Chris Geidner flags today an appearance by CBS News’ Chief Legal Correspondent Jan Crawford’s attacking Supreme Court critics who call the Court and its current jurisprudence “corrupt.”

“There is a narrative the Supreme Court is corrupt,” she told Face The Nation. “We saw that emerge in the wake of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and now we see it that they’re in the tank for Trump. Not only is that narrative over-reported, it is patently false, and it is dangerous for the institution and the public’s faith and confidence in the rule of law.”

Chris has more of Crawford’s quotes. And he makes clear the most telling thing about Crawford’s defense is that she doesn’t even address the arguments against the Court’s practices and behavior. She just asserts it in a ‘the King can do no wrong because he’s the King’ kind of fashion. But this one passage is enough to make the point. Not only is the Court demonstrably not corrupt, Crawford claims, it is also dangerous for the Court to have itself be called “corrupt”. And, she claims, what is dangerous or threatening to this Court threatens the rule of law itself. In other words, you might say, the danger to the state is that child in the third row saying the King is naked.

It’s coming to the surface now. But it’s a marvel in itself that it has taken as long as it has. AI is really, really unpopular with the American people — even more unpopular than I’d realized, as I noted a week ago. And yet for most of the last couple years, in elite discourse, on TV and in the big news publications, you would feel very backwards and Luddite expressing more than a general caution that rogue AI intentionally blowing up the world would be a bad thing. Because it’s the new thing and who doesn’t like the new and innovation and all the good stuff? We remain, meanwhile, in an economic moment in which vast, almost unprecedented amounts of economic resources are being directed toward AI rollout. Public messaging in advertising and product development are filled with reminders of how many awesome things AI can do for you. And yet everyone basically hates it.

The lawless no man’s land between the holidays and the New Year are an apt time to announce the winners of the 17th Annual Golden Duke Awards, TPM’s yearly toast to the toads who took venality and nonsense to new heights.

In 2025, the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, those who specialize in political corruption, shameless capitulation and unabashed betrayals of public trust had ample opportunity to shine. And shine they did.

I wanted to let you know that we are now out of free TPM 25th anniversary baseball caps and t-shirts that we were giving away as inducements for people to become members of TPM or upgrade their memberships. Thanks to everyone who took us up on the offer. Your ultra-merch should either be in your hands or on the way.

I wanted to add an important additional point. This isn’t the last chance. A number of you wrote in asking if you could simply purchase a piece of ultra-merch or why newbs were getting first dibs while years-long-members were shut out. Here’s the deal.

The ultra-merch we commissioned for the 25th anniversary was also basically a proof of concept. We wanted to find good suppliers and get a sense of pricing and so forth for a different quality tier of clothing, something a few notches above the standard made-to-order, meh-quality stuff that any substack can set up to sell in a few minutes, stuff that is essentially a novelty. We wanted stuff that that was of quality you’d feel good wearing as a simple garment. That’s a different part of the clothing commission industry; pricing is different, fulfillment is different. And what we found is really nice stuff. Like the high end version of the kind of baseball cap you might buy from an MLB team or the kind of well-made t-shirt you might buy at a real clothing store. So it was done with the expectation that we would start selling similar ultra-merch in the new year. So there’s more coming and that was the point all along.

In a number of recents posts I’ve been trying to make sense of the climate of drift and enervation that now seems to suffuse the Trump administration and, in a way, the country. Making sense of these things isn’t just interesting in the abstract or an opportunity to dunk on the administration. It’s important to know just where we are, what’s possible now that might not have been possible in the Spring or even a few months ago. And that’s important because we’re all kind of worn out. It’s not just the Trump administration. In a way the opposition to Trump is, too, albeit in a very different way. It’s been a really long year.

I first proposed my DOJ-in-Exile idea back in April. If you’re not familiar with the DOJ-in-Exile concept, this post explains the idea. But the main points I’m about to make don’t require knowing those details. As I’ve mentioned a few times here and to a number of you in email correspondence, it was harder going than I anticipated. For a mix of reasons, I did not want to run it myself or even be involved. I wanted to find a group that wanted to do it and hand the idea and the name off to them. But people were scared. Without my really asking, various TPM Readers came forward with soft pledges totaling probably upwards of a million dollars. So money wasn’t going to be a problem. But the kind of people who would run it or take responsibility for it were scared. People in the key do-gooder groups were scared. People who are hard-chargers were scared. Sometimes they wouldn’t quite say as much in calls but I could read their intonations and I realized a conversation wasn’t going to go anywhere.

When Congress passed the Epstein Files law, the common and undoubtedly correct assumption was that the Trump DOJ would simply weed out the Trump stuff. And as we’ve seen, they’ve gone to town releasing everything about … say, Bill Clinton but in many cases obviously filtered out Trump stuff. So this basic part of the story is predicted, unsurprising and confirmed. But there’s a more complex if no less corrupt story coming into focus.

A few pretty damaging things have come out. I’m not sure for instance whether that purported jailhouse Epstein letter is real. But it’s pretty clear the White House/DOJ doesn’t have any evidence or hasn’t yet found any evidence that it’s fake. If they did, they’d release it. The best discussion of the authenticity question I’ve seen is this short piece in New York Magazine’s Intelligencer. The gist is that, based on what we know in the public record, there’s no clear evidence pointing either to its authenticity or fraudulence. There are a couple potential red flags. But these have relativity straightforward explanations based on how the prison mail system works. They could be evidence of fakery but not necessarily. A handwriting analysis was done and that could at least point in one or the other clear direction. But we haven’t seen that report.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I got a host of very interesting responses to yesterday’s post about the tech platforms force-feeding the mass consumer market AI. I learned a lot from your responses, which included both direct personal experiences and expert perspectives on different dimensions of the topic. What is important to me about this moment is distinguishing two or three different very real things happening at once.

The first is a genuine critical mass in the development of LLM-based machine learning. This is a much better description than “AI” to my thinking, since the latter contains a vast range of meanings from simple and accurate to triumphalist and grandiose. But machine learning is real, and in recent years it’s developed real capabilities that are at least transformative in various areas of work and technology. I’m skeptical of what we’ve developed beyond this at this point but really don’t know. It could be a lot. And it will increase. I think this is the best way to understand the technology itself at this moment now.

GREENBELT, MD — For the first time since he was unlawfully deported to El Salvador in March, Kilmar Abrego Garcia appeared in person this afternoon in front of U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland. He is no longer detained by El Salvador, the Justice Department, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But as his lawyer pointed out he remains in a “literal double bind,” with a bracelet on one ankle from his criminal case in Tennessee and an ICE bracelet on the other ankle from his immigration case in Maryland.

I just got a new iPhone. I didn’t need a newer version. But my old one was broken in a way that wasn’t easily fixed. So I submitted myself to the hard wheel of planned obsolescence. I’m always happy for ever-improved image quality. Otherwise, for me, it was just a need for a new, undamaged phone. But this is one of the models which Apple tells you very frequently has their AI bundled into the device. Which I’m told is awesome. Or that’s what they’re telling me. A lot. And my sense generally is that Apple is the least over-the-top of the big techs in this regard.

As I’ve been using the new phone, I’ve noticed that the Apple texting app now takes suggested phrases and completing your words to the next level — as in kind of an absurd level.