Quite a lot of ink has been spilled in recent weeks over the supposed problem — perhaps a very big problem — that the years-old case of the Stormy Daniels’ payoff might be the first — and perhaps the only — prosecution of Donald Trump. It weakens, so the argument goes, the whole global case against Trump. It’s old, technical, small stuff, and “why now?” when Trump needs to be held accountable for the gravest sorts of crimes against the country itself. Trump will clearly try to take the iffy nature of a Daniels’ payoff prosecution, use it to make the case that charges against him are all weak and manufactured and then try to use that broad brush to color whatever other more serious charges come later.

Some of these points I agree or agreed with; some not. So let me address different parts of this question.

If you think back over the last three years, we’ve had a series of epic socio-cultural smackdowns over COVID: Lockdowns, masks, vaccines, schools. Each of these have tended to array broadly similar groups against each other, though with some key variations. But whatever you made of those fights, the public debate had really immense and immediate real world consequences. That is what is so odd and mystifying about the intensity of Lab Leak Discourse. It doesn’t actually matter. Or rather there are basically no real-world implications to either side being “right” or “winning.” I was talking to someone today who said how incredibly important it was. But after thinking about it for a bit, I thought, why? Now it’s much better for people to think up is up rather than up is down. And there are probably important secondary effects of getting this wrong, whichever way is “wrong.” But in any direct sense it’s not clear it has any real impact on anything.

I just wanted to flag for you that we’ve got our annual sign up drive coming up in a couple weeks. It’s a very important one. So if you’ve been a member and lapsed or if you’re a TPM Reader who’s never taken the plunge please consider becoming a member during this drive. Before we kick it off I’ll be sharing a few more thoughts with you about our membership business model, why we do these drives and what we’re doing more broadly today as an organization.

At present, my main contribution to Lab Leak Discourse is making fun of it. I say this operating on the distinction provided to us by TPM Reader JS a couple weeks ago, noting that Lab Leak Discourse is now entirely autonomous from the actual ongoing research into the origins of COVID-19. Indeed, I noticed yesterday that it has now taken a new turn focusing on public opinion surveys showing that a majority of Americans believe COVID began with a laboratory accident at the virology lab in Wuhan, China. The “wisdom of crowds,” one Lab Leak advocate told me, should be given its own weight along with the judgments of those with domain expertise in virology, genomics and other fields.

As a publisher, I love highly kinetic pieces like Hunter Walker’s new article on the Axios journalist, Ben Montgomery, who Axios canned after he got crosswise with Ron DeSantis’s carnivorous Florida media machine. I’ll assume you’ve read the story. So I won’t rehash the details. (If you haven’t, just read it.) But I want to expand a bit on why it’s such an important story. It captures in a single incident key dynamics of our present treacherous political moment and the role of the political press within in it.

According to stories bursting across the right-wing mediasphere today, a key reason for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was its focus on spreading “woke culture” rather than efficiently managing risk and profits. Ground zero for this is the allegation that SVB had donated over $73 million to the “BLM Movement & Related Causes.” That struck me as quite a lot of money for a single company, even a large and profitable one, to give to any cause or even all causes. So I tried to find out where this factoid came from and rapidly found my way to a Trumpist think tank. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s a complete lie. I want to show you the receipts, but first some key details.

The claims come from a database posted earlier this week by the Center for the American Way of Life, a project of the Claremont Institute. As Claremont put it in a Newsweek article introducing the database, “Americans deserve to know who funded the BLM riots.”

A bubbling conventional wisdom has been taking shape in the recent weeks that might best be stated as a question: what happened to all the Republican investigations? From one perspective it’s early: the new Congress has only been seated for a bit over two months. There have been hearings. There was one just last week into the so-called “Twitter Files.” But they’ve been low energy and mostly a bust. Outside of the right-wing media bubble they’ve been met more with derision than headlines and follow ups. A March 6 Axios headline read: “Jim Jordan scrambles amid claims ‘weaponization’ probe is a dud.” But the reaction inside the bubble hasn’t been any different. As far back as a month ago, Fox News’ host Jesse Watters angrily denounced the underwhelming show.

Some point to Jim Jordan not having the organizational abilities or chops to run impactful hearings. Others point to Jordan getting crosswise with the other top GOP investigator, Jim Comer. The most obvious explanation is that they’re just lame and underwhelming because they don’t have the goods. But even that doesn’t work as an explanation because the same could be said about the previous times we did this under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Something’s different.

TPM Reader EG notes a post from our friend Barry Ritholtz in which he notes ten questions or current unknowns about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. You can find them here. As Barry points out, if past financial crises are any guide, we currently — that is to say, in real time — have only a very limited understanding of just what happened here and why. Presumably decision-makers at the Fed and FDIC had substantially more information that was the basis of the decisions they made on Sunday. But their understanding is almost certainly limited too. Check his post out. Often a knowledgable set of questions is far more illuminating than opinion and assertion in advance of any real understanding and context.

A few general observations.

Things moved very fast early Sunday evening. As you likely now know, the troika of the Fed, the FDIC and the Treasury axed a second bank — Signature Bank of New York — and decided to guarantee all deposits at Signature and Silicon Valley Bank because of “systemic risk” to the whole banking system. As noted yesterday, the issue at least with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) seemed to a significant degree to be one of liquidity. It appears to have assets to cover the great majority of its deposits. So the costs to the FDIC should be limited, and perhaps there’s no cost at all. I’m less clear on the exact situation at Signature Bank, which had more exposure to the imploding crypto sector. But I assume it’s broadly similar.

To me the most interesting and noteworthy issue to emerge over the last 48 hours is the debate or really the unclarity about what counts as a “bailout.” The dictionary definition is simple enough. There is no specific or technical meaning. It just means action to relieve someone or some entity in financial distress. But what became clear this weekend is that quite a few people have decided post-Global Financial Crisis that a bailout is relief for shareholders. Making depositors whole is not. That’s just making depositors whole. As long as the bank’s owners get wiped out or take a severe hit, it’s not a bailout.

But there’s little basis for that distinction.

Reading through the often frenzied commentary about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), it’s important to note how much that chatter conflates or confuses what are distinct if complex issues. The most high octane issue is watching the dyed-in-the-wool libertarians and anti-regulation voices who run Silicon Valley suddenly demanding a bailout. Specifically, many are demanding that the FDIC backstop all the bank’s deposits rather than simply those up to $250,000 because of the number of startups which could quickly go under without money to make payroll and cover other ongoing costs of doing business. (SVB’s deposits, roughly 95% of which are uninsured, are heavily concentrated in the tech start-up ecosystem.) It’s a hypocrisy that merits all sorts of guffaws and mockery. But hypocrisy isn’t new or terribly surprising.