Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) took to the airwaves yesterday in defense of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), arguing that it’s up to Feinstein to decide if and when she leaves office before the end of her term. Gillibrand says that many other senators have had serious illnesses that have kept them away from the Senate. “They all deserve a chance to get better and come back to work. Dianne will get better. She will come back to work.”

This is not a strong or good argument.

It’s certainly true that senators, most of whom are over 65, have had health problems that take them away from the Senate. They’re not pressured to leave office in the way Feinstein is being pressured.

But Feinstein’s case is very different.

A little tea leaf reading on the Dominion Fox trial. The trial, which was supposed to begin today, was delayed one day to allow the parties one last chance to reach a settlement. If you look at the details this appears to be at the judge’s instigation. That is not unusual. Judges would almost always like to see the parties resolve their disagreements prior to trial; and one day left before trial tends to focus people’s minds. In addition to a potentially mammoth judgment the trial itself is likely to be highly damaging to Fox. But the one day delay and final negotiations do not necessarily mean that either party has become more inclined to reach a deal.

There’s another point that comes up in this Post piece. Dominion appears to have dropped $600 million of its $1.6 billion claim against Fox. That $600 million was for lost future profits, whereas the remaining $1 billion was for lost “enterprise value.” The revelation is a bit murky because it came in a Sunday filing from Fox, which references an email from Dominion. But a statement Dominion gave to the Post appears to confirm that that part of the claim was withdrawn.

One of the small community of moneymen who fund the Republican Party is pulling his support from Ron DeSantis. Thomas Peterffy, the wealthiest man in Florida until Ken Griffin relocated there, tells The Financial Times that “because of [DeSantis’s] stance on abortion and book banning … myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.”

Though numerous press reports and a letter to employees say Griffin moved to Florida for tax purposes and the better corporate environment, Griffin told Fortune magazine, in an interview sent to TPM in response to this article, that taxes were not the reason he and his company moved to Florida.

From the Journal …

The people in the online spaces where Airman First Class Jack Teixeira spent his time and allegedly leaked highly classified documents had many things in common. In obscure game forums and private online chat rooms, his friends posted slurs against minority communities, Ukrainians and pretty much everyone else. 

Everyone, that is, except Russians.

Members of that small community, hosted on the social-media app Discord, admired President Vladimir Putin’s regime and its war on Ukraine. 

Trump Youth.

We are currently at exactly 400 408 420 429 440 sign ups in our annual TPM membership drive. 100 92 80 71 60 to go. We think we’re going to make it.

Here’s a new article from the Post on Jack Teixeira which contains a series of assumptions I can only call disturbing. The headline reads, “He’s from a patriotic family — and allegedly leaked U.S. secrets.” In the vein of that headline, the article presents Teixeira as a bundle of contradictions. He didn’t want to hurt America. He was a patriotic guy from a patriotic, military family, etc.

Late yesterday evening, The Washington Post published the first detailed look at just how the currently unfolding and massive leak of classified U.S. intelligence happened. It’s an almost literally incredible story and some of it does strain credulity. The gist of the story is that an early-to-mid 20s member of the U.S. military with wide-ranging access to highly classified intelligence set up a Discord chat group made up of pandemic-bored gamers in which he operated as something between a guru and a cult leader. The group was a few dozen men, many of them teens and some from abroad. The Post describes him as a “young, charismatic gun enthusiast.”

He sketched out a quasi-paranoid anti-statist worldview, and mixed garden variety far-right and racist memes with emotional support and guidance. Gun worship was also central. He claimed to be able to foretell events and in some cases appeared able to do so. At the center of his enterprise was sharing classified material, which, over the last month, started spreading from the original Discord server and shaking up international relations around the world. The classified documents were the validator of his inside status, his role at the center of the overbearing American state. In a sense he was running his own private Q cult, with a small group of bored-depressed gamer teens. Only in this case, “OG,” as he was called in this tiny community, really did have access to some of the U.S. government’s most closely guarded secrets.

If this sounds unreal, you’ve got it about right. One surreal passage in the Post story describes getting the permission of the parents of one of its sources since the source is still a minor and apparently came into “OG’s” orbit as a young teen.

There’s an ugly political spectacle playing out in press reports and on social media tonight about Sen. Dianne Feinstein who has appeared frail and sometimes confused in recent public appearances and has been absent from the Senate since February suffering from shingles. Feinstein agreed under pressure last year to announce that she would retire at the end of her present term in January 2025. Now there is another round of media pressing her to resign sooner. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) became the first high-ranking Democrat today to call for Feinstein to step down.

This is an undignified and unkind spectacle that shouldn’t be playing out on Twitter or in press stories. Feinstein should simply step down. There is no issue she espouses that wouldn’t be advocated for by an appointed successor in 2023–24 and an elected one in 2025. The idea that it is acceptable to be absent from the Senate for months at a time with no clear prospect of return is absurd.

I said on Twitter this afternoon that rather than allowing the current spectacle to play out publicly, it is incumbent on Gov. Newsom and Sen. Schumer to go to Sen. Feinstein and/or her family and/or her staff and say she needs to step down. A number of people responded that those conversations have probably already taken place but to no avail.

Is that true? Maybe. Probably. But clearly not directly enough or clearly enough.

Our annual membership drive is off to a solid start. And now we’re in sight of meeting our goal. More is great. But 500 new members is the minimum we truly need. We’ve now signed up 363 new subscribers. So we need just 137 more. No one likes subscription pitches. I’d rather be writing new stuff. But these brass tacks numbers are what allow this organization to operate, keep us flourishing and focused. If you’ve not yet become a member please take a moment right now to join us. I know myself that there are plenty of things I plan in some vague sense to do but just don’t get around to. So take this moment, literally right now, and take the plunge. Click right here. Thank you.

Democrats are rightly hitting Republicans for voting to “defund” the police in the form of federal law enforcement, and scheduling test votes like the one Majority Leader Chuck Schumer just announced. (This follows Trump’s demand that Republicans vote to cut off funding for the DOJ and FBI to force the end of the various prosecutions that await him.) This comes after Democrats have voted several times since the beginning of the pandemic to increase funding for law enforcement and Republicans have voted no. But there’s a broader and more sinister process unfolding that needs to be at the center of national conversation.