We’re still getting conflicting reports about what is contained in the memorandum of understanding reportedly about to be signed by the United States and Iran. Both sides are describing different details; neither has released any text and neither is a reliable narrator. But the big picture is fairly clear. It’s not a peace agreement, just a longer ceasefire. And the terms just revert everything to the status quo ante before the war with a promise to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program.
Editors’ Blog
Take this for what you will but in this piece the NYT seems to be coming around to a point I’ve been making for the last three or four months: “Mr. Trump has decided to double down, presenting himself as politically all-powerful even in the face of indications that he is not.”
More fallout from yesterday’s courtroom drama in Chicago. The original prosecutor in the Broadview Six case, Sheri Mecklenberg, withdrew from the case with little or not advance notice in late February and announced she was taking a position as a DOJ detailee working for the Senate Judiciary committee under Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). The hearing yesterday pointed to her as the source of most or all of the grand jury misconduct though not the redactions part of the misconduct, which took place after her departure.
Durbin’s office said this morning she’s been dismissed from her position.
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.
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Antifascists were fighting with their far-right rivals. An anti-immigrant group with surging membership took to the streets and clashed with the police. And a member of the Trump family was at the center of it all.
The year was 1927.
The riots that broke out on the streets of America’s largest city over Memorial Day weekend nearly a century ago show that our current climate is not entirely unprecedented in American history. In truth, these dark currents have been with us for generations.
PODCASTS
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.
A nuanced look at the current state of the so-called Make America Healthy Again movement and it’s relationship with the Trump Administration
Kate and Josh talk Virginia and Callais fallout, the growing tent of Supreme Court reformers and an interesting development in Nebraska.
RECENT
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