Donald Trump has weighed in on the Kristi Noem dog-shooting drama, offering the South Dakota governor, who was long considered on the short list to be Trump’s running mate until the past few weeks, plenty of bizarre cover for revealing she killed a dog and may have lied about a meeting with Kim Jong Un.
Continue reading “Trump Defends Noem, Suggests She Maybe Didn’t Read Her Book ‘Carefully.’ She Did.”Cohen Returns To Stand For Third Day, Facing Cross-Ex From Trump Lawyers
Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, is on the stand again Thursday in former president’s New York criminal trial.
Follow his testimony with us below.
A Quick Survey of Numbers, Vibes and the Inner Lives of Campaigns
In yesterday’s podcast Kate and I discussed that NYT-Siena poll (way overplayed and exaggerated but still not great for Biden) and the debate story which was literally continuing to break and change while we recorded the pod. The two stories intersect in some interesting ways.
The Times said: “The early-debate gambit from Mr. Biden amounted to a public acknowledgment that he is trailing in his re-election bid, and a bet that an accelerated debate timeline will force voters to tune back into politics and confront the possibility of Mr. Trump returning to power.”
A public acknowledgement!
In recent days I’ve been in a running conversation with several Times staffers about Times coverage, some private, some on social media, trying to both keep it real and keep it calm. When I saw this line it struck me as part of that subtext of so much Times coverage, at least going back months and in many ways much longer, of “Joe, stop playing games and admit you’re behind. Admit you’re behind, Joe!”
Continue reading “A Quick Survey of Numbers, Vibes and the Inner Lives of Campaigns”Listen To This: For Whom The Bell Polls
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh analyze the presidential polling landscape plus some breaking news about the debates.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Warren’s Consumer Protection Agency Saved In New SCOTUS Decision—Authored By Thomas
The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a massive win for an agency constantly under fire from conservative corporate interest.
Continue reading “Warren’s Consumer Protection Agency Saved In New SCOTUS Decision—Authored By Thomas “Detroit Rises From Rock Bottom With Its First Population Increase Since the 1950s
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
What A Journey!
Detroit’s population has increased for the first time since the 1950s.
Its decades-long decline has long been emblematic of America’s industrial decline, the hollowing out of cities that followed the loss of factories, and the urban wasteland of poverty, crime, drugs and social decay left behind. It was always a bit more complicated than that, but damn Detroit had it rough.
The contrast between its heyday and its nadir were so stark. From gleaming mid-century capital of the automotive industry that drew immigrants from around the world and was a major destination of the Great Migration to a husk of a city with abandoned landmarks, a local economy in free-fall, and its national reputation in disrepair.
Detroit benefitted from an unbelievable population explosion in the first half of the 20th century. It didn’t crack the top 10 until 1910, but by 1920 it had doubled its population and was the fourth largest city in America. By 1930, it became the fourth U.S. city to top 1 million people, and it peaked in the 1950s with a population of nearly 2 million. It has the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. city to surpass 1 million people then fall back below that number.
The latest figures show a slight uptick of 1,852 people from 2022 to 2023. Not a huge swing, but deeply symbolic given its painful historical arc.
The Menace Of Stroads
While we’re on the topic of urban development, the WSJ had a good piece on “stroads” yesterday which reminded me of this really good explanation of how the stroad is the centerpiece of America’s misbegotten post-war development patterns, largely built around the automobile (sorry, Detroit, I giveth, then I taketh away):
Biden’s Blue Wall
Let’s me streeeetch and bring all of this back to politics. The Blue Wall of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin remains President Biden’s simplest path to 270 electoral votes, and he’s spending a lot of time there. The WSJ looks at the numbers.
Biden-Trump Debates Are On
Things moved very quickly Wednesday morning, with President Biden ditching the traditional Commission on Presidential Debates and throwing down a gauntlet to Donald Trump to debate twice and on the early side. What looked initially like the beginning of a negotiation over the debates turned out to be the culmination of negotiations that had already been under way. By midday, the debate schedule was more or less locked in place (and the debate commission was entirely sidelined):
- June 27: hosted by CNN in Atlanta and moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash
- Sept. 10: hosted by ABC News
In related news, former Biden White House chief of staff Ron Klain will take leave from his Airbnb job to help Biden with debate prep.
A Counterintuitive Supreme Court Decision
The Supreme Court cleared the way for Louisiana to use a new congressional district map with two majority-Black districts – a win of sorts for voting rights – but the dissenters were the liberal justices who feared that how the majority arrived at the decision will be used to undermine voting rights in future cases.
What A Colossal Waste
When the final tally is complete, Rep. David Trone (D-MD) may end up having spent more on his losing primary campaign than any Senate candidate has spent on their entire campaigns ever.
Michael Cohen Is Back On The Witness Stand
TPM’s Josh Kovensky is liveblogging the second day of the cross-examination of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial.
Menendez Trial: Opening Statements
Prosecutors gave their opening statements yesterday in the public corruption trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). Defense counsel are expected to give their opening statements today.
Just In …
President Biden is asserting executive privilege over the audio of his two-day interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents investigation that ultimately yielded no criminal charges. The move comes as House Republicans try to keep the issue in the news during an election year by pushing toward holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to cough up the audio of the interview. Biden invoked the privilege at Garland’s request, the White House said.
Gaetz Under The Gun
As part of its investigation of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), the House Ethics Committee earlier this week subpoenaed the Justice Department for records related to its investigation of Gaetz in a related sex trafficking case, Politico is reporting. The DOJ investigation ended without charging Gaetz.
Clarence Thomas And That RV Loan
Thomas is still refusing to reveal whether he repaid the principal on the $267,000 loan that he received from Anthony Welters, a wealthy health care executive and personal friend, to purchase his RV in 1999, according to a letter that senators Ron Wyden and Sheldon Whitehouse have sent to an attorney for Thomas.
Venezuela Loses Its Last Glacier
The loss of La Corona glacier was long expected but it marks a point of no return for the glaciers of the tropical northern Andes, which are expected to all be gone by 2050.
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Red States Seek To Make Anti-Abortion Regimes Absolute By Boxing Out Democratic Prosecutors
Republican-controlled states are sealing the cracks in their anti-abortion regimes through legislation that removes the power of, or seeks to punish, Democratic prosecutors who decline to charge people for abortion-related crimes.
Continue reading “Red States Seek To Make Anti-Abortion Regimes Absolute By Boxing Out Democratic Prosecutors”A New, Big Crack in Netanyahu’s Governing Coalition
I wanted to update you on an important development in Israel and the Israel-Hamas war. There have been a few of these blow-ups in the far-right Netanyahu coalition. But they’ve all gotten hashed out and patched up eventually because, as we’ve discussed, the government’s very unpopularity is, paradoxically, its greatest adhesive in holding on to power. Since October, coalition members have known they’d lose power in a new election. So no one has really been willing to trigger new elections — the recent polls have shown some limited recovery of Netanyahu’s fortunes.
In any case, here’s the latest thing.
Continue reading “A New, Big Crack in Netanyahu’s Governing Coalition”Trump Tries To Appear Aggressive On Debates, Too
Mere hours after President Joe Biden announced his demands, designed to switch up the dated, late-in-the-fall debate schedule run by the presidential commission on debates, Donald Trump leapt to it and agreed to Biden’s proposal — to set debates before early voting starts, in June and September.
Continue reading “Trump Tries To Appear Aggressive On Debates, Too”RNC Brings Trump’s Non-Citizen Voting Fixation To Arizona Courts
The Republican National Committee is bringing Donald Trump’s Non-Citizen voting myth—a baseless narrative and an increasingly rabid area of fixation for Republicans headed into 2024—to the Arizona courts.
Last week, the RNC and Arizona Republican legislators filed a notice of appeal to a case challenging two voter suppression laws. The appeal however, is far more about messaging than substance. It’s merely a way to keep the lie — that non-citizens vote en masse in federal elections — alive and well ahead of 2024.
“The Republican Party seems to believe that it’s in their interest to keep controversies about immigration in the news, manufactured or real,” Justin Levitt, a professor of law at Loyola Law School, told TPM. “There’s a real nativist push to characterize immigrants as scary. And the appeal here seems to be very much in that flavor.”
The case centers around two 2022 Arizona proof of citizenship laws, which voting rights activists argued in a 2022 complaint, severely burdens the right to vote and has the potential to disenfranchise Arizona voters by, in part, requiring voters who register to vote using federal forms to provide proof of citizenship documentation or residency documentation to vote in a presidential election or vote by mail. A federal judge, however, blocked a portion of the provision in September 2023.
The 2022 legal challenge to H.B. 2492 was consolidated with another challenge to another state voting law, H.B. 2243, which among other things, required county recorders to cancel voter registrations when they have “reason to believe” a voter is not a citizen. It’s worth noting that there have been eight different groups of plaintiffs, primarily focused on the threats they present to voting rights, that filed complaints against these two laws collectively, that were then consolidated.
In response to the RNC’s appeal, a spokesperson for Mi Familia Vota, one of the groups that challenged the voter laws, said in a statement via email to TPM: “It should be no surprise to anyone paying attention that the Republican National Committee would appeal the case challenging Arizona’s proof of citizenship law. MAGA Republicans are anti-democracy and have made a concerted effort to make it as hard as possible for Latinos to vote not just in Arizona but across the country.”
In September 2022, as reported by Democracy Docket, a federal district court, while keeping certain provisions in place, temporarily blocked the implementation of the voter registration cancellation law. And then in 2023, the court struck down proof of citizenship provisions in H.B. 2492, including a provision that required registrants to list their birthplaces, which, as Mark Kokanovich, former federal prosecutor and attorney at Ballard Spahr noted to TPM, is not germane to whether or not a voter is a citizen as people can be naturalized citizens and be born outside the U.S.
“The effort to scare people who aren’t born in this country away from voting, even though they’re citizens and allowed to vote, is, I think, one of the concerns of the plaintiffs in the case,” he said.
Brent Ferguson, senior legal counsel at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, similarly said that the RNC making a big show of their appeal in Arizona can be understood as a way to perpetuate this false myth and intimidate potential legal voters.
“Cases like this certainly are one attempt to push that [non-citizens voting] narrative, even when the trial court has pretty clearly found that most of the laws here are meritless and unneeded,” Brent Ferguson, senior legal counsel at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, noted.
These types of laws focused on proof of citizenship, which Arizona Republicans have attempted to pass since 2004, are being pushed forward against the backdrop of no evidence to suggest that non-citizens vote in elections in Arizona or otherwise.
“In Arizona and elsewhere, there is a big problem with election misinformation and disinformation intimidation at drop boxes and things like that,” he added. “And this just shows that 2492 and 2243 are focusing on an essentially non-existent problem.”