Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, secretly encouraged Donald Trump’s chief of staff to help Trump steal a second term in office. “Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down,” Ginni Thomas texted Mark Meadows, the Washington Post first reported.
Questions about Ginni Thomas’ activism and what it says about Clarence Thomas’ own views go back years. Now, they’re a leading story.
Your briefing on developments in the Supreme Court confirmation battle.
The Senate Judiciary Committee met in executive session Monday to “consider” a slate of nominations including Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s. The real vote will happen next week after Republicans requested a delay, so Monday’s session involved brief comments from senators with promises that they’ll elaborate further at the vote.
Continue reading “In 20 Minutes, A Microcosm Of The Jackson Hearings”I am of course just speculating, but that ^ might be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) current internal debate after Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) flailing around on Fox News this weekend.
As head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Scott put out an “11-Point Plan to Rescue America” last month to attempt to give Republicans some sort of safe-space to coalesce around heading into the 2022 Midterms — as the party seemingly does not have a broader legislative agenda, beyond letting the right-wing media rile the base into a frenzy over faux culture wars.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Probably Better To Have No Agenda Than Allow Rick Scott To Do … Whatever It Is He’s Doing”A new article (sub req) in the FT says that Russia and Ukraine are discussing a ceasefire agreement in which Ukraine would agree not to join NATO but also get NATO-like security guarantees from major European powers and the U.S. Ukraine would also be free to join the EU. This essentially amounts to armed neutrality and likely an agreement not to host foreign troops on its territory. A key element appears to be an agreement to leave the question of the territories Russia held as of February 24th as a matter to be discussed in subsequent negotiations. So an agreement to disagree for the time being essentially.
The unknown in these negotiations and the reported draft agreements they are working on is that no one on the Ukrainian side — and I suspect in the U.S. as well — is clear at all about whether Russia is actually seriously considering these potential agreements or simply using them to stall for time or keep the Western powers from imposing more sanctions.
Svetlana Nikolaevna was trying desperately to get out of Mariupol.
The city was burning, and Russian troops were closing in. People told dark jokes about Russian troops praying at a nearby cathedral, as shells continued to fly into high-rises, seemingly at random.
Continue reading “‘Nobody Will Save You’: One Refugee’s Account Of Escaping Mariupol”Michael Kofman is one of the most important Twitter follows for understanding the Russia-Ukraine war. This morning he has a short thread about Russia’s dismal military performance in Ukraine. While he says he has no doubt the U.S. military would greatly outperform the Russian military, he sees the reaction to those Russian failures as an example that “we may be psychologically unprepared for war with [a] determined opponent that has some parity of capability.”
In other words, when you have a real army on the other side, lots of things can go wrong. The U.S. military has had lots of experience over the last two decades in counter-insurgency conflict, against very lethal and determined enemies. But when it comes to invasions, air combat, armor and the like the U.S. has not faced a peer or near-peer in a very, very long time. The military has an adage that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” But if the enemy is weak enough — in terms of technology, training, logistics, firepower — your plan probably can survive first contact and maybe most of the whole engagement.
But there’s a related but distinct issue that keeps coming back to me as I watch this war unfold.
Continue reading “A Warning for All Goliaths, Not Just Russia”For many Atlanticists in Europe and the United States there is a deep belief that the horror of the invasion of Ukraine — a conflict with a still very uncertain outcome — has nonetheless revitalized not only NATO but a sense of unity and purpose among the world’s civic democracies. I agree with this. Increasingly over the last decade the forces of revanchist authoritarianism have been on the march while those of civic democracy have been mired in internal division and generally unaware of or indifferent to the fact that a conflict is even afoot. And yet the same conflict is underway or continues within the United States itself. It’s quite possible that the economic clout and military might of the United States, around which the resistance to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revolves, could be absent from the field in less than three years.
Continue reading “Which Is The Weakest Link?”Former President Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 likely constitute attempted obstruction of Congress, a federal judge ruled on Monday.
Continue reading “Trump Likely Committed Obstruction Of Congress, Judge Rules”TPM Reader SB, like virtually everyone else who wrote in this morning, is all in with TPM Reader JB’s “Punch Them in the Nose” …
Continue reading “You All Agree, It Seems”In response to the letter from JB, re: “Punch Them In the Nose”: this is exactly right, it’s beyond right, and Democrats and liberals in positions of power and influence ignore these words at the peril of our democracy. Every point JB made, in particular tying Putin and Putin’s Russia to the Republican Party, is not just factually correct but existentially necessary. The rest of the world is watching us, especially Western Europeans who have extensive experience with fascism, authoritarianism, and autocracy, and they see precisely what’s going on in the U.S., and they are watching to see whether or not Democrats and Americans rise to the occasion. We have a Chamberlain wing of the Democratic Party, mostly consultants and so-called “moderates,” that has a risk averse chokehold on Democratic political culture and praxis that permeates the entire political structure, but it goes beyond that.
Former “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace is finally opening up about his bombshell decision last year to leave Fox for CNN after 18 years at the right-wing outlet.
Continue reading “After Two Decades, Wallace Finally Got Fed Up With Fox. He Admits He Might Be A ‘Slow Learner’”
