The Supreme Court and California’s Election Deniers Are on the Same Page About (at Least) One Thing

Posted on by Kate Riga

Republicans Ramp Up Election Denial in California Just Before Suspiciously Related SCOTUS Decision Drops

Two things are happening at the same time: 1) President Donald Trump and his stooges are becoming increasingly shrill about the “election fraud” that they insist explains a very liberal city advancing two Democrats to the general election and 2) the Supreme Court is going to release a decision that’ll likely curtail voting by mail nationwide any day now. 

Coincidence? 

While election denial is depressingly old hat for Republicans by this point, the fixation with the Los Angeles mayoral race is odd. Yes, Republicans ran an attention-attracting candidate in reality television star Spencer Pratt, and yes, California takes forever to count its ballots. Conservative media covered Pratt in the runup to the jungle primary as if he stood a real chance of defeating the Democratic candidates. But Los Angeles County has three times more registered Democrats than Republicans — it’s a poster child for a big, lib city. It’s like feigning disbelief about Curtis Sliwa losing to Zohran Mamdani — if Sliwa was a proud Trump sycophant.

Republicans are training their denialism on a race their party hasn’t won for over 30 years. 

This very plausibly could boil down to the fact that some gullible but influential people online thought Pratt could win, and cynical Republican electeds are weaponizing their naïvete to further the election denying agenda, softening the ground for a future attempt to steal a more important race. California could be crucial for determining control of the House. 

But it also sets them up very nicely to be “vindicated” by the Supreme Court in the coming weeks.

We’re awaiting the Court’s ruling in Watson v. RNC, an odd bedfellows case where national Republicans are trying to outlaw Mississippi’s (and 30 other states’) grace periods, during which ballots mailed by Election Day but received afterwards can still be counted. 

Here’s Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the March oral arguments picking quotes from a 2020 article by New York University Professor Richard Pildes: “If the apparent winner the morning after the election ends up losing due to late-arriving ballots, charges of a rigged election could explode.” “…The longer after Election Day any significant changes in vote totals take place, the greater the risk that the losing side will cry that the election has been stolen.” 

Funnily enough, he quoted the same lines in his 2020 concurrence with the Court’s ruling not to reinstate a court-ordered extension of the deadline for receiving mailed ballots in Wisconsin at the height of the pandemic.

“If you have an election and the election is going to turn on late arriving ballots in a way that means what everybody kind of thought was the result on Election Day ends up being the opposite a week later, 21 days later, the losers are not going to accept that result,” Paul Clement, attorney for the RNC, said during the Watson oral arguments. “Full stop. They won’t. And that is bad for our system.”

Compare that to Trump’s Truth Social: “Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had. 3rd World Nation. Rigged Elections!”

Lacking any proof of fraud in voting by mail — because they are making it up — Republicans from Kavanaugh to Trump argue that the mere “perception” of fraud justifies making it harder to vote. Losing Republicans are the only ones perceiving this fraud, creating a pretext to allow fewer voters (who they assume to be Democrats, or at least more Democrats than Republicans) to cast a ballot.

Elected Republicans/influencers and those on the Court are in a perfectly symbiotic relationship here. The Court will almost certainly rule in their favor at some point in the next two months, perhaps even pointing to the hysteria Republicans have whipped up in recent days as evidence of the need to cut off voting earlier. Republicans, in turn, will point to the Court’s ruling as “proof” that their denialism was correct.  

It’s hard to imagine that the LA mayorship is the real race they’re gunning for in perfecting this system.

A Dull Maine Senate Primary Becomes Interesting

We’ll be watching Tuesday night for the first big indicator of how badly, or not, Democrat Graham Platner has been wounded by the recent dribble of scandals. Platner will almost certainly win the ranked-choice primary, but by how much? If his numbers come in precipitously low — Democrat Sara Gideon got 71 percent of the vote in 2020 Senate primary — calls to replace him will grow louder. 

Bari Weiss Fails Upwards to New Heights

The Trump toadying editor-in-chief of CBS News is reportedly in line to also take over CNN’s editorial operations, should Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. go through, per Axios. She is failing in her tenure at CBS — ratings are dismal for both the morning and evening shows, and she’s gutted 60 Minutes, a unicorn in profitable broadcast journalism — if you consider her job to be running the network. But since her job is actually to grease the skids for the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal, withering CBS and CNN in the process, she’s succeeding beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. 

In Case You Missed It

Church, Merch and State: What the Pentagon’s Snub of Mormons Was Really All About

Morning Memo: The Most Important Nomination the Senate Has Ever Considered

On the midterm primaries so far: Trump Sees The Primaries As Proving His Strength. He May Come to Regret It.

TPM Cafe: Why Are Any Democrats Supporting a Bill That Was Championed by the Crypto Industry?

Photo Gallery: Behold the Freedom 250 Celebration Prep in All Its Tacky Glory

Yesterday’s Most Read Story

DOJ to Courts: Don’t You Dare Touch the Already-Dead Slush Fund — David Kurtz

What We Are Reading

‘Unbelievable how accurate’: How paid influencers hype Polymarket’s odds — Jason Beeferman, Maya Kaufman, Jessie Blaeser and Declan Harty, Politico

Somali Referee Says His World Cup Dream Is Dashed After U.S. Denies Entry — Matthew Mpoke Bigg, New York Times

Under the Trump crypto playbook, the family always wins. Investors don’t — Tom Bergin, Michelle Conlin, Koh Gui Qing and Tom Wilson, Reuters

Trump Sees The Primaries As Proving His Strength. He May Come to Regret It.

Posted on by Layla A. Jones

So far, a clear media narrative has emerged from the 2026 midterm election primaries: Trump’s unprecedented reshaping of the Republican Party in his image over the last decade is nearly complete, and his influence remains as strong as ever. 

He’s repeatedly succeeded in unseating his political enemies in Congress and in state legislatures. He vanquished state legislators who defied his redistricting push in Indiana, defeated now-outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana, and booted Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky. In Texas, he backed scandal-laden election denier Ken Paxton, who ousted longtime senator John Cornyn (R-TX) in a runoff. His candidates mostly prevailed in Georgia, where the governor’s race is heading to a runoff between Trump’s pick and a billionaire who wanted to be Trump’s pick. Cornyn, in a post-defeat speech, lamented what he characterized as low voter turnout for his runoff. “Another reminder,” said Cornyn, “that those who show up decide for those who do not.”

Georgia Republicans also gave voice to their fears about Democratic enthusiasm after the open primary there saw a drop in people who voted in the Republican contest and a jump in those who voted in the Democratic one.

But it all raises another question, with Trump’s popularity reaching historic lows: Are general election voters going to choose these new, victorious, Trump-preferred candidates?

Experts who spoke with TPM weren’t surprised about the ultra-MAGA outcomes of most states’ GOP primaries so far, even in spite of the unpopular Iran war, painful gas prices, and surveys that show Trump losing support on the economy, the one area where Republicans tend to enjoy unshakable voter confidence. Recent polls show Trump’s approval rating on the economy is worse than his overall approval rating. The opposite was true in 2018, said Kyle Kondik, managing editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and that prevailed throughout Trump’s first term.

“I don’t think there’s really any conflict between these two realities,” said Kondik when asked about the president’s recent success in the primaries, “because even though Trump’s overall approval rating is poorer, the numbers amongst Republicans are still pretty decent.”

But given polling that shows overall voter dissatisfaction with the president specifically and Republicans more broadly — especially on economic issues, and among independent voters — the wisdom of selecting candidates who have built their entire identity around Trump is questionable at best, election analysts and experts in public opinion told TPM. That may be what Republican primary voters want. Is it what America wants?

The primary season four years ago offers a cautionary tale.

GOP ‘Pulling Defeat from the Jaws of Victory’

MAGA’s coalescing around Trump picks, no matter how extreme or embattled, could contribute mightily to the party’s downfall, several people who spoke with TPM said. They pointed to several 2022 races that saw Trump favorites win primaries, even defeating sitting GOP officials who voted to impeach the president, only to lose the general election in what in hindsight looks like a rather predictable turn of events.

“In 2022 there were multiple instances of Republicans pulling defeat from the jaws of victory by nominating candidates that were too far right for their electorate,” Matthew Baum, a professor of public policy at Harvard University, told TPM. “And I think there’s certainly a possibility of that happening here.”

Former GOP New Hampshire Senate candidate and MAGA conspiracy theorist Don Bolduc parrotted lies that the 2020 election was stolen and continued to support the unfounded belief that widespread election fraud compromises U.S. elections. He earned Trump’s nomination but lost the GOP primary in 2020, then came back in 2022 with Trump’s praise to win his party’s Senate primary against a more moderate Republican candidate. Bolduc lost the general election in a race Cook Political Report rated as “leans Democrat.”

Fellow conspiracy theorist Blake Masters was endorsed by Trump in the 2022 Arizona Senate race. His primary-winning candidacy was funded by billionaire Trump ally Peter Thiel, for whom Masters had worked. Neither Trump’s stamp nor Thiel’s $15 million could secure Masters’ victory. He was defeated in the general election by incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ).

In another Arizona statewide race that year, Trump’s endorsement of gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake over Karrin Taylor Robson could’ve been the factor that cost Republicans the Arizona governorship, said Kondik; given the narrow margin by which Lake lost to her Democratic opponent. Lake at the time said it was “disqualifying” that Robson wouldn’t support the Stop the Steal conspiracy theory.

And in Michigan, Trump successfully ousted Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) in the 2022 primary after the latter voted to impeach the former following January 6. Meijer lost to election denier John Gibbs, who also expressed the belief that Hillary Clinton participated in a satanic ritual. Gibbs then lost the general election to Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI). 

That year also saw the Trump-backed candidacies from Herschel Walker in Georgia and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania; both lost their purple states. 

Comparing this year’s general election to 2022 based on the primary season is “premature,” said David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst at The Cook Political Report. 2022’s candidates were uniquely extreme, though Trump-backed 2026 candidates in Georgia and Texas are giving them a run for their money.

But then, as now, Trump getting his pick could be a flashing warning sign to Republicans at large. 

“It’s just very clear,” Robert Shapiro, professor of political science and international and public affairs at Columbia University, told TPM. “His candidates he’s supported have been performing well. And of course the danger here for the Republican Party is that doing well in the primary may not be indicative of what’s going to happen in the general election.”

“We’ve seen too many cases of that happening.” 

On the Issue of Turnout

It’s worth noting that no one who spoke with TPM for this story suggested lower primary turnout numbers among Republican voters and higher engagement among Democrats represented much more than the typical dynamic: voters use the primary to lash out against the party in power. Midterm turnout among a president’s party is historically lower than among the opposing party, and Trump’s magnetic pull inside his own party has done nothing to impact this age-old pattern.

Midterms bring out only the most engaged party activists and ideologues, said Baum. And runoffs, like the one Cornyn lost, attract only a fragment of that already narrow population. The 2026 GOP electorate’s most energized voters are those far-right MAGA conservatives who won’t break from Trump for anything — not even the sky-high gas prices, the rising consumer inflation, or the White House’s denial of peoples’ real-world economic situations, which ignited voters against Biden.

“Trump enjoys more rock-solid support than his predecessors inside his base,” said Baum. “His base is probably a little larger and probably somewhat stronger in their conviction. But if you look at the overall aggregate numbers, it isn’t by that much.” 

While low voter turnout is a fact of U.S. primary elections, Wasserman said Trump’s stronghold on his party is also the result of the weeding out of non-MAGA Republicans.

“The voters who would be inclined to defect, they left long ago during 2015 and 2016 or in subsequent years,” Wasserman told TPM.

The Most Important Nomination the Senate Has Ever Considered

Posted on by David Kurtz

How Far Is Too Far?

By formally nominating Todd Blanche as attorney general, President Trump set the stage for a late summer tableau in which Republican senators — in the midst of a midterm election — will be asked to ratify the unprecedented corruption of the DOJ by the Trump White House.

It fits a pattern of the Trump II presidency: move quickly, break things, and then get the compliant GOP Congress to paper it over later. But Trump has never asked his GOP allies on the Hill to bless misconduct as wide-ranging and extreme as that which has taken place at DOJ since Blanche became deputy attorney general, the department’s No. 2, in March 2025.

If, as I have argued, the politicization and weaponization of the DOJ is the single greatest threat to democracy of the Trump II presidency, then the Blanche confirmation hearing is arguably the most significant nomination that the Senate has ever considered.

Sanctioning everything that has happened up until now at the Justice Department would be a clear go-ahead from Republican senators to continue full steam ahead, or worse, for another 2 1/2 years. No accountability, no roadblocks, no pumping the brakes.

Blanche’s nomination comes immediately after he single-handedly purported to absolve Trump, whom he still treats as his client, from some $100 million in liabilities to the IRS. It follows the not-quite-dead-yet boondoggle of the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund.

Confirmation of Blanche wouldn’t just ratify the damage he has done in his two-plus months as acting attorney general — targeting, among others, James Comey (again), the Southern Poverty Law Center, John Brennan, Fani Willis, and Cassidy Hutchinson — but would serve as a stamp of approval for all the depredations of the Trump II DOJ.

The list is nearly endless:

  • the attempted retributive prosecutions (Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook, Adam Schiff, Letitia James, Eric Swalwell, LaMonica McIver, and six sitting members of Congress);
  • the defiance of court orders in cases involving the original Alien Enemies Act, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and countless other immigration cases;
  • the coverups of the fatal ICE shootings in Minnesota;
  • the vindictive purges of hundreds of prosecutors and FBI agents;
  • the scheme to avoid the Senate confirmation process by lawlessly installing U.S. attorneys semi-permanently in some blue states;
  • the unprecedented levels of prosecutorial misconduct, lack of candor, and basic incompetence that has wrecked the presumption of normality the government once enjoyed;
  • the corruption and abandonment of the pardon process;
  • the subversion of DOJ independence and allowing the department to be run out of the White House, including installing White House aides like Lindsey Halligan and Kurt Olsen in prosecutorial positions.

There’s no use in clutching pearls over what GOP senators will or will not do with the Blanche nomination. They have proven themselves time and again to be complicit at best as Trump rampages across civil society. But the Blanche confirmation process does give Democrats, who cannot by themselves block Blanche’s nomination, an election-year opportunity to publicly hold Blanche to account for the worst DOJ abuses, lawlessness, and grift.

Still, the urgent question is not how bad things have been at DOJ under Blanche, but how much worse things will get between now and January 2029 if he is confirmed.

Trump DOJ Watch

  • Sun-Times: Controversial DOJ official Aakash Singh eyed by ‘Broadview 6’ was involved in Chicago deportation blitz, source says
  • Democracy Docket: Dem senators “raise the alarm” over DOJ pullback on voter protections 
  • ProPublica: Trump Administration Killed Criminal Investigation of GOP Senator’s Coal Companies

Pentagon Dodges Its Mormon Issue

After outcry from Utah’s two Republican senators that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not designated a Christian faith in a new Pentagon policy, DoD responded not by adding the “Christian” designation to LDS but by removing the Christian designation from the list for all denominations. Nonetheless, that seemed to satisfy Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who was the most vocal about the designation decision.

Mass Deportation Watch

  • $100K Visa Fee: U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin of Boston blocked President Donald Trump from charging employers a $100,000 fee if they hire foreign workers for specialized roles, ruling that it amounted to a unilateral tax without proper congressional approval.
  • Denaturalization: The Trump administration moved to strip citizenship from 17 naturalized U.S. citizens accused of concealing previous crimes or committing fraud during the naturalization process

The Corruption: Don Jr. Edition

ProPublica: An Indian Billionaire Was Targeted by Trump. Then He Poured Money Into a Startup Secretly Backed by Donald Trump Jr.

Thread of the Day

Some thoughts on the Trump-specific aspects of the last 24hrs, stipulating that structural, national, and domestic interests in the Middle East are the most important factors, not Trump. But the U.S. has so much power and leverage, worth thinking about. 1/

— Elizabeth N. Saunders (@profsaunders.bsky.social) 2026-06-08T11:36:54.570Z

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

What the Pentagon’s Snub of Mormons Was Really All About

Posted on by Sarah Posner

In Church, Merch, and State, Sarah Posner writes about the intersection of religion and politics in the United States. This column is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), an ardent Trump loyalist, recently got a taste of what it’s like to be a disfavored religion in the Christian nationalist world of MAGA. He was triggered by the news, broken by the defense news site Military.com, that the Pentagon had eliminated 180 recognized religious faiths in order to “streamline the DoW [sic] collection of religious preferences collection [sic] for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy.” The Pentagon’s new list of what it calls Religious Affiliation Codes classified a number of religions, like Methodists and Baptists, as Christian. But Lee’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was not listed among the “Christian” faiths. He demanded — on X, of course, because United States Senators have no other means of either commanding attention or acquiring information — “why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was left out of the list of Christian churches.”

Continue reading “What the Pentagon’s Snub of Mormons Was Really All About” →

JD Vance Gets in on the California Conspiracy Theorizing

Posted on by John Light

Where Things Stand last night covered what seems to be the beginning of the 2026-specific flooding of the “zone” with “shit,” to use Steve Bannon’s infamous terminology. (I am distinguishing these state- and primary-specific attacks from the more general muck of election conspiracy theories we have been wading in daily for the better part of a decade.) The conspiracy theory machine is off and running, fueled by conservative dismay that reality TV star-turned-dilettante politician Spencer Pratt (R) will not advance to the November general election against LA Mayor Karen Bass (D). Perhaps making it more painful is that he was in recent days supplanted in second place by Nithya Raman, a DSA-backed Democrat. The AP projected Monday that Raman and Bass will face off in November.

JD Vance is the latest person to get involved with spinning false narratives from conservatives’ ire. “Do you trust this election?” a grinning Jesse Watters asked Vance last night on Fox, teeing him up. 

Continue reading “JD Vance Gets in on the California Conspiracy Theorizing” →

Why Are Any Democrats Supporting a Bill That Was Championed by the Crypto Industry?

Posted on by Allegra Kirkland

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

In May, the crypto industry won big as the Senate Banking Committee advanced the Clarity Act. It passed largely along party lines, but two Democrats with crypto-friendly records, Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), broke with their colleagues to support the bill. Last September, Alsobrooks and Gallego partnered with 10 other Senate Democrats to articulate their wishlist for the Clarity Act; their demands are more permissive than the hardline anti-crypto politics of Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and the party’s progressive wing. However, they did pay lip service to consumer protection, strong regulatory agencies, and a provision to limit the Trump family’s crypto-powered corruption. 

Unfortunately, the Clarity Act will not achieve these goals. Instead, as Senator Warren observed, “Nothing made it into this bill that wasn’t approved by the crypto industry.”

Continue reading “Why Are Any Democrats Supporting a Bill That Was Championed by the Crypto Industry?” →

Behold the Freedom 250 Celebration Prep in All Its Tacky Glory: PHOTOS

Posted on by Allegra Kirkland

America’s 250th birthday is coming up, and, just as the Founders intended, our anniversary celebrations will be decked out in gold and the face of our ruler. 

President Trump is going full developer mode over the renovations he’s making to Washington, D.C. in preparation for the Freedom 250 events “celebrating the triumph of the American spirit.” He spent much of a recent Cabinet meeting gushing over work being done to power-wash the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and coat it with “American flag blue” paint.

Continue reading “Behold the Freedom 250 Celebration Prep in All Its Tacky Glory: PHOTOS” →

Republicans Soft Launch Their 2026 Election Disinfo Campaign With California Freakout

Posted on by John Light

Big Lie 2026 Gets Underway

It was already burbling up in various venues toward the end of last week, but it officially got underway over the weekend: the long-expected 2026 midterm election disinfo bonanza.

At its core, the extremely predictable claim is this: That as we all watch California slowly, slowly tally its millions of mail-in ballots, we are in fact watching a Democratic plot to steal the election unfold in real time.

Though Trump asserted as early as election night that this fantastical scheme was underway — and spilled the beans that his DOJ was investigating — the conspiracy theory ripened on Friday and through the weekend, as DSA-backed City Councilmember Nithya Raman surpassed conservative cause célèbre Spencer Pratt in the LA mayor race, quashing Pratt’s hope of ousting incumbent mayor and first-place winner Karen Bass in November. It was an outcome many trained election analysts predicted way back on the evening of primary day, but that has still prompted deranged reactions among the full spectrum of conservative and reactionary influencers.

The particularly Trumpy top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, made his entrance into the fever swamps on Friday, noting that his office has “multiple election fraud investigations underway” — though he did, in a separate social media post late that night, attempt to debunk a specific, absurd claim circulating online: that Pratt got “zero votes” in one ballot drop.

On Sunday, Trump leaned hard into the conspiracy theory before storming off Meet the Press. “The election was rigged,” he declared of 2020. “It was a dirty election. And it’s happening again right now in California.” That claim only further inflamed the various self-appointed election administration experts dismayed about Pratt. And on Monday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson opined that the election “stinks to high heaven.”

“Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that it’s impossible to prove, but I think everybody knows instinctively, something is wrong here, and that’s a concern,” he said.

California officials are quick to point out that their state processes a huge number of mail-in ballots, and their ambling process of reporting election returns is a byproduct of the fact that they must ensure the accurate, secure tally that MAGA activists profess to want. The state mails a ballot to everyone registered, and election workers must carefully inspect each one returned, the envelope it comes in, and the voter’s signature. Because Republicans tend to vote in greater numbers on Election Day, the days- or weeks-long tallying of mail-in ballots tends to see a shift toward Democrats in the state’s top-two primary system, dismaying Republicans and, in recent years, prompting conspiracy theories. 

Bill Pulte’s Big, New, Retribution Job Derails Another Congressional Vote

Renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the warrantless wiretapping program — is one of those rare votes of Congress, these days, that doesn’t fall neatly along party lines. Some Republicans and some Democrats support it, some Republicans and some Democrats oppose it.

But, last week, after Trump nominated his buddy, Bill Pulte, as acting Director of National Intelligence — a job Pulte seemingly got by combing through the mortgages of people Trump doesn’t like and accusing them of crimes — Section 702 lost its bipartisan sheen. Democrats came together to oppose it, saying they would not let the program move forward until Pulte was removed. Some Republicans voted with them for reasons unrelated to Pulte.

Today, Democrats are standing their ground. “Reversing the Bill Pulte appointment is a starting point, not an ending point,” Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Monday.

Schrödinger’s War and Schrödinger’s Ceasefire 

As Emine Yücel and Josh Kovensky have been chronicling for TPM, the administration has insisted that it doesn’t need Congress’ green light for its war in Iran because there is no war. And, if there is in fact found to be a war, White House lawyers further insist, it was “terminated” by a ceasefire that began this spring. 

Now, its not so clear there even is a ceasefire. Iran lobbed missiles at Israel over the weekend. Israel lobbed them back. Trump — at first, largely unsuccessfully — sought to constrain Israel’s response. It seems the exchange of fire has quieted, for now.

Regardless, the situation means that the White House’s claim that it doesn’t need Congress’ sign-off for this war is looking more absurd than ever. On Monday, 36 Democrats in the Senate sent a letter to the White House observing that its reasoning “stands in sharp contrast with the text of the War Powers Resolution, the relevant legislative history, domestic and international law, and past interpretations made by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and the State Department under Administrations of both parties.” They demanded to see the OLC reasoning that informed this questionable perspective. (TPM scooped last week that this letter was in the works.)

The deteriorating situation in the Middle East, and the deteriorating relationship between Trump and Senate Republicans, will almost certainly will give rise to further votes of the sort we have now seen in the House and the Senate, attempting to force Trump to end the war. Because these War Powers Act bills would be subject to Trump’s veto, they’re unlikely to do much in the short term — but they highlight a growing divide in the Republican Party and channel American’s frustration with Trump’s most sweeping (so far) misguided intervention abroad as voters get ready to cast ballots in the midterms.

In Case You Missed It

Today’s deep dive: ‘Ugly Language’ and Nervous Funders: Inside the Trump Administration’s Attack on Harm Reduction

TPM Cafe: How the Right Captured State Power as a Weapon in Its Anti-Government Crusade

Rough Edges: From Sonic Booms to Mystery Drones: How Science-Based Panics Take Hold

Morning Memo: DOJ to Courts: Don’t You Dare Touch the Already-Dead Slush Fund

From the Editor’s Blog: Gordon Wood Dies at 92

Yesterday’s Most Read Story

The Worst Advice for Democrats on How to Win Elections — Allegra Kirkland and Derick Dirmaier

What We Are Reading

The Substackist politics of Nick Bilton and the AI-bootleg crisis — Max Read, Read Max

Bot web traffic has overtaken human web traffic, data shows — Samantha Elkins, NBC

Graham Platner is a Type of Guy — John Ganz, Unpopular Front

Gordon Wood Dies at 92

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I just heard the news that Gordon Wood, a towering figure in the scholarship of Early American history, died yesterday at 92. Adding more upset to the news is the fact that he died after being struck by a car in East Providence. He died later in a Providence hospital. (One knows that people in their 90s are in the last years of their lives; a violent death like that makes it more of a gut punch.)

As I’ve mentioned a few times over the years Wood was my dissertation advisor at Brown. So he played an important role in my life. What ended up being my area of specialty, the topic of my dissertation, was pretty distant from the focus of his scholarship. He was concerned with the decades surrounding the American Revolution and the early Republic. My focus was on the middle 17th century and the interplay between economic interactions and inter-communal violence between English settlers and the Indians of Southern New England. In a way he indulged my interest in these questions that were pretty distant from his. He had very little time for cant or jargon or, as he saw it, theory.

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The Delaney Hall Strike Is Exposing a Massive Thirteenth Amendment Crisis

Posted on by Allegra Kirkland

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.  It was originally published at Balls and Strikes.

For the past several weeks, hundreds of detainees at Delaney Hall, an immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, have been on a labor and hunger strike. Participants in the strike are refusing to perform their work assignments or eat meals in protest of what they describe, in a series of handwritten letters smuggled out of the facility, as “unlawful and forced detention” and “inhumane treatment” that violates their constitutional rights. Among the myriad “injustices and irregularities” named in the letters are rotten food riddled with worms; persistent “unresolved issues” with bathrooms in “terrible and inhumane” condition; and detainees being forced to work for practically pennies or, more often, for no pay at all.

Delaney Hall was the first immigration detention center to open during President Donald Trump’s second term in office. And like almost all immigration detention facilities, Delaney is owned and operated by a private prison corporation. GEO Group, a company valued at approximately $3.3 billion, signed a 15-year contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in February 2025, providing ICE with the facility and “support services” like security, maintenance, and food services, in exchange for over $60 million annually. 

But it is the detainees—not GEO Group—who actually do that work.

Continue reading “The Delaney Hall Strike Is Exposing a Massive Thirteenth Amendment Crisis” →