Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) announced on Thursday he will be running for Senate in 2024.
“I wish I could say the threat of MAGA extremists is over. It is not. Today’s Republican party is gutting the middle class.Threatening our democracy. They aren’t going to stop,” Schiff said in a campaign video launching his Senate bid.
Continue reading “Schiff Announces Senate Bid For 2024, Joining Already Crowded Field For Feinstein’s Seat”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
A day after making sweeping amendments to his past FEC reports and further muddying the waters on the origins of the funds he used to make personal loans to his congressional campaign, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) dodged reporters’ questions with this word salad:
Let’s make it very clear: I don’t amend anything; I don’t touch any of my FEC stuff, right? So don’t be disingenuous and report that I did because you know that every campaign hires fiduciaries.
I’m especially moved by Santos’ use of “disingenuous” and “fiduciaries.” Bold, brother, bold.
Kate Riga and Josh Kovensky: New York’s Redistricting Chaos Changed Santos’ Future
Emine Yücel: Dems Demand McCarthy Deny Santos Access To Classified Info
Curbed: What George Santos Was Really Like as a Roommate
Insider: In a resurfaced 2020 interview George Santos claimed he met Jeffrey Epstein, and entertained the idea that he could still be alive
WaPo: ‘I felt like we were in “Goodfellas’’’: How George Santos wooed investors for alleged Ponzi scheme
Daily Beast: George Santos Planned ‘Engagement Party’ With Man While Married to Woman
NYT: How George Santos Made Baruch Volleyball Famous
A few tidbits on the debt ceiling hostage-taking:
One of the best-written things we’ve ever published at TPM:
The Sacred Lies of Virginia Thomas, by Francis Wilkinson
For the first time since tracking began in 1999, rents crested 30% of median U.S. income, meaning the typical household is now “rent-burdened.” When Moody’s first began using the metric more than two decades ago, the typical rent-to-income ratio was 22.5%.
The NYT:
A record 16.3 million Americans have signed up for health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces during this year’s open enrollment period, beating last year’s sign-ups by 13 percent, the Biden administration said on Wednesday.
After a modest Alabama farmer died on New Year’s Day, it emerged that he’d been secretly paying for his neighbors’ prescriptions for more than a decade.
Pope Francis: Homosexuality is a sin, but it’s “unjust” to criminalize it –– and bishops should welcome the LGBT faithful into the church.
Video of the October attack on Paul Pelosi in his San Francisco home could be released as soon as today.
WaPo: Everything you need to know about the heated RNC chair election
“Marjorie Taylor Greene aims to be Trump’s VP pick in 2024”
Trump has been reinstated to Facebook and Instagram, some two years after being banned over Jan. 6. Can’t argue with this:
Meta put Trump back on bc “the risk to public safety had “sufficiently receded” since January 2021” – understandable perception given the complete lack of any criminal charges against Trump or his co-conspirators.
— Shanlon Wu (@shanlonwu) January 26, 2023
Greg Sargent: Can enormous amounts of federal spending launched under President Biden, much of it destined for MAGA country, dampen the right-wing populist fervor unleashed by his predecessor Donald Trump?
The former Trump cabinet official who resigned over Jan. 6 (and is married to Mitch McConnell) released a public statement about Donald Trump’s repeated mocking of her name:
When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name. Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation. He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.
Hunter Walker: ‘People’s Convoy’ Trucker Protest Movement Says It Has Been Taken Over By Text Message ‘Scammers’
For right-wing extremists, including GOP members of Congress, the Jan. 6 rioters have been “political prisoners” unjustly detained in solitary confinement and subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.
It’s all malarky, of course. But it’s been a persistent background noise since Jan. 6.
Yesterday, the state House in South Dakota decided it didn’t want to wade into this mess, defeating a resolution that called for the “humane and fair treatment of the Jan. 6 defendants.”
Yesterday in the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial:
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Are House Republicans going wobbly on debt-ceiling hostage taking?
Roll Call reports that House Republicans are now considering passing a series of short-term “clean” debt-limit suspensions in order to create more time for negotiations with the White House over the debt limit and all the spending cuts House Republicans are demanding.
There’s a lot of jargon here. So let me explain what this means.
The House would pass a series of short term laws “suspending” the debt limit. It wouldn’t create a higher debt ceiling but empower the Treasury to simply ignore the debt limit for a period of time. The point is that the crisis seems to be coming sooner than House Republicans want. Generally, the side that wants to free up more time for “negotiations” isn’t on the winning side of the engagement.
Continue reading “House GOP Going Wobbly?”Mother Jones just reported that the new guy that the George Santos campaign listed as its new treasurer on FEC filings Wednesday is not actually his campaign’s new treasurer.
Their headline is 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 George Santos’ New Treasurer Wants You to Know He’s Not George Santos’ Treasurer.
Mother Jones called the attorney for Thomas Datwyler, a campaign finance consultant who was listed on a handful of FEC docs filed by campaign committees affiliated with George Santos as the Santos campaign’s new treasurer today, replacing Nancy Marks. Datwyler’s attorney told the publication that he never agreed to be treasurer and even told the campaign straight up that he wasn’t interested in the gig.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Is There One Thing That Is True?”Two New York House Democrats, Reps. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and Joe Morelle (D-NY), are demanding Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) deny Rep. George Santos (R-NY) access to classified information.
Continue reading “Dems Demand McCarthy Deny Santos Access To Classified Info”Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration has apparently chosen a new target for his next stunt, aimed at an audience of Fox News hosts: a school administrator.
Continue reading “Tallahassee-Area Superintendent Becomes Latest Target Of A DeSantis Political Stunt”Last year’s trucker convoy protests threatened to storm into the nation’s capital, but ended with a whimper in May as the group disbanded amid intense infighting. However, in recent days, the movement was reawakened by text message “scammers” calling for the truckers to join a multi-level marketing scheme.
Continue reading “‘People’s Convoy’ Trucker Protest Movement Says It Has Been Taken Over By Text Message ‘Scammers’”Ginni Thomas’ testimony before the Jan. 6 Committee kind of got buried in the avalanche of material the committee released before the end of the last Congress. But it deserves a closer look and Frank Wilkinson takes that deep dive right here. Fascinating stuff. Check it out.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has been on a mission lately to “rebrand” herself as a serious politician. The MAGA-aligned conspiracy theorist congresswoman has spent the last few weeks trying very hard to lean into what looks like a new public image where she is no longer the famously far-right member of Congress – who won her first bid in 2020 on the back of her QAnon beliefs – but instead the number one ally to Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and other moderate Republicans.
Well, evidently, the change in her tactical approach to politicking is fueled by grander ambitions than just looking like the reasonable member of the Freedom Caucus.
Greene is angling to be Donald Trump’s running mate in 2024, according to NBC News.
Continue reading “Surprise! MTG’s Performative ‘Rebranding’ Is A 2024 Political Calculation”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the members of Rep. Jim Jordan’s already notorious subcommittee that is running interference for coup plotters, Trump, and his own members under federal investigation by targeting the Justice Department, FBI, and other “Deep State” players:
A few notes:
With a propagandistic name like the “Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government,” the subcommittee is tipping its hand, but that’s enough to fool some news outlets, our old friend Brian Beutler noted last week:
Notable indication here that DC publications are prepared to refer to this corrupt committee with the deceptive, hysterical name Republicans gave it. If so, it’s a big propaganda coup for the GOP, but it’s important to note this is not standard practice. https://t.co/JHKOVFnIre
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) January 18, 2023
This is what enforcing the rule of law looks like. DOJ took a firm line on Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, and everyone else, including President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence, is scrambling to comply. Not a bad thing!
A few notes on the discovery of classified documents in Pence’s home:
Rep. George Santos (R-NY) filed Tuesday a sweeping series of amendments to his campaign’s FEC reports, the Daily Beast first reported.
Of particular interest: Santos indicated on the new filings that he was not the source of the funds of personal loans he made to his campaign. But he doesn’t indicate who was?
The change was baffling to campaign finance experts:
The significance of the change … was not immediately clear to campaign finance experts. Mr. Santos’s lawyer, Joe Murray, said it “would be inappropriate” to comment given pending investigations.
The experts said they were struggling to interpret the change, especially because in filings from later in 2022, the box marking “personal funds of the candidate” remains checked.
“I have never been this confused looking at an F.E.C. filing,” said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog group.
Stay tuned.
Grid News: Rep. George Santos’ earliest political backers faced financial misconduct investigations
MSNBC: Rep. Santos describes assassination attempt, mugging in new video
Politico: The improbability of George Santos’ $199 expenses
Josh Marshall: Santos Now Identifies as Straw Donor
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis suggested indictments are “imminent” in her investigation of Donald Trump’s meddling in the 2020 election. That’s about all we learned in the court hearing yesterday over whether to release to the public the report of the Georgia special grand jury that investigated the 2020 election interference scheme.
After getting slapped with nearly $1 million in sanctions last week, Donald Trump has withdrawn a second lawsuit against the New York attorney general, this one an appeal pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Last week, Trump dropped a related lawsuit against AG Tish James that was pending before the same judge who imposed sanctions.
AP: Proud Boys expecting ‘civil war’ before Jan. 6, witness says
CNN: Proud Boys member testifies about group’s culture and celebration of violence
Speaker Kevin McCarthy officially blocks Democratic California Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House intel committee.
Politico reports that some House GOP defectors combined with staunch Democratic support may make it hard for Speaker McCarthy to boot Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
After days of what looked from the outside like a diplomatic stalemate, a big breakthrough for Ukraine in pursuit of heavy armor to repeal an expected spring offensive by the Russians:
The U.S. EV charging infrastructure, to use the technical term, sucks.
California is considering ways to hold charging networks accountable for reliability.
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