In Emine Yücel’s newly published piece about Republicans’ struggles to pass a slew of President Trump’s priorities ahead of the midterms, she digs in on a crucial point that isn’t getting much discussion.
Since Republican leadership doesn’t want to nuke the filibuster in order to pass the SAVE America Act, they’re doing a big performance for Trump to show that they’ll figure out a way to cram all of his needs — passing the voter suppression bill and funding for his war in Iran as well as the Department of Homeland Security — into another reconciliation package. Republicans are considering paying for the new spending for Trump’s latest fixations with more cuts to the social safety net, under the guise of rooting out rampant “fraud,” the admin’s favorite new word.
But in many cases, they won’t actually have to do that. The new spending is just a convenient excuse for more cuts.
I wanted to share a few thoughts on questions that are adjacent to or secondary to the question the Supreme Court is being asked to take up today. That is in part because there is no real question they are being asked to take up. Birthright citizenship is the clear, intended and unambiguous law of the federal constitution. One might as well try to complicate or question whether the document creates a federal senate. I have a source and correspondent deep in the federal bureaucracy who is a specialist in a specific area of federal law unrelated to citizenship questions. And even though I’ve written about this at length over the years, by going over developments in this person’s area of law with them it has helped me crystalize my own thinking on this topic.
Almost all of these cases are based on the premise, the working assumption of what can the U.S. Constitution mean if we decide that words or established phrases simply have no meaning and we can simply piece the individual words together based on their dictionary definitions? So what does the “law of the land” mean? Well, it turns out some guy who did a stint at the Claremont Institute and now teaches at some obscure law school has written a bracing new law review article about how it refers to agricultural policy, mineral and agricultural rights and the law of farming. That’s really where we are here.
One of the most bizarre aspects of the city occupations in 2025 and early 2026 (and perhaps continuing under Markwayne Mullin? TBD) was the way in which the administration brought random social media celebrities inside its operations to produce propaganda. Through lawsuits and reporting, we’re learning more about how that all worked. Josh Kovensky takes a close look.
Longtime TPM readers know we always have been and always will be a small publication. We like to think we punch above our weight in terms of what we’re able to cover given our size. But we’re always looking for ways to do more.
That’s why we’re thrilled to announce the addition of Mike Rothschild and Sarah Posner as regular contributors to TPM. What that means is you’ll be seeing their bylines a lot more on our site, and hearing from them in our videos and Substack Live conversations.
Over the weekend I noticed an example of one of the most significant features of the last decade-plus in American politics, though it’s one that still remains too little remarked upon. Lauren Egan writes a newsletter covering the Democratic Party for The Bulwark. Sunday night’s edition was about pundit and political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, “He Was a Legendary Independent Pundit. Then Trump Arrived.” Basically, How did Stuart Rothenberg come down with, as MAGA puts it, Trump Derangement Syndrome? Toward the end of the piece, Egan gets at what I think is the underlying issue here and some of the commonality I’m about to note.
Let’s start this story in the late ’80s and early ’90s. At the time, there were a handful of men — pretty much all men, as I recall — who played a very specific role in the political-journalistic ecosystem. They were rigorously, perhaps obsessively, non-partisan and were go-to people on basic questions of politics. They’d appear on shows, be on call for quotes for journalists at the big papers. Rothenberg and Charlie Cook played that role in the electoral analysis and predictions space. Larry Sabato also occupied that space, though he also played in the political analysis one. In the latter space were Norm Ornstein (AEI) and Thomas Mann (Brookings). I think they were on PBS Newshour for a long time as a pair. Their analysis was on the mechanics of governing, less the explicitly political stuff and generally not electoral stuff.
Three years ago, Hunter Walker heard that Mark Robinson, then the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, was about to enter that state’s governors race. He also heard that Robinson had a penchant for extreme statements. And so, Hunter dug into his Facebook page, where Robinson had for years been an inveterate poster. In March 2023, TPM offered one of the first comprehensive looks at the public proclamations of this bizarre governor candidate-to-be — a man who would later be reported to have offered on porn forums such memorable self-descriptions as “I’m a black NAZI.” (Robinson denied at the time that the account was his, and even sued CNN, which had published the story.)
After losing in November 2024, Robinson got quieter. But, now, he’s back, with a sort-of apology. Hunter has that story here.
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The hard right has long wanted to end birthright citizenship in the United States. The view only came into vogue with the Republican mainstream — and entered the White House — in the last decade.
Kate and Josh talk airports in crisis, Trump’s bewildering political calculus and, believe it or not, an optimistic vision of what a post-Trump world could look like.
