Big Things in 2023

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Dark times call for great journalism. That’s why we’ve decided to beef up and expand our original reporting team going into 2023. Building on the great work of our rising star reporters Josh Kovensky and Kate Riga we’ve just added Hunter Walker and Emine Yücel to our team. This comes on top of the recent hire of Kaila Philo who joined us in August.

We believe in a battalion approach to journalism. See where the important, kinetic stories are and run toward them. Our goal is to break a lot of stories in 2023, make a lot of light and heat around our work. In the tradition of our organization we will also be the narrators of the key stories, not only publishing new facts and revelations but helping you piece together the whole story as it is emerging and evolving through the whole political news ecosystem.

Thanks to our subscribers and our TPM Journalism Fund contributors for making this possible. There’s a lot to do going into next year. So keep your eyes open for more.

Debt Ceiling Shenanigans

Posted on by Josh Marshall

One question that comes up a lot when we talk about the debt ceiling is whether there might be some extraordinary executive branch action to get around the problem. These range from outlandish theories about minting trillion dollar platinum coins to much more reasonable things like simply declaring that under the 14th amendment the whole debt ceiling law is unconstitutional. On the merits, I think this latter argument is valid, indeed almost unquestionably valid. But I think this is largely besides the point. The point of the “full faith and credit” is that United States debt obligations are beyond any question. That is why the US is able to borrow money freely and at very low rates of interest. Indeed, the whole global monetary system is significantly underpinned by that commitment.

Continue reading “Debt Ceiling Shenanigans” →

Kash Patel Pressed On Trump Declassification Claims During Grand Jury Testimony

Posted on by Cristina Cabrera

During Trump loyalist Kash Patel’s testimony in front of a grand jury on Thursday, prosecutors reportedly confronted him with his public claims that then-President Trump had declassified the documents the FBI found at Mar-a-Lago before he left office.

Continue reading “Kash Patel Pressed On Trump Declassification Claims During Grand Jury Testimony” →

Emails Show Constitutional Sheriff’s Efforts To Expand Surveillance Of Drop Boxes

Posted on by Kaila Philo

A sheriff in Arizona has reached out to other sheriffs across the country to encourage them to surveil drop box locations, a CNN investigation found.

Sheriff Mark Lamb out of Pinal County, Arizona, has been sending out emails to others in his cohort Uncle Sam-style: “Here’s how YOU can enforce election integrity,” he wrote, offering recommendations for how to increase “patrol activity around drop box locations” and use “video surveillance” with “access points directly on Sheriff Department computers.”

Continue reading “Emails Show Constitutional Sheriff’s Efforts To Expand Surveillance Of Drop Boxes” →

In Pre-Election Drop, House Republicans Release ‘Bombshell’ Report Composed Mostly Of Old Letters

Posted on by Kate Riga

House Judiciary Committee Republicans released a much-ballyhooed “1,000 page report on FBI and DOJ politicization” Friday morning, a pre-election-timed preview into life under a Republican House. 

Continue reading “In Pre-Election Drop, House Republicans Release ‘Bombshell’ Report Composed Mostly Of Old Letters” →

None For You: Judge Keeps Seized Phone Away From Pillow Merchant

Posted on by Cristina Cabrera

A federal judge on Thursday rejected MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s motion to make the federal government return his phone, which FBI agents had seized when they confronted the pillow tycoon at a Hardee’s drive-thru in September.

Continue reading “None For You: Judge Keeps Seized Phone Away From Pillow Merchant” →

The Right-Wing Plan To Bring Down The Regulators Reaches The Supreme Court

Posted on by Sarah Posner

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a SEC v. Cochran, a case in which the conservative majority could further erode the ability of the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate financial markets — and, depending on how the justices decide the case, potentially deal a powerful blow to other agencies’ ability to carry out their regulatory and enforcement mandates as well. 

Continue reading “The Right-Wing Plan To Bring Down The Regulators Reaches The Supreme Court” →

There’s Going to Be A Global Financial Crisis in 2023

Posted on by Josh Marshall

In several recent posts I’ve told you that most of the near-term (pre-2024) dangers of a GOP House majority are manageable. I don’t mean “no big deal.” It’s disaster after disaster. But I mean manageable in the sense of things the country can get through. With one exception: a debt-limit hostage-taking stand-off in 2023 in which House Republicans force the first U.S. debt default in U.S. history. Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s election it will be within Democrats’ power to prevent this crisis in advance by settling the debt limit issue during the lame duck session of Congress. Whatever the political complexities, it is straightforward as a technical matter. Pass a bill in the House raising the debt limit high enough to take the issue off the table for years to come. Then take one of the remaining “reconciliation vehicles” on the Senate side and pass the law with 50 votes. Done and done.

But here’s the thing. We had a great TPM virtual event last night with two of the most knowledgable people about the U.S. senate, Adam Jentleson and Steve Clemons. Both agreed that there’s virtually no chance Democrats are going to do this.

Continue reading “There’s Going to Be A Global Financial Crisis in 2023” →

Election Official Ousted For Voter Frauding To Prove Voter Frauding Is A Thing

Posted on by Cristina Cabrera

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

Slow Clap

The mayor of Milwaukee announced on Thursday that he had fired Milwaukee Election Commission deputy director Kimberly Zapata for allegedly making a bogus request for military ballots and sending them to a MAGA election-denying state lawmaker to prove voter fraud was possible.

  • Zapata also now potentially faces criminal charges over the gambit, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Milwaukee County prosecutors are reportedly looking at charging the ex-official with illegally requesting a ballot and malfeasance in office.
  • Zapata isn’t even the first person in Wisconsin to land in trouble for committing voter fraud to prove voter fraud could be committed: A conservative activist named Harry Wait was criminally charged in September for trying to pull the same stunt.

Paul Pelosi Released From Hospital

Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul left the hospital following a six-day stay to recover from the attack in their San Francisco home that left him with a fractured skull and other injuries on his arm. He “remains under doctors’ care,” the speaker announced on Thursday.

Texas GOPer Allegedly Banging On Doors Accusing People Of Voting Illegally

A voter in Austin, Texas alleged last week that a precinct chair of the Travis County Republican Party plus an unidentified man had come to her home and accused her of illegally voting by mail, according to the Texas Civil Rights Project.

  • The list of people who voted by mail is public, making it easier for voter intimidation campaigns to find targets.
  • Mail-in ballots can be canceled after they’ve been sent, so the harassment can work even if the target’s already cast their vote.
  • The Texas Secretary of State’s office has gotten at least two complaints of potential voter intimidation, a spokesperson for the office told Vice.
    • Sidenote: This is the same secretary of state who deployed “inspectors” to Harris County last month to monitor the elections.

Key Analysis

“The Democrats’ GOTV pitch: Get out the vote — while you still can” – The Washington Post

Maine Guv Faces Proto-MAGA Rival In Final Debate

Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) and far-right former Gov. Paul LePage (R) squared off in a debate for the last time last night in the Pine Tree State’s gubernatorial race.

  • Bangor Daily News: “3 key moments from the final debate between Janet Mills and Paul LePage”
  • The Portland Press Herald: “Mills and LePage clash in final debate before voters have their say”
  • WABI: “Mills, LePage on inflation, child protective services”
  • The Associated Press: “Mills, LePage debate for a final time in race for governor”

Election-Denying Lawyer Yells At Judge In Voter Suppression Lawsuit

A lawyer representing GOP Michigan Secretary of State nominee Kristina Karamo, a particularly unhinged conspiracy theorist, exploded at the judge during a hearing in Karamo’s lawsuit on Thursday that aims to stop tens of thousands of absentee ballots that were cast in Detroit from being counted.

  • “To characterize me as trying to disenfranchise the military voter is offensive,” the attorney, Daniel Hartman, shouted when the judge pointed out that the lawsuit would exclude military service members’ ballots from the vote tally.
  • The attorney also cited “2,000 Mules,” far-right commentator Dinesh D’Souza’s fake documentary about voter fraud in the 2020 election, during the hearing.

Must Read

“What the Far-Right Fringe Online Is Planning for Election Day” – Slate

“Virginia’s governor set up a tip line to crack down on CRT. Parents used it for other reasons” – USA Today

“Between Kanye and the Midterms, the Unsettling Stream of Antisemitism” – The New York Times

Judge Refuses To Give MyPillow Guy His Phone Back

A federal judge on Thursday shot down MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s request to have his phone returned after the FBI seized it when agents confronted him at a Hardee’s in September. The seizure was part of the Justice Department’s investigation into indicted Mesa County clerk Tina Peters’ plot to breach her county’s election systems.

Trump’s Lawyers Tried To Stop Other Trump Lawyers’ Suit Against NY AG

Before some of Trump’s lawyers filed a lawsuit in Florida on Wednesday to stop New York Attorney General Letitia James’ (D) lawsuit against him, the ex-president’s other attorneys tried to convince their colleagues to please not do that, the New York Times reports.

  • Those lawyers were reportedly worried the Florida attorneys were potentially committing malpractice, believing the lawsuit was doomed to fail and frivolous.

And, well, it’s hard to argue otherwise when Trump’s lawsuit reads like one giant Truth Social rant:

“As a private company, nobody knew very much about the great business that then-businessman Donald Trump had built but now it is being revealed by James and much to her chagrin. The continuing witch hunt that has haunted and targeted Donald Trump since he came down the ‘golden escalator’ at Trump Tower in June of 2015 continues.”

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You Have Just A Bit More Time To Sign Up To Attend Our Event Tonight

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

TPM is holding a virtual event this evening and you should sign up to join us 🙂

Josh Marshall will lead a panel discussion tonight at 6 p.m. ET digging into various theories of Democratic messaging over the last few months leading up to the midterms.

He’ll be joined by two friends of TPM: journalist Steve Clemons and political strategist Adam Jentleson. Clemons is the editor-at-large for Semafor, a one-time blogger for TPM, and an old friend of Josh’s. Jentleson is the editorial director of the Battle Born Collective, an influential voice for filibuster reform, and a former chief of staff for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

To attend please RSVP. The event is free, but consider a $10 donation to the TPM journalism fund. Readers like you make TPM possible.