Kate is joined by HuffPost reporter Matt Shuham to talk about how the war in Gaza is refracting domestically, from college protests to presidential politics.
Belaboring The Point is now on YouTube! Check out the latest video episode of the podcast here.
Continue reading “Listen To This: The View From Campus”As most fans probably know, May 4th is Star Wars Day. The day is celebrated with a playful take on the iconic line “May the force be with you.” The first known use of the pun “May the 4th be with you” came a year after the release of Star Wars in 1978 and has been used by fans ever since. Although Lucasfilm does not recognize the holiday, it has become an annual celebration of all things Star Wars.
Longtime Trump communications director Hope Hicks broke down sobbing on the witness stand on Friday.
Continue reading “Hope Hicks Breaks Down On Stand After Giving Damaging Testimony Against Trump”I assume you’re familiar with Kristi Noem/Cricket the executed dog discourse. But I have to flag this new controversy from her memoir, No Going Back. Noem appears to have made up a meeting with North Korea paramount leader Kim Jong Un.
Says Noem: “I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. I’m sure he underestimated me.” The report casting doubt on that anecdote is from a local outlet, The Dakota Scout.
Continue reading “Scenes from the Kristi Noem Implosion”I’ve had a few responses to last night’s post about the identity of the maurauding pro-Israel demonstrators/thugs who attacked the Gaza encampment on Tuesday night. There are clearly a lot of rumors circulating about it. The most interesting article I’ve seen so far is one that came out yesterday afternoon from the Los Angeles Times. It doesn’t include identities but reports on the team of online sleuths trying to identify them. Think of it as broadly similar to the “Sedition Hunters” group which has identified probably hundreds of people involved in the January 6th insurrection. The article doesn’t include any identities though it does seem like the sleuths have already identified or contingently identified some people.
Continue reading “Online Sleuths”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
As we come to the end of a difficult week, it’s becoming obvious that daily news coverage isn’t sufficient to capture what a deeply strange period we’re living through.
The former president is on criminal trial for making hush-money payments to a porn star he says he didn’t have sex with, while trying to stave off the three other criminal prosecutions he faces. At the same time, he is promising more post-election criminality if he loses in 2024, which is the very thing two of the remaining prosecutions are seeking to convict him for having done in 2020.
Not content to merely replay his first term, he is promising a second presidency that will be authoritarian to its core. It begins with the premise that he must exact retribution against all who have wronged him, including prosecuting the current president whom he falsely claims is behind his own legal turmoil. From there, he swears he will target disfavored classes of people – immigrants, the press, anyone whose fealty to him he perceives to be insufficient – abusing the powers of his office to inflict pain and suffering to the delight of his supporters. He is also determined to harness the full powers of the federal government in pursuit of personal political and private ends, even and perhaps especially if that means breaking government in the process.
In the meantime, the coverage of the current president is the same tired analysis, worn thin by overuse, and utterly oblivious to the looming authoritarian threat. Complexities like post-pandemic economic policy are reduced to a thin gruel of “inflation is bad for incumbents.” The nightmarishly difficult Israel-Palestine conflict is more easily covered as an American political story about law and order, and so campus protests are forced to stand in as a poor proxy for the actual conflict in the Middle East.
In the face of what almost certainly is a significant historical moment that is full of uncertainty and unpredictability, we grasp for ways to make sense of it all but what we grab ahold of for comfort and security is oversimplification, reductiveness, and cliches. Rather than rising to the moment, we just try to cover our eyes and soothe our souls so we can endure it. It’s a temptation that’s hard to resist.
It’s in moments like these that the overconfident diagnoses and simplistic solutions of someone like Donald Trump hold their greatest allure. He offers certainty amidst the chaos, even if he has no idea what he’s talking about and doesn’t have the skill or capability to do anything about it. He’s a chaos monster: the more of it he creates, the greater the need for the snake oil palliatives he offers. He’ll make you sick to sell you his bogus curatives.
This is all happening against the backdrop of the even bigger existential threat than Donald Trump: climate change. The environmental catastrophe already underway adds layers of uncertainty that we may have never encountered before as a species. It dwarfs our political chaos. It feeds the anxiousness that makes us seek solid ground, some permanence, a place above whatever the new high water mark may turn out to be. For many people, it’s easier to find immediate security in a Trump (even if that means drowning later) than enduring the uncertainty, trying to make sense of it all, and doing the hard work of piecing together solutions.
So don’t get too caught up in the day-to-day news. There lies madness. Embrace the uncertainty, live with the dis-ease that comes with not knowing, and forswear the cheap and easy fixes offered by tawdry figures who prey on the victims of the chaos they create.
TPM’s Josh Kovensky is back this morning in the courthouse, where former Trump White House aide Hope Hicks is expected to testify in the hush money trial.
In case you missed them, Josh’s two dispatches from the trial yesterday:
Donald Trump is still out there promising to “fight” to overturn the 2024 election if he deems it fraudulent, which is to say: if he loses.
Ari Berman: How Michigan Ended Minority Rule
In the upcoming May 14 GOP primary in West Virginia, a convicted Jan. 6 rioter is trying to knock off incumbent Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV).
Bankruptcy proceedings are offering a new – yet quite incomplete by his own design – glimpse into Rudy Giuliani’s personal finances.
Ex-FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, charged by Special Counsel David Weiss with fabricating lies about the Bidens, must remain in jail pending trial, a federal appeals court ruled this week.
WaPo: Texas man files legal action to probe ex-partner’s out-of-state abortion
What remains of the United Methodist Church has voted to end its anti-LGBT policies, including its ban on gay clergy and its penalties against clergy who conduct same-sex marriages.
It was the 11th consecutive month of record-setting global temperatures …
Nearly 2,200 people have been arrested nationwide this week in the crackdown on campus protests over Israel-Gaza
It was a tough week. We end it with Pokey LaFarge’s ode to Michael Brown:
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
This is a brief follow up on my post earlier that touched on the violence on Tuesday night at UCLA. As I noted, and has been widely reported, on Tuesday night a small contingent pro-Israel counter-protesters attacked the Gaza encampment on campus. This group appears to have been willfully violent and focused on tearing down the barricades of the encampment, throwing various projectiles at pro-Gaza demonstrators, throwing anywhere from one to four firecrackers into the encampment and using something like pepper spray or other similarly noxious spray on people in the encampment. In short, a group of vigilantes or thugs who went in to break up the encampment and terrorize the protestors.
But as far as I can tell there’s no clear information on who these people were. And I’ve seen no evidence that any of them were or have been arrested.
Continue reading “Details on Identities of the Violent Pro-Israel Protesters at UCLA?”Fresh off an interview with Time magazine published this week, during which he would not rule out the possibility of violence if he doesn’t win in November — “If we don’t win, you know, it depends. … It always depends on the fairness of the election” — Donald Trump is giving himself wiggle room to cry “rigged” in a key swing state this fall.
Continue reading “Trump Sets Himself Up For Election Denialism 2.0 In Wisconsin This Fall”NEW YORK — The jury in Donald Trump’s criminal trial on Thursday were introduced to a coterie of 2010-era celebrities that included Tila Tequila, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and Hulk Hogan. It came as attorneys for Trump sought to discredit the latest witness for the prosecution.
Continue reading “Trump Defense Details Sleaze In Life Of An Attorney to the Porn Stars”I wanted to do an update to my post on Monday about the situation in Israel-Palestine as well as on campuses on the United States.
A few of you asked, what was the response to the post? It was, I think, overwhelmingly positive. I did have one longtime reader say he was quitting the site and ending his subscription over it. If I interpreted his message and what I’ve known about his viewpoints generally, he thought I was being too critical of Israel. But people are entitled to their opinions and viewpoints and feelings. And I say that not as a throwaway line but as a statement of fact and a recognition of the right way to live in the world. But the overwhelming and almost universal response was positive.
Continue reading “More Thoughts on the Campuses”