David Kurtz
I teased it yesterday, and now it’s live. Josh Kovensky peels back the layers of “ItalyGate” (not familiar? Josh will explain). Along the way, he finds a surprising cameo by a longtime TPM fixture, threads into Iceland and Somalia (no, really), and a cast of characters that will leave you scratching your head. It’s rollicking good fun, but remember this is the crap Trump’s White House chief of staff was pushing the Justice Department to look into. It’s a classic TPM story.
We have a Josh Kovensky must-read coming Saturday. You won’t want to miss it, even on a holiday weekend. Trust me: it’s a lot of fun.
Four months after the worst insurrection since the Civil War, the House GOP ousted one of its leaders for not condoning the vast Trump-led conspiracy to overturn the election that culminated with the insurrection. That Liz Cheney is a firebrand conservative and the scion of one of conservatism’s leading families for the last half century only sharpens the point. American democracy may be past the event horizon and we still not know it.
We have a beehive of activity on the Hill today, a combination of the Liz Cheney ousting and several committee hearings, all of which one way or the other flows directly from the Jan. 6 insurrection.
We, as in the nation, are still grappling (poorly) with the aftermath of what happened then. We, as in TPM, decided it was worth covering today as one big Jan. 6 story with distinct but highly related moving parts. And we’re doing it right here. I hope this gives you more context and grounding in where we are four months after the attack on the Capitol than a bunch of disparate stories about separate hearings would. Feedback welcome, as always. Check it out.
A historic proposal by any standard. Join us here to watch the culmination of the day’s rollout.
Excited to announce that we’re hiring for a newly created position: Editor for Content Strategy and Audience Development. This editor will help nourish and grow the TPM community. I think you’re going to like what this new role will enable us to do. We want a fantastic new teammate, so help us out. Please spread the word to your sharpest, most talented friends and colleagues – and put in a good word for us. Thanks.
From the closing argument of impeachment manager Madeleine Dean (D-PA):
For those who say we need to get past this, we need to come together, we need to unify, if we don’t set this right and call it what it was, the highest of constitutional crimes by the president of the United States, the past will not be past. The past will become our future.
Correction: I initially misidentified Dean.