Second, Josh Kovensky speaks with Dennis Dahmer, whose father, Vernon Dahmer, a Black activist in Forrest County, was murdered by the KKK for his efforts to help his community vote. Dennis describes what a Colom victory, secured by Black voters in the state and the backlash to the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, would mean for him.
For listeners and watchers of The TPM Show, because of the holiday the show will come out this week on Thursday rather than our regular Wednesday time slot.
A few thoughts on Chuck Schumer and whether he’ll continue as leader in the Senate. One important detail. Senate leadership works differently from House leadership. Majority Leader isn’t a constitutional position. So unlike the House where it’s a public vote and you need a majority of the body, in the Senate, it’s a secret ballot and Schumer needs only a majority of his caucus. So a handful of defections won’t settle this.
I said multiple times over the last two years that while I think highly of Schumer, he’s not characterologically or generationally suited to the moment. The big question that faces us today isn’t ideological, “centrists” vs. progressives, it’s fight vs. accommodation. Or, put differently, are we in a normal period of American history in which regular order should prevail or are we in an ongoing national emergency? Schumer thinks in terms of the first and not the second.
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With Jim Jordan elected GOP leader, let’s remember that Jordan is part of a longstanding coverup of sexual abuse of student athletes at Ohio State by Dr. Richard Strauss. The story got a lot of attention a few years ago and it briefly seemed possible that it might derail Jordan’s position in the House GOP caucus. But he stonewalled, refused to credibly address the allegations and eventually his colleagues and conservative media gave him a pass. He’s never come clean about any of it. As recently as last year there was a whole new documentary about it. Multiple ex-wrestlers and even a ref describe how Jordan knew about it, turned a blind eye and has been lying about it ever since. “To say that (Jordan) knew nothing, that nothing ever happened, it’s a flat out lie,” said former Ohio State Wrestler Dan Ritchie in the documentary. You’d think House Republicans would be stung enough by Donald Trump’s main character status in the Epstein Files. But memories are short. Jordan was never the caucus leader until now. Democrats need to be certain everyone knows that his colleagues know about his stonewalling and the coverup and are fine with it.
The Information is reporting (paywall) that regardless of what multiple investigations unearth about NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s affair with a suspected Chinese spy, the scandal is likely to spur Congress to impose tighter export controls on the advanced processors used in AI data centers. There’s been a big bipartisan push for this in Congress for a while but it’s largely been headed off by White House resistance. That resistance seems to center on Trump himself and the small coterie of Silicon Valley advisors who run AI policy at the White House. As I noted in this post, the argument for tight export controls seems pretty strong to me, certainly if we’re operating on the premise that U.S. superiority in AI development is a critical national security interest.
The Times’ Maggie Haberman is currently appearing on CNN to discuss the Jensen Huang story. She confirms that, according to Times reporting, Trump was first briefed on Huang’s relationship with suspected Chinese spy Alice Huang (no relation) late last year. She said about this time last year. So the key details here have been known and seemingly ignored for a whole year.
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Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom this week flipped Forrest County. Named for the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, the area is steeped in the history of racial repression, and of the Civil Rights Movement.
