FORT WORTH, TEXAS — A swanky stockyards-themed venue in this Texas city hosted a far-right politician whose candidacy for a top state oil regulator position asks a simple question: is racist posturing enough to win an election?
The New Iran-US Ceasefire
We’re still getting conflicting reports about what is contained in the memorandum of understanding reportedly about to be signed by the United States and Iran. Both sides are describing different details; neither has released any text and neither is a reliable narrator. But the big picture is fairly clear. It’s not a peace agreement, just a longer ceasefire. And the terms just revert everything to the status quo ante before the war with a promise to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program.
Continue reading “The New Iran-US Ceasefire”YOLO Trump
Take this for what you will but in this piece the NYT seems to be coming around to a point I’ve been making for the last three or four months: “Mr. Trump has decided to double down, presenting himself as politically all-powerful even in the face of indications that he is not.”
2020 Was Nothing Compared to Our New Era of Public Health Conspiracy Theories
In Rough Edges, Mike Rothschild writes about fringe groups, conspiracy theories and how the Internet broke our brains. This column is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Before COVID-19 had reached the United States in significant numbers, there were countless conspiracy theories about what it “really” was and who was behind it. The “infodemic” was so virulent that many people’s first knowledge of the pandemic was the disinformation about the pandemic.
As the virus spread around Asia and Europe in early 2020, rumors ran almost unchecked alongside it. The internet became a dull throb of fear about “Coronavirus Death Smog” from all the bodies China was secretly burning, or China using it as an engineered bioweapon that would wipe out humanity, or that the outbreak was “foretold” in a 1981 Dean Koontz novel. The disinformation had penetrated places it would take the virus itself months to reach. As a result, when COVID truly impacted the U.S. in mid-March, many Americans knew little about the virus other than what they’d heard online, and had been inundated with false claims and scapegoating of Asian Americans.
Conspiracism instantly became a major factor in how the pandemic was responded to and treated. And it happened incredibly quickly, as hundreds of millions of people found paranoia and fearmongering in their COVID isolation. The infamous disinformation superspreader video Plandemic took just one day to shoot and two weeks to edit, cost $2,000, and was released less than two months into lockdown — instantly gathering millions of views and shares. It went from non-existent to almost inescapable in a remarkably short amount of time.
Disinformation and conspiracy theories are now often the first point of contact we have with a rapidly-developing news story. We hear the myths and rumors before we even know what we’re hearing them about.
Continue reading “2020 Was Nothing Compared to Our New Era of Public Health Conspiracy Theories”What’s Going on With Trump’s Big Fascistic Arch Near the National Mall?
[Essay]
Arc de Triomphe Trump
Memorial Day heralds the unofficial start of summer, and this summer will also be the zenith of the Trump administration’s Christian nationalist Freedom 250 events celebrating the country’s semiquincentennial. So it seems like a good moment to check in on Trump’s plans to build a giant triumphal arch near the National Mall.
The Federal Commission of Fine Arts, which is stocked with Trump allies, has officially approved plans for the 250-foot structure, with the chairman calling it a “very elegant building.” The design is as Trumpy as one might expect, with four golden lions at the base, an enormous winged Lady Liberty astride it, and a golden inscription that reads “One Nation Under God.” Architecture historian and Columbia professor Reinhold Martin described it to TPM as “Napoleonic” and part of an “imperial tradition” in a piece Layla A. Jones did on Trump’s obsession with restoring Classical architecture in D.C. “The classical architecture stuff is a dog whistle for white nationalists,” Martin pointed out.
Trump has said he wants the arch built in time to ring in America’s 250th, but a few months is not exactly the window in which 250-foot monuments are typically built. “The president wants it now” is also not the typical process for new construction on the National Mall. Under the 1986 Commemorative Works Act, Congress is supposed to sign off on any major new structure built on federally administered land in D.C., conducting reviews to make sure that the monument doesn’t disturb existing structures and is of “pre-eminent historical and lasting significance to the United States.” (When asked by CBS who the proposed arch would commemorate, Trump said, simply, “Me.”). But the Trump administration reportedly has no intention of seeking approval from Congress, “arguing that they do not need it because lawmakers a century ago authorized a somewhat similar project that was never built,” according to the Washington Post.
As of now, the project has not yet broken ground. Two lawsuits — one filed by a group of Vietnam War veterans who say the arch will block views of Arlington National Cemetery and disrespect the dead, and another by an architectural historian — are still winding their way through the courts. Warning that she doesn’t “want to wake up in the morning” to find “bulldozers” at work, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has ordered the government to provide her with at least 14 days’ notice before construction or demolition begins for the project, per MS Now.
Funding is another unanswered question. While the White House originally said the arch would be paid for with private donations, Politico reported that the National Endowment for the Humanities is setting aside $15 million for it. Other, sneakier pathways exist to fund it too: For example, TPM’s Emine Yücel reported this week that Trump could use the same kind of corrupt settlement that created the DOJ’s so-called anti-weaponization slush fund to obtain taxpayer dollars to build it.
[Report]
If the Price is Right
There’s a new push to create a national Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. First announced via executive order last year, the idea got a twofold boost this week. Patrick Witt, the head of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, teased a “breakthrough” on the idea, adding that he had been working with Stephen Miller to bring the plan into reality.
At the same time, members of Congress this week introduced a bill that would codify the idea of creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. In simple terms, the proposal is that the federal government buys a lot of bitcoin. Under the bill – introduced by Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) along with Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) – the government would buy a whopping amount of crypto: 1 million Bitcoin over the next five years, accounting for around 5% of the total supply of Bitcoin in existence. The government would have to hold the Bitcoin for at least 20 years, per the bill.
It’s not clear if the “breakthrough” that Witt mentioned has been announced. This week, the White House said it was asking the federal reserve to allow “uninsured depositories and non-bank fintech” firms to access payment accounts in the central bank. That would further entangle crypto into the traditional financial system and entrench the means by which the industry would be backed up by the federal government.
There’s a brazenness to all of this that kind of wallops you. The Trump family is personally invested in the price of Bitcoin. His sons run a Bitcoin company; as the price has tanked in recent months, it’s faced steep losses. World Liberty, the crypto firm founded by members of the Trump family and the family of his adviser Steve Witkoff, issues its own crypto token. The Trump family receives 75% of proceeds upon the sale of its tokens. In the months before this latest crypto push began, the President’s family trust bought shares in several companies linked to Bitcoin and its production.
All of the policy changes and proposals are already having an effect. The price of Bitcoin was back to over $80k last week.
[Report]
The Right is Eroding Its Own Voter Turnout by Attacking Early Voting
You might be shocked to learn that the all-out assault on early voting by Trump and his GOP allies has officially backfired.
In the Georgia primary election — which saw Republican voters move to send ultra-MAGA election deniers to posts that will oversee state elections — Democrats outnumbered Republican voters by nearly 151,000 votes, according to unofficial turnout data from the Georgia Secretary of State. That lead started after 580,000 Democrats voted early compared to 430,000 Republicans, a 150,000 person or 15 percentage point difference. GOP voters never closed that early gap, which came even as mail-in voting rates plummeted for both parties.
Georgia’s WABE reported Gov. Brian Kemp said he’s “definitely concerned” about the state’s energetic Democratic base.
It’s not crazy to say the depressed GOP turnout was a predictable, natural outgrowth of the far-right promotion of false election security conspiracies. To promote his categorically untrue claims that U.S. elections are marred by fraud and that non-citizens are voting and illegally affecting election outcomes, Trump has repeatedly targeted mail-in voting. He waited, of course, to launch this full-scale attack until after he finished promoting early and mail-in voting ahead of his own 2024 election.
In March, Trump went so far as to sign an executive order outlawing mail-in ballots for all but a limited group of people. Election officials from Trump’s own party turned on the president and expect the order to be struck down by the courts. Nevermind that Trump himself votes by mail. He is president and has declared that no rules apply to him except those inside his own heart and mind.
Georgia’s turnout results are even more striking because it’s a total reversal of the 2022 primaries, where Republicans cast more mail-in and total ballots than Democrats. Then, former President Joe Biden was in office and post-pandemic inflation galvanized Americans to show their dissatisfaction with the administration at the polls. The opposite is expected to happen this year. Still, the scale of the flip-flop is striking.
At a topline level, Georgia voters broke the state’s early voting record. But Democrats logged a 53% increase in early voting while Republican early voting turnout dropped by 13% compared to 2022, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Hispanic voters made a major coalition shift. This year, 72% of Hispanic primary voters chose to vote in the Democratic primary, compared to 47% in 2022. More white and Asian voters shifted their allegiances to the left, too, the AJC reported.
The 15 percentage point partisan difference in early ballots cast this year is the exact same gap Republicans led Democrats by in 2022, when the GOP swept statewide offices, suggesting Democratic enthusiasm could signal danger for the right.
The right’s demonization of mail-in and early voting is not the only counter-productive anti-voting measure the party is pushing. The GOP’s SAVE America Act would require Americans to present a birth certificate or passport before registering to vote. As a result, the right risks alienating its own base: working class, white voters from middle America who don’t have passports and may have limited access to birth certificates, as well as conservative women who’ve married and failed to change their last names on official documents. As we’ve reported before, states who turned out for Trump in 2024 have the largest percentage of residents without passports.
Correction: This article initially incorrectly described how party registration in primary elections works in Georgia. TPM regrets the error.
[Galaxy Brain]
The Errors are Why I Wrote the Book
In his new book, “The Future of Truth,” Steven Rosenbaum cites the following quote: “Emotions aren’t just reactions to truth — they’re how we construct truth.” This is, of course, nonsense. It’s also a good indication of Rosenbaum’s grasp of his subject matter.
The quote is attributed to a professor of psychology at Northeastern University. In fact, it’s an AI fabrication the author claims to have included by mistake. It’s one of at least a half-dozen fake AI quotes Rosenbaum includes, according to an analysis by the NY Times. After being contacted by the Times about the made-up quotes, he reassured them that he would be doing his own investigation into how this happened. Better yet, he told the Times if this “serves as a warning about the risks of A.I.-assisted research and verification, that is why I wrote the book.”
[Bad Twetes]
The GOP is Fine
[Trivia]
What Do You Remember From This Week’s News?
1) How much money is in the absurd slush fund Trump created to pay his allies back for their legal costs?
2) What beverage did Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) drink from the podium after losing his reelection bid on Tuesday?
3) Which former Iranian leader did the U.S. and Israel reportedly aim to restore to power as part of their early strategy in invading Iran?
Answers below
[No Words]
Trumpuffalo
Trivia answers: 1) $1.776 billion 2) Raw milk 3) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
How Fred Trump’s Mysterious KKK Riot Arrest Resonates Almost a Century Later
Antifascists were fighting with their far-right rivals. An anti-immigrant group with surging membership took to the streets and clashed with the police. And a member of the Trump family was at the center of it all.
The year was 1927.
On Memorial Day, 99 years ago, the celebrations in New York City turned violent. The chaotic scenes, which involved the Ku Klux Klan rioting in Queens and black-clad Fascists who stormed Times Square after shots were fired by their antifascist rivals in the Bronx received renewed attention during President Donald Trump’s two White House bids. And the reason this bloody day refused to fade from memory is that one of the men arrested amid the melees, according to newspaper reports from the time, was the future president’s father, Fred Trump.
Despite the recent scrutiny, the episode remains shrouded in mystery and clouded by nearly a century of time. Multiple fact checks have confirmed the arrest based on articles about the incident that identified Fred Trump by name and described him as living at an address that matched his residence in the 1930 census. However, those modern reports have also stressed that it is unclear whether Fred Trump was part of the Klan crowd or simply caught up in the broader brawl. That hasn’t stopped swirling online accusations that Fred Trump was part of the hate group. Those rumors were fueled by the fact Fred Trump reached a settlement in the 1970s after he and the future president were sued by the Justice Department for engaging in systematic racial discrimination at the family’s real estate firm.
When President Trump was initially asked about the incident during his first campaign in 2015, he attempted to brush it off as something that “never happened” even though his denial blatantly contradicted the historical records. With much still unanswered about the events of that day and its relation to the most powerful man in the world, TPM has thoroughly analyzed newspaper archives containing coverage of the event. While there is no definitive indication of whether or not the elder Trump was part of the Klan contingent, we found some signs he may have been separate from the hate group. And the moment still has ongoing resonance beyond Trump’s involvement.
The riots that broke out on the streets of America’s largest city nearly a century ago show that our current climate — with the looming threat of authoritarianism, periodic outbursts of political violence, and raging anti-immigrant sentiment — is not entirely unprecedented in American history. In truth, these dark currents have been with us for generations.
Continue reading “How Fred Trump’s Mysterious KKK Riot Arrest Resonates Almost a Century Later “BREAKING: Abrego Garcia Prevails on Vindictive Prosecution Claim
A federal judge in Nashville has dismissed the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, ruling that he was the victim of vindictive prosecution by the Trump Justice Department.
Continue reading “BREAKING: Abrego Garcia Prevails on Vindictive Prosecution Claim”Broadview Fallout Reaches DC
More fallout from yesterday’s courtroom drama in Chicago. The original prosecutor in the Broadview Six case, Sheri Mecklenberg, withdrew from the case with little or not advance notice in late February and announced she was taking a position as a DOJ detailee working for the Senate Judiciary committee under Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). The hearing yesterday pointed to her as the source of most or all of the grand jury misconduct though not the redactions part of the misconduct, which took place after her departure.
Durbin’s office said this morning she’s been dismissed from her position.
In the Trenches with the Law — Thoughts on the Broadview Six Case
I was thinking last night about the denouement of the Broadview Six case, a collapse which I’m told by some legal observers stands a non-trivial chance of seeing some of the prosecutors disbarred. And I contrasted it with the series of TPM Reader emails about the “fancy lawyers.” A number of these emails start out with some version of, I’m not part of the legal elite, I’m just working here in the trenches as a lawyer in [this or that mid-sized city in the United States]. Or maybe, my background is in elite law but I’m down here in the trenches, etc.
Craven Self-Preservation Puts Senate GOP at Odds With Trump
‘Our Majority Is Melting Down Before Our Eyes’
Senate Republicans have always felt like the weakest of the political bulwarks protecting Trump and Trumpism, but real signs of senators crumbling en masse have remained few and fleeting. Yesterday’s developments were more real and may not be so fleeting.
Resistance within John Thune’s conference to Trump’s vanity ballroom and the travesty of the anti-Weaponization Fund coupled with House GOP leaders yanking a vote to rein in the Iran War because they were going to lose on the floor gave the real sense that Republicans see their own midterm prospects as dim.
“Our majority is melting down before our eyes,” a GOP senator told Punchbowl.
But there’s a lot of nuance here that suggests something less than a sea change in the underlying political dynamics. Our eagerness to see real change, real opposition to Trump, and a real erosion of his political support is so overwhelming that it can skew our perspective.
Nearly half of GOP senators reportedly spoke out against the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s face in a contentious Senate lunch yesterday, but the only senators going on the record with their criticisms are the usual suspects: lame duck senators already on the outs with Trump, Punchbowl notes:
In most cases, the only Republicans who are publicly speaking out against these initiatives are the victims of Trump’s revenge tour or otherwise not seeking reelection. But GOP leaders’ decisions on both the ballroom and weaponization fund make clear that they feel the same way.
Another dynamic in play: Senators may feel emboldened now not just because things are looking bleak electorally in the fall but because the window for Trump to primary them has mostly closed. That’s not a mark of courage, but it does inform the underlying politics.
What isn’t happening is important, too. Senate Republicans still aren’t keen to defend Congress as an institution against a rogue executive intent on stealing its powers as his own. They’re not rising up in defense of the rule of law. They’re not drawing a line in the sand: This far, no further.
Rather, they’re trying to nickel and dime their way to something that is more politically palatable. It’s about the “optics.” This gives rise to half-measures like the proposal being floated to prohibit “Anti-Weaponization Funds” from going to those who assaulted cops on Jan. 6. That’s great as far as it goes, but it still leaves $1.776 billion in unappropriated funds in the hands of an unchecked president for him to use to prop up his political machine.
Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) was an exception, saying he didn’t think any guardrails could fix the fund: “I don’t like the fund at all.”
In normal times, craven self-preservation is sometimes all the democratic system offers as a means of course correction, but so long as one of the two major parties is on an authoritarian bender, these will not be normal times.
The Tax Side of the Corruption
It’s been interesting to observe the world of tax professionals and former IRS officials entering the debate, agog over the sweeping release granted to Trump et al. in the deal for the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
At its core is the immense disconnect between the I.R.S.’ wrongful leak of Trump’s tax returns and the reward of absolving Trump from complying with the tax laws at any point prior to the signing date of this week’s corrupt bargain.
“It’s just completely contrary to the notion that you’re supposed to comply with the law and the I.R.S. is there to make sure you do that,” George Yin, a tax law professor and former chief of staff at the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, told the NYT. “The idea that you can get a free pass from the I.R.S. or anyone can get a free pass from the I.R.S. is just completely ridiculous.”
Quote of the Day
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.”—Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Get in Line
MAGA World figures are already posturing about why they deserve a portion of what Sen. Thom Tills (R-NC) called a “payout pot for punks.”
Among the notable figures, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio says he expected to get between $2 million and $5 million from the fund. “I’m not greedy,” Tarrio told Reuters. “But my life was all fucked up because of this.”
It’s not just insurrectionists and those once criminally charged seeking compensation but a whole cross-section of right-wing groups and Trump allies, ranging from abortion foes (who the settlement specifically invited to apply) to “millions of Americans whose online speech was censored at the behest of the government, parents silenced at schoolboards, senators whose records were secretly subpoenaed, churchgoers targeted by the FBI, and so on,” according to a DOJ overview given to GOP senators.
Down the Memory Hole!
While President Trump is corruptly accruing funds to pay off his insurrectionist allies, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued orders yesterday without explanation clearing the way for the Trump DOJ to dismiss the seditionist conspiracy and related indictments arising out of Jan. 6.
Pardons and commutations aren’t good enough. Convictions by juries can’t be allowed to stand on the record. It will be as if the indictments themselves never happened.
Broadview Six Case Collapses
The Trump DOJ dropped all remaining charges in the prosecution of the ICE protestors in the Broadview Six case in Chicago during an extraordinary day in court that revealed extensive prosecutorial misconduct and irregularities in front of the grand jury.
“I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts,” U.S. District Judge April Perry said, after reviewing grand jury transcripts behind closed doors and without defense counsel present.
Redacted grand jury transcripts that had been previously been produced to the judge left out the most damaging and incriminating parts of the proceedings, and DOJ prosecutors had not revealed that fact to her, even as she had openly surmised that the redactions were probably just IT glitches.
“And frankly, it is that that I find the most problematic,” the judge said, adding, “I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken.”
Thread of the Day
Criminal defense attorney Ken White goes through the transcript of the highly irregular hearing yesterday in the Broadview Six case:
ICE Agent Will Surrender on State Charges
The ICE agent facing state charges in Minnesota for a road-rage-style incident during Operation Metro Surge will surrender after Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty issued a nationwide warrant last month for his arrest.
Colbert’s Last Late Night Show
The cancellation of a late night show doesn’t rank with the losses of the last 16 months, but the underlying principles under attack are as important as any that Trump has assailed, and the capitulation by CBS mirrors the other cases where institutions and corporations have crumpled rather than stand strong.
Stephen Colbert closed it out with a singalong led by Paul McCartney, who famously first performed in America on the same stage 62 years ago:
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