We appear to be moving toward a critical moment for rule of law in the United States, where it will finally be vindicated or a mockery. Unsurprisingly, former President Trump instructed his aides to defy the Jan 6th committee’s subpoenas. The legal instructions were reported yesterday by Politico and the Post. They involve mostly hand-waving with turns at executive privilege, lawyer client privilege and various others. None of these aides are lawyers and they are not the President’s lawyers. Former Presidents have no executive privilege. Or to put it more precisely, executive privilege inheres in the office of the presidency, not individuals. The President is Joe Biden. Not Donald Trump. It’s up to him to make such an argument. Trump can ask.

In recent months I’ve become paradoxically addicted to scanning the top insider sheets as they come out through the day – Politico, Punchbowl, Axios – because they’re like a direct injection of the DC establishment, insider zeitgeist. It’s not that you couldn’t find that before. I started TPM in many ways to critique that mindset and worldview. But it’s sort of like the way competition has made illicit drugs more concentrated and potent over the years. These sheets give it to you in a more concentrated form. They are each in competition with each other to refine and recut the giddiness, knowing expressions, punch phrases and conventional wisdom production into shorter and shorter bursts. In any case, not great for the country or journalism: but good for me inasmuch as I can observe it in one place so easily.

This morning I opened Punchbowl. And the story is: THE SPEECH. What’s the speech? Yesterday evening as Republicans were scrambling to overcome their own filibuster Chuck Schumer gave some short remarks in which he lambasted Republicans for their recklessness and fecklessness. They played chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States and thank God they lost. And now they were scrambling to put the genie of their own recklessness back in the bottle. So you suck, you lost and don’t suck next time.

The Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen — who I wrote about earlier this week — is expected to meet with the Jan. 6 select committee investigating the insurrection, and might have already shared testimony with the committee.