I was thinking last night about the denouement of the Broadview Six case, a collapse which I’m told by some legal observers stands a non-trivial chance of seeing some of the prosecutors disbarred. And I contrasted it with the series of TPM Reader emails about the “fancy lawyers.” A number of these emails start out with some version of, I’m not part of the legal elite, I’m just working here in the trenches as a lawyer in [this or that mid-sized city in the United States]. Or maybe, my background is in elite law but I’m down here in the trenches, etc.
Following up on the points outlined in the immediately previous post, this evening House leadership abruptly canceled a war powers vote because they realized it might pass.
All power is unitary. Every victory or defeat in one area strengthens or weakens you everywhere else.
It is important to see a few different developments coming together today up on Capitol Hill. As you likely saw there was a mini-revolt today among Senate Republicans over Trump’s slush fund and, to a secondary degree, over the ballroom. Because they wouldn’t agree to back the slush fund, they just left and went on recess. Not exactly a huge profile in courage. But it’s also at least delayed Trump’s new ICE funding bill. The ballroom, the slush fund, the ongoing retribution tour — these are all Trump’s big obsessions right now, as I noted this morning. But in something like a meta-ten-car pile-up, the different self-soothing efforts are bumping into each other. Trump just knee-capped Sen. Cassidy in Louisiana (he lost his primary) and Sen. Cornyn (endorsed primary challenger Ken Paxton). Two careers ended. Two senators who are really embittered. Trump also blindsided other Republican senators when he endorsed Paxton. They had no advance warning. Totally out of the blue. Party discipline is a thing. But you do it wisely. Trump’s made Cassidy, Tillis and perhaps now even Cornyn into chaos agents going into the midterms.
The point is, the retribution tour is colliding with the building spree and the Deserving Fascists Slush Fund. None of them have anything to do with helping the GOP in the midterms. The wheels are coming off.
Here’s a story you should pay close attention to. You may have heard of the “Broadview Six” (later reduced to “Four”). It was a case focused on prominent local Democrats protesting at a Chicago-area ICE facility. (One was congressional candidate and influencer Kat Abughazaleh, who lost her primary this spring.) It was a classic over-charging case: A brief chaotic moment around the vehicle of an ICE employee ratcheted up to be a federal felony conspiracy charge. The case has been moving toward trial for like eight months and it was scheduled to go to trial next week.
For the last month, however, questions about the underlying grand jury proceeding have been roiling the case. First that prompted the government to drop the felony conspiracy charge rather than show the judge the grand jury testimony. (It thus went from a felony trial to a federal trial on one misdemeanor charge.) The judge finally saw those transcripts Tuesday night. That led to a closed-door emergency hearing this morning. In rapid succession today, the remaining charges were dropped and Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros appeared in court personally to apologize to the judge and deny all knowledge of what had happened.
This has been implicit in various points I’ve made in recent Editors’ Blog posts. I want to make it more explicit. What’s occupying Donald Trump’s time right now? The big items are the Ballroom, the Deserving Fascists Slush Fund, the revenge tour against merely 95% loyal members of Congress. We could add Trump’s Iran War which is keeping gas prices sky high and creating other shortages. But that’s kind of baked in from a decision Trump made more than two months ago. It’s damaging him but it’s a tar pit he’s already stuck in. The things he’s most focused on, the obsessions are things that are either irrelevant to the midterm elections or are playing central roles driving down his public support. The plane is losing altitude fast but he’s in the cockpit grabbing the controls and trying to steepen the descent.
The most important thing to know about the DNC “autopsy” report on the 2024 election is, who cares? Most of the commentary on this document gives the impression that this is some meaningful disclosure of the inside dope, what really happened, etc. But it’s not. It just the take of the guys they chose to write a report. No more significant or revealing than the million other takes on the 2024 election we’ve all read.
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TPM’s Josh Kovensky and Joe Ragazzo are joined by TPM reporter Layla A. Jones to analyze the state of the economy and why it seems to be working for some people, but against most people.
Kate and Josh discuss the expulsion of anyone of character from the Republican Party, Trump’s new taxpayer-funded slush fund and Jared Polis’ baffling commutation of election denier Tina Peters’ sentence.
