After retaining the Senate, Democrats’ biggest win in the midterm election was locking House Republicans into a slender and brittle majority. Though holding the House would have been a boon for Democrats, it also came with significant disadvantages. There’s a thermostatic dynamic in American politics. One party in power for too long spurs a desire to provide some check on the incumbent party. It also builds up partisan energy in the opposition. 2024 is the year when everything is at stake, when either party could take total control of the federal government. Joe Biden holding the presidency provided a check on the worst that could happen from a GOP congress in 2023 and 2024. After that, all bets are off.
‘We Need to Defend This Law’: Inside An Anti-Abortion Meeting With Tennessee’s GOP Lawmakers
This article was originally published at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
When state Sen. Richard Briggs voted “yes” on Tennessee’s total abortion ban, he never thought it would actually go into effect.
It was 2019, and Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. His vote seemed like a political statement, not a decision that would soon impact people’s lives.
Continue reading “‘We Need to Defend This Law’: Inside An Anti-Abortion Meeting With Tennessee’s GOP Lawmakers”Manhattan DA Shows Renewed Interest In Stormy Daniels Hush Payments
The Manhattan district attorney’s office is seeking to move forward in its criminal investigation into Donald Trump through a familiar lens: Stormy Daniels.
According to the New York Times, District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg is focusing on the hush money payments the former president made to Daniels, a former porn actress, to keep her quiet about an alleged affair she had with Trump.
Continue reading “Manhattan DA Shows Renewed Interest In Stormy Daniels Hush Payments”Inside An Arizona GOP Election Denier’s Self-Own
A state House Republican in Arizona is refusing to vote on any bills unless the 2022 election is redone—ironically, holding back her party in the meantime.
A real estate agent and noted election denier, Republican state Rep. Liz Harris was elected to represent Legislative District 13 in the midterms. Her victory cemented a slim majority for Republicans in the state’s House of Representatives. She’s since decided to throw that away in pursuit of the Big Lie.
Continue reading “Inside An Arizona GOP Election Denier’s Self-Own”McCarthy Woos Far-Right Members By Dangling the Biggest Carrot Of All — Punishing Dems
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) vowed on Sunday to remove Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from House committees under his leadership.
Continue reading “McCarthy Woos Far-Right Members By Dangling the Biggest Carrot Of All — Punishing Dems”Amidst the Corruption
This morning the NRSC, the GOP Senate campaign committee, sent out an urgent email soliciting funds for Herschel Walker to contest the Georgia runoff election. No surprise there. Warnock and Democratic committees are doing the same. Let’s look at the details.
Here is what you see when you click through to donate.
FTX Is A Bigger Mess Than You Could Possibly Imagine
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Dude Is Still Talking To The Press!
The new CEO of the bankrupt crypto-exchange FTX is in that position precisely because he has long experience guiding companies as they make their way through the bankruptcy process. His name is John J. Ray, and he served in a similar role after Enron’s implosion. So when he says this, you take notice:
Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.
Perhaps the only thing more unbelievable than the utter lack of financial controls at FTX is that founder Sam Bankman-Fried is still talking to the press, as recently as Friday when he emailed the Wall Street Journal.
The Great Unraveling
America’s slow-motion civil war grinds on:
Colorado Springs: A 22-year-old man is the suspected gunman in a Saturday night shooting at a gay bar that left five dead and 25 injured.
New York City: Two men, ages 22 and 21, were arrested at Penn Station Saturday in connection with a probe into threats against the Jewish community. “Searches of the suspects, their belongings, and a residence turned up a Glock semiautomatic handgun, a large hunting knife, and a swastika armband,” two senior law enforcement sources told NBC News.
North Carolina: A 42-year-old man was arrested for threatening to kill a FBI agent and vowing to execute members of a fact-checking organization if they didn’t leave MAGA World alone.
Meanwhile, the Texas legislature is preparing an all-out war on trans people’s existence.
Behind Closed Doors Isn’t Good Enough
Dan Savage with a deeply moving response to the Colorado Springs gay bar shooting.
Undisguised Payback Time
GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is vowing to strip committee assignments from Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff (CA), Eric Swalwell (CA), and Ilhan Omar (MN).
Republicans promised payback after House Democrats stripped Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) of her committee assignments at the beginning of the current Congress. The move is also inextricably bound up with McCarthy’s current wooing of Greene to secure the speakership. Fun times.
Supreme Court Bombshell
The NYT blew things up Saturday with its exhaustive report outlining (i) a long-running stealth lobbying campaign of Supreme Court justices by abortion foes; and relatedly (ii) all but pointed the finger at Justice Samuel Alito for allegedly revealing to abortion foes in advance the ruling in the majority decision he authored in the 2014 Hobby Lobby case.
The Times report comes as Chief Justice John Roberts continues to oversee an opaque internal investigation into the leak earlier this year of a draft of Alito’s majority opinion in the Dobbs case.
Two leading Democrats sent a letter Sunday to Roberts demanding answers about the new revelations and continuing to press their case for the Supreme Court to be bound by ethics guidelines.
OneLove Is Too Much For FIFA
Seven European national teams are bending to pressure from FIFA and won’t wear rainbow armbands for LGBTQ rights during the World Cup. Organizers were threatening violators with on-the-field penalties if they wore the OneLove armbands.
Kanye. Elon. Trump.
Twitter impresario Elon Musk reinstated Ye and invited Trump back, and that’s really all you need to know about the weekend’s Twitter drama.
The GOP minority on the House Judiciary Committee, ahem, saw this coming last month.
Coming Up This Week
With the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s a short week, but there’s a lot going on:
Monday, Nov. 21: Closing arguments wrap up in the seditious conspiracy trial of the Oath Keepers. The jury should begin deliberations this week.
Tuesday, Nov. 22:
~ The Mar-a-Lago documents case goes to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for oral arguments. The Justice Department is asking the appeals court to stop the special master review of the documents seized by the FBI and let it resume its investigation unfettered by premature interference by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.
~ Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mike Flynn are finally set to testify in the Georgia state grand jury investigation of 2020 election meddling.
Coda
Therano founder Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison.
In Case You Missed It
Explosive residue confirms Nord Stream sabotage.
Ugh
The Biden administration has endorsed a theory of legal immunity for MBS that he is using to shield himself from a lawsuit by the fiancée of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and by the rights group Khashoggi founded.
Who Cares What Bill Barr Says?
If you’re intrigued by Bill Barr’s long-running psychodrama over Trump, I’m sorry I can’t help you.
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
Weekend Miscellany
Oliver Sacks on the dehumanizing effects of iPhones and internet culture, published in The New Yorker in 2019, four years after his death.
Maricopa County Chairman Bill Gates, a Republican, moved to an undisclosed location with a sheriff’s protective detail in response to threats tied to the 2022 midterm. Maricopa County is governed by a five-member board of supervisors. As chairman, Gates is the chief executive authority in the county. Gates has been an outspoken defender of the integrity of the county’s voting system.
Newly elected Arizona Republican state representative announces she will not vote in the state house until the 2022 election is redone. Rep. Liz Harris’s decision would reduce the GOP’s effective majority to a margin of 30 to 29.
Annals of AI
This article on “Galactica,” a Meta (i.e., Facebook) AI engine that was supposed to organize and synthesize 48 million scientific papers, is a new addition to a growing list of such reports which make me think that both the transformative and dystopic versions of the AI future are further in the distance than we are often led to believe.
5 Dead at LGBTQ Nightclub in Colorado Springs
Five died and eighteen were wounded overnight in a mass shooting at a LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs. Initial reports suggest that the gunman was initially subdued by club attendees rather than police, perhaps reducing the death toll. We should treat all the initial reports as tentative. The shooter was apparently also injured and is in custody receiving medical treatment. (In the summer of 2021 the alleged shooter threatened violence against his mother with “a homemade bomb, multiple weapons, and ammunition.” A SWAT team negotiations unit was able to get Anderson Lee Aldrich to come out of the home voluntarily and he was taken into custody.)