’s Case Against Trump That Unusual?

The NYT does an analysis of false business records cases brought by the Manhattan DA’s office under Bragg and his predecessor Cyrus Vance:

A New York Times analysis of about 30 false business records cases brought by Mr. Bragg and his predecessor — based on court records, interviews and information the office provided — shows that in this respect, the case against Mr. Trump stands apart. In all but two of the indictments reviewed by The Times, the defendant was charged with an additional crime on top of the false records charge.

Debt Limit Status Update

I can save you a lot of time by assuring you that a resolution to the GOP’s hostage-taking on the debt ceiling is unlikely to be resolved this week despite the much-ballyhooed White House meeting scheduled for tomorrow between President Biden and congressional leaders. We’ll keep you up to speed throughout the week on any major developments, but I don’t expect many.

Early Signs Of A Major Shift On Abortion Politics

There’s some tension between reporting on the enormous impact Dobbs has had and will continue to have on the lives of women nationwide and looking for the early signs of a political retrenchment that breaks the stranglehold abortion foes have had on the Republican Party. But in the end both things can be true. Here’s a good read on one data point: The Unexpected Women Blocking South Carolina’s Near-Total Abortion Ban

Weekend Hate Read

It’s been a while since a story elicited the kind of universal scorn that the NYT’s soft-focus profile of Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos fraud fame provoked.

2024 Ephemera

  • Ooops: Ted Cruz confused his potential 2024 opponent, Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX), with another black man: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg:

Texas Moves To Expel Lawmaker For Sex With Intern

The Texas legislature could vote to expel state Rep. Bryan Slaton (R) as early as this week for allegedly plying a 19-year-old intern with alcohol and having sex with her. Slaton’s attorney has denied the allegations. It was just a few weeks ago that Slaton was leading the charge against drag shows as a “grooming event” that leads to the “the sexualization of our children.”

8 Killed By SUV Outside Migrant Shelter

Witnesses reported the driver of the SUV was hurling anti-immigrant remarks before the vehicle hit a group of mostly Venezuelan men waiting at a bus stop in Brownsville, Texas.

Texas Outlet Mall Shooting Investigated As Possible Hate Crime

The gunman who killed eight people Saturday at an outlet mall in suburban Dallas had a fascination with white supremacist and neo-Nazi views – and was wearing a “RWDS” patch on his chest: Right Wing Death Squad.

It Was An Ugly Weekend

America’s usual macabre tableau after a mass shooting – thoughts and prayers, turgid explanations for why nothing can be done, soulful howls of mourning from those directly affected, cries of despair from everyone else with a conscience – had barely gotten underway after the Allen, Texas outlet mall shooting before the SUV-rampage in Brownsville.

Among the worst of the worst was, as you might expect, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. But nothing quite captured the American right’s obsession with guns and carnage as this moment on Fox News:

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Marge Greene, Worst of the Worst, Mass Shooting Edition

Posted on by Josh Marshall

A small detail in the context of the latest mass shooting, this time in Allen, Texas. Eight people dead, including children. (The gunman was also shot to death by a police officer who happened to be at the mall for reasons unrelated to the shooting.) That detail is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, just the worst kind of racist degenerate who somehow has managed to become the de facto leader of House Republicans in the new Congress.

This morning Greene went on Twitter to note that the shooter “appears Hispanic” and had what she decided “looks like a gang tattoo on his hand.” And then added “Title 42 ends on Thursday and CBP says 700,000+ migrants are going to rush the border.”

Continue reading “Marge Greene, Worst of the Worst, Mass Shooting Edition” →

Trio Of Texas Churches Donated To Political Candidate Despite Clear IRS Prohibition

Posted on by John Light

This article first appeared at ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Three churches in West Texas have made financial contributions to a pastor running for a hotly contested seat on the Abilene City Council, a clear violation of federal rules prohibiting nonprofits and churches from endorsing candidates, financial disclosure records show.

Fountaingate Merkel Church, Remnant Church and Hope Chapel Foursquare Church donated a combined $800 to the campaign of Scott Beard, senior pastor at Fountaingate Fellowship church, who is running for a seat on the seven-member City Council in Saturday’s election.

The donations represent a new level of brazenness as some churches across Texas and the United States become more active in political campaigns, a prominent expert said. Rules posted on the IRS’ website say campaign contributions from churches and other nonprofits “clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity.”

“This is absolutely something every church should know — and probably does know — that they’re not allowed to do,” said Sam Brunson, a law professor specializing in religion and tax exemption at Loyola University Chicago.

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported last year that church leaders in Texas and across the country endorsed candidates from the pulpit at least 20 times in apparent violation of the Johnson Amendment, a law passed by Congress in 1954. Three experts on nonprofit law, including Brunson, reviewed the sermons and said they crossed a line.

The IRS can strip violators of their tax-exempt status, but there’s only one publicly known example of it doing so, nearly 30 years ago. Brunson said this lack of enforcement has emboldened bad actors, and he called on Congress to explicitly tell the IRS it can also fine violators.

Beard told ProPublica and the Tribune in a phone interview on Thursday that the churches did not know they weren’t allowed to donate to him and that he has sent the checks back.

“Look, we’ve made mistakes,” he said. “Every campaign makes them. I’m just kind of under the microscope because of me being a pastor, honestly.”

Dewey Hall, the pastor of Fountaingate Merkel Church, which is nearly 18 miles west of Abilene and not affiliated with Beard’s church, said Beard told him on Wednesday that his church’s $200 donation was illegal, but he thought Beard would “be a good councilman, and we need to have Christians in politics nowadays.”

A representative of Remnant Church, which Beard reported gave him $400, responded to a question via Facebook Messenger to say that its donation was intended for Fountaingate Fellowship Church, not Beard’s campaign.

“They must have a mistake,” wrote the representative, who did not identify themselves when asked. “We will look into it.”

Beard told ProPublica and the Tribune on Friday that he thought Remnant Church’s check was written to his campaign, but that he would review his records and talk to the pastor of Remnant Church.

Hope Chapel Foursquare Church, which gave $200, did not respond to a voicemail and email seeking comment.

The IRS declined to confirm whether it had received any complaints or was investigating.

Though the donations made by the churches are small, local races are typically lower-dollar affairs than legislative elections or statewide offices. The donations may also violate Texas election law, which prohibits both nonprofit and for-profit corporations from making political contributions to candidates or political committees. Violations are considered third-degree felonies.

The Texas Ethics Commission is charged with investigating such violations and can assess a civil penalty of up to $5,000 or triple the amount at issue, whichever is greater, said J.R. Johnson, the commission’s executive director. Agency commissioners also have the authority to refer violations to local district attorneys for criminal prosecution, he said.

In February, the commission issued a $12,400 civil penalty against a for-profit corporation that it found had made two prohibited donations worth a combined $3,700 to the campaign of a county clerk candidate in South Texas. The company didn’t respond to the commission, which issued a default judgment. A message left for the company was not returned; the president’s voicemail inbox was full.

According to the Texas secretary of state, Fountaingate Merkel Church formed as a nonprofit corporation in 2017 and Remnant did so in 2021. Hope Chapel is part of the California-based International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, which is formed as a nonprofit corporation. (The IRS automatically considers churches to be tax-exempt even if they don’t apply for that status directly.)

The Abilene City Council race has been marked by allegations of Johnson Amendment violations for months. At least five churches have displayed campaign signs for three conservative Christian candidates who have all vowed to protect children by removing what they deemed to be obscene books from the public library and banning family-friendly drag shows from the city.

Two of the candidates are pastors: Beard and Ryan Goodwin, a mayoral candidate, who is both a real estate agent and an associate pastor at Mosaic Church. The third candidate, James Sargent, who is running for a City Council seat, is an Air Force veteran and an auto mechanic who has made his identity as a Christian central to his campaign. Sargent’s campaign motto is “biblically founded | constitutionally grounded.”

All three organized to outlaw abortion in Abilene before the Supreme Court ruling that said it was not a constitutional right and prior to Texas enacting a near-total ban on the procedure.

In interviews with ProPublica and the Tribune, Sargent said the churches he asked to display his campaign signs said yes because they were willing to display all candidates’ campaign signs if asked, which Brunson said was not a defense to a potential Johnson Amendment violation. Goodwin said some churches asked him for his campaign sign, and he’s not concerned they’ll face IRS enforcement.

“What I think we’re seeing is a fiction of the law,” Goodwin said. If the issue were to ever reach the U.S. Supreme Court, he said, “churches would have a voice and wouldn’t have to worry about anything like this.”

Beard said the Texas Ethics Commission has so far notified him of three complaints about his campaign this election.

One complaint stemmed from Beard telling his congregation at the end of a service to pick up his campaign signs in the church foyer.

Michael Bob Starr, the former commander of Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, filed the most recent ethics complaint about Beard’s campaign, alleging that Beard had not reported the in-kind donations his church had made to his campaign, specifically his church allowing him to use its property for his campaign activities. Starr told ProPublica and the Tribune on Thursday that he will submit another complaint to the commission about Beard accepting donations from the three churches even though Beard sent the checks back.

Starr, who ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for Congress in 2016, can’t vote in the City Council election because he doesn’t live within city limits, and he’s upfront about his friendship with Beard’s opponent, Brian Yates. During their time in the Air Force, Starr said, he and Yates traveled to countries run by those who believed they had a mandate from God and those who tried to impose their religion on others. He said that’s why he’s speaking up.

Beard told ProPublica and Tribune on Thursday that he is cooperating with the Texas Ethics Commission regarding Starr’s first complaint.

Beard stands by his belief that the nation was founded as a Christian nation and if it doesn’t turn back to God, it will fall like the Roman Empire and other great civilizations have throughout history.

Lawsuit Alleges What Victims Of DeSantis’ Sham Election Crimes Force Suspected – They Were Pawns For His 2024 Bid

Posted on by Kaila Philo

As Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) readies his impending presidential run, he’s built a brand largely off of former president Donald Trump’s: appearing “tough on crime” and making noise about election security.

Continue reading “Lawsuit Alleges What Victims Of DeSantis’ Sham Election Crimes Force Suspected – They Were Pawns For His 2024 Bid” →