Today Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth called on Chicago U.S. attorney Andrew Boutros to resign charging that his office is adrift in chaos and official misconduct.
On the one hand this is unsurprising. This is a major and growing scandal. It implicates a Republican president. They’re Democrats. And the office has been at the leading edge of policies (Midway Blitz, mass deportation generally) that are deeply unpopular — certainly in Chicago and to varying degrees across the state. So, as I note, to some agree it’s a predictable development.
But there are some additional threads I want to remind you of.
In case you forgot, Bill Pulte is the Federal Housing Finance Agency head who proved his loyalty to the president by combing through the mortgages of Trump’s enemies, such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fed Governor Lisa Cook, for things that the DOJ might be able to prosecute. It’s unclear what intelligence community credentials he has, though, given the way he used his power at FHFA and as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that question is probably missing the point.
Though the role is acting, acting heads can end up serving for quite a while. Pulte is replacing Tulsi Gabbard.
One feature of the current moment is that there are so many things going on, so much corruption and wrongdoing that it is hard to focus on any one thing. What would otherwise be historic scandals blow by almost unnoticed. Today I wanted to zero in on a couple storylines we should all be following.
One comes from the Broadview Six/Four case. I explained the outlines of the story here. It’s now being referenced in numerous federal cases to persuade judges to deny prosecutors the presumption of “regularity,” i.e. the foundational assumption that the government is following the rules and operating in good faith in its prosecutions. The end of the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case is getting similar treatment. But there’s clearly a deeper scandal brewing here, especially with grand juries. It’s not clear to me how much of this is coming from explicit instructions from the DOJ to violate the rules or simply a climate of permissive lawlessness in which prosecutors start breaking the rules because they see their superiors doing the same.
TPM Reader TB dropped me a note this afternoon about today’s second post. He liked it. Then he wrote this: “You’ve pretty much conclusively won the argument on SCOTUS reform, starting with immediate unilateral expansion. You’ve written comparatively much less about the filibuster and I’m among those unconvinced that just nuking it is the best way forward or that that’s a win as a platform plank. Not passionately against it, just not clear on how concretely that plays out as a long-term win.”
I’ve written pretty extensively about abolishing the filibuster. But I haven’t done so in quite some time. So I welcome the opportunity to do so again.
I’d put the matter in three related arguments: 1) It’s bad on the merits and defies if not violates the Constitution. 2) It hurts Democrats disproportionately. 3) The existence of the modern filibuster is a major driver of the loss of confidence in public institutions.
Yesterday The Bulwark’s Lauren Egan ran an “exclusive” with an advance look at Project 2029 and its policy recommendations going into the 2028 election. TPM Alum Brian Beutler looks at it and concludes, in so many words, this ain’t it. I read the piece last night and that was exactly my conclusion.
First, a few points of context. Attitudinally and analytically I blanche at most things Egan writes. That’s not a criticism precisely. There’s nothing wrong with not sharing my viewpoints or outlook. I think it’s fair for me to share that background. I would also say that there’s a lot of hunger for a Project 2029. I had someone pitch me a few days ago on leading one up. But there doesn’t need to be just one. At least for now, we should be in a let 100 Flowers Bloom mode. There can also be different kinds. With that said though, what Egan published didn’t seem like anything like what I and I imagine others are talking about. It seems like a mix of positioning statement and policy portfolio. And some of those policies are good ones. It talks about affordability; it talks about breaking up monopolies, etc. That may have some role. But that’s an entirely different exercise.
Josh Kovensky has a good piece up today on the collapse of the “Broadview Four” nee Six case in Chicago. What started off as yet another case of wild overcharging by the Trump Justice Department and politically motivated prosecution collapsed a week ago when a stunning level of prosecutorial misconduct was revealed in open court and all the remaining charges were dropped. The taint of the misconduct has already spread to other cases. The U.S. Attorney in Chicago, Andrew S. Boutros, has reacted with what he purports are important and until now neglected “reforms” to avoid anything happening like this again. (He has also been accused by one of the defense attorneys in the case of at least some level of involvement with the tainted grand jury.) But according to experts on grand juries, avoiding the levels of misconduct revealed in the case could have been done easily enough by just not breaking some of the most basic rules for how prosecutors must conduct themselves in grand juries.
It’s a galactic mess. But it’s also an example of the corruption of the Trump DOJ seeping down into depths of the Department.
Kate and Josh discuss Ken Paxton’s primary win, redistricting developments in South Carolina and Alabama and fissures between congressional Republicans and the White House.
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.
