As you’ve likely seen, things kind of went off the rails on Capitol Hill. Speaker Mike Johnson had assembled one of those big spending packages to avoid a government shutdown. Then Elon Musk went off on the bill and started a stampede for the exits among House Republicans. Then Trump turned against it too. Then JD Vance. By the end of the day, it was clear not only that the bill was dead, there was a real question about whether Johnson’s speakership will survive the vote for speaker coming up on January 3rd.

But none of those points are the critical ones. This is about Elon Musk.

I got the opportunity to see the new Dylan movie at an advance screening a couple nights ago. And I wanted to share a few thoughts about it. I don’t know how to write a movie review. And I don’t know enough about movies to write one anyway. These are just some of my reactions.

First, for a tl;dr: I liked it. I recommend it. Especially if you’re at all a fan of Bob Dylan.

I’m a difficult audience for this kind of film. I know every detail and anecdote from the history the movie chronicles — each meeting, plot point, verbal exchange, performance. That’s not bragging. It’s an admission. I’m way too deep into this stuff. What that means is that it’s really hard for a biopic to recreate or dramatize these events in a way that does not seem, at least for me, sentimental, cliched, overdone. Even if you don’t know all the details as an obsessive, this material has been discussed and mythologized endlessly. How can it possibly be fresh? Biopics such as these often have a stations-of-the-cross air to them, with the hero floating from one iconic moment to the next. So there’s like a Sword of Damocles of cliché and treacleiness hanging over a project like this.

But for me, Like a Complete Unknown managed to avoid this pitfall, which surprised me. The sword doesn’t come down.

Folks, we’re really excited about this. We’re hosting the first live, in-person version of The Josh Marshall Podcast Featuring Kate Riga on January 15th in Washington, DC. Tickets just went on sale. They’re $75 per person and $50 for members. If you’re a member you’ll already have gotten an email with a link to get the membership pricing. We’ll do a live version of the podcast with the audience, followed by a Q&A and then a bar with drinks for chatting and discussion afterwards. We are really looking forward to it and we really hope you can join us.

Cash bar and every ticket comes with a coupon for your first drink. Tickets are free for TPM Inside members (again, you’ll have gotten an email). If you’re a member and for some reason haven’t received an email just drop us a line at memberships at talkingpointsmemo dot com.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory and promised revenge tour, a number of individuals have proposed the creation of an organization or fund which would take on the job of defending the various lawsuits, prosecutions and generalized legal harassment Trump will bring to the table in the next four years. It’s a very good idea. It’s a necessary one. Over the last six weeks I’ve had a number of people reach out to me and ask who is doing this. Where should they send money to fund this effort? This includes people who are in the small-donor category and also very wealthy people who could give in larger sums. So a few days ago I started reaching out to some people in the legal world and anti-Trump world to find out what’s going on, whether any efforts are afoot and who is doing what.

What I found out is that there are at least a couple groups working toward doing something like this. But the efforts seem embryonic. Or at least I wasn’t able to find out too much. And to be clear, I wasn’t reaching out as a journalist per se. I was explicitly clear about this. I was doing so as a concerned citizen, not to report anything as a news story but as someone who wants such an entity to come into existence. The overnight news that Trump is now suing Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register over her final election poll for “election interference” makes me think that these efforts aren’t coming together soon enough or can’t come together soon enough. (If you’re not familiar with the details, Selzer is a pollster of almost legendary status and in what turned out to be her final public poll, dramatically missed not only the result of the election but the whole direction of it.) So what I’m going to write here is simply my take on why such an effort is important and what shape it should take.

Let’s start with the practicalities.