Marjorie Taylor Greene Archives

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Where We Go from Here

January 2, 2026/25 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Epstein, Immigration, Weaponized DOJ /by emptywheel

Back before everyone checked out for the holidays, I did an inventory of the progress we’ve made in four ways to fight fascism (in comments ApacheTrout reminded I should have the courts in there too).

The Erica Chenoweth rule, which says that if you can get 3.5% of a population in the streets, it often leads to regime change.
Beginning to peel off four people in the Senate or eight or nine people in the House.
Rescuing Republicans from a predictable catastrophe like Democrats did in 2008 and 2020.
Waiting until 2026, winning at least one house of Congress, and beginning to rein in Trump that way.

I wrote it intending to kick off the new year with a post of things we can do, or do better. Here we are!

But first, let me explain where I’m coming from. Much of what follows builds on my belief that we’ve been fighting Donald Trump wrong.

Polarization is his superpower. It’s how he has gotten out of every single one of his political jams in the past: by turning his own scandal into a polarizing pivot, thereby turning his own failures and crimes into a matter of tribalism. Once he has done that, he invents some new bullshit story (usually stoking grievance), and getting right wingers to believe it because of that polarization.

This is why I’m such an asshole about the way people serve as data mules for Trump’s tweets: because those damn things are little polarization machines, which always serve to make him the center of attention around which society is re-polarized.

The way to combat someone whose superpower is polarization is not to exacerbate that polarization. It is to use his own tools — grievance and conspiracism — against him.

Back in May, before the Epstein files had created a full-blown crisis for the Trump Administration, Phil Bump and Mike Rothschild wrote about how conspiracism can undermine someone with power (which I added to here).

Think of how important conspiracism and grievance were to (at least per the Robert Draper profile) Marjorie Taylor Greene’s turn against Trump:

Realizing Trump never returns loyalty
Discovering Trump was the villain of the Epstein scandal in which she had an unshakeable belief
Opposing Gaza (probably for horrible Jewish space laser reasons) and crypto currency (for justifiable reasons inflamed by conspiratorial thinking)
Seeing Trump mock affordability
After all that (but while she still had her courage), being targeted by Trump mobs
Packaging that in a morality tale, Christianity, whence she derived moral value

Simplifying and ignoring her potential political ambitions, Trump became the thing everyone suspected was being hidden in the Epstein files, and that led to cognitive dissonance that led MTG to revisit a lot of her other differences with Trump.

So some of my logic, below, is simply to focus on the things that are likely to get Trump supporters or sympathizers to feel betrayed by him including by holding people close to him accountable for shitty things we are pretty sure are going to occur. It includes:

Treat Epstein as the base layer
Focus on the Broligarchs and AI
Emphasize Trump’s loser stench
Visualize Trump’s corruption
Brand Trump as the criminal he is
Hold Stephen Miller accountable for his failures
Visualize how Stephen Miller took money for cancer research and veterans care to pay for a goon army snatching grandmothers
Discredit Key Spokespeople
Use Trump’s claimed opposition to antisemitism against him
Reclaim disinformation research

One more point about this. This post is not a To Do list for the DNC (though some people on Bluesky will undoubtedly treat it as such). It’s a To Do list for myself, most of all, but one that others can borrow if they find it useful. Many of these things are attentional activities that are about repetition and focus as much as congressional oversight or electoral politics.

These are meant to be stories we can tell, regardless of what someone in Congress or some candidate in Iowa does.

Treat Epstein as the base layer

Remember that Marc Caputo column — it was published on December 23 — stating that the Epstein releases could last a whole ‘nother week? On the day that would mark that week, December 30, Devlin Barrett published a story saying that, “The document review” of what is now believed to be 5.2 million documents “is expected to take until at least Jan. 20, according to a person familiar with the matter.” Even if they could finish it by January 20 (they won’t), that’ll just be the first go-around. DOJ has not done what they need to do to document the redactions, so there’ll be demands from Congress for them to do that (with obvious areas — including DOJ names and some deliberative documents specifically included in the law, where they’re in violation), they’ll need to repeat the entire process over again, Congress will begin to bring more legal pressure, and all the while survivors will be pointing out things they missed.

A week, Marc Caputo reported, as if that were credible!

This will go on for some time. This will go on for a very long time.

Still, while the Epstein scandal has been absolutely instrumental in loosing Trump’s grip on things, people are naive in thinking that will be enough. “My friends will get hurt,” Trump predicted, but what does it really mean for Trump’s power that Les Wexner has been implicated in the Epstein scandal as a co-conspirator? What is the use of creating right wing cognitive dissonance about Les Wexner, when Wexner is not the oligarch currently helping Trump destroy the country?

In my opinion, the Epstein scandal is a tool. It undercuts Trump’s ability to grab and redirect attention. It can create moments of cognitive dissonance, as it did for MTG. It is a way to turn Trump’s conspiracism and populism against him and may make other related narrative lines more salient. And if there’s a surprise disclosure — perhaps about Melania’s origin story — all the better. But as you keep the focus on Epstein, remember that there needs to be a direction beyond Epstein as well, a direction which incorporates the oligarchs who are still key players in Trump’s network of power.

Focus on the Broligarchs and AI

The Broligarchs who’ve been a key part of Trump’s power are one way to do that (and that’s before we’ve really gotten into Steve Bannon and Peter Thiel’s ties to Epstein).

Tesla Takedown was one of the most successful campaigns of 2025. At a time when Tesla faced cheaper competitors worldwide, the protests incurred a cost on Musk for his DOGE depredations.

Elon was installed in the White House in significant part by fellow South African “alien invader” David Sacks, who is even more conspiratorial and even more pro-Russian than Musk. Sacks was installed in the White House as a Special Government Employee (who, Elizabeth Warren suggests, has overstayed his welcome) to force a bunch of policy decisions that suck for America but ensure that Broligarchs won’t pay any consequences for their rash business deals. When one or both of crypto and AI crash (this is a really good story on how and why AI will burst), he’ll be there to ensure the government bails them out, as he did after playing a role in the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.

And even as Trump sheds support based on his mockery of affordability, even as MTG split with Trump over that and his support for crypto, Sacks is trying to brand Democrats as being more populist than even Zohran Mamdani is.

Fine. You want Democrats to be the party attending to the needs of working people? You’ve just made the GOP the party of “alien invader” billionaires who got tax cuts as millions lost their health care.

This happened even as AI has become a political liability. It has happened as local groups successfully stave off new data centers. It has happened as more instances of AI-inflamed suicide, murder, and porn — including porn exploiting children — appear. And it happens before the aforementioned crash.

Sacks and the other Broligarchs are going to do something for which they’ll try to dodge accountability. Now is the time to make sure his name comes up as people look for culprits.

Emphasize Trump’s loser stench

Another thing that will lead people to defect is to realize that Trump is a loser. He has done things — like the takeover of the Kennedy Center — that makes it easy to demonstrate he’s a loser in tangible fashion. Better still, every time Trump attaches his name to something, it provides an opportunity to hijack that brand, as comedian Toby Morton auspiciously managed to do by anticipating Trump’s most venal instincts and buying the domain.

The same is true of his businesses. Trump and his entire family is getting rich off the presidency 2.0. But his businesses are built as cons, sometimes Ponzi schemes. The idea is to leverage the loyalty of MAGAts to get them to invest in something, run up its value, only to collapse, leaving the most vulnerable screwed. In the past, at least, the cult effect was such that even MAGAts bilked by Trump associates, as with Steve Bannon’s Build the Wall graft, were reluctant to turn on the fraudsters; that may change. But at the very least, the volatile nature of Trump’s frauds makes it easy to show that as a businessman, he’s a loser.

Visualize Trump’s corruption

While there has been good reporting on Trump’s corruption — see, for example, NYT’s nifty visualization from New Year’s Eve — there has not been a systematic effort to take on his corruption.

Nevertheless, possibly because of the Epstein scandal, a majority of the country does think Trump is corrupt.

That may actually not be in a bad place to be as we move into 2026. That’s because Democrats can make Republican inaction in the face of Trump’s corruption a campaign issue (and then, if it leads to a Democratic sweep in midterms, the electoral buy-in will be in place to do a lot of oversight and defunding of Trump’s corruption).

Trump’s pardons are similar. There’s actually a solid stream of reporting on how corrupt they are, without yet any political direction to it. Democrats running against Republican incumbents — especially in the Senate — should state as presumed that it is the job of Senators to respond to the kind of naked corruption Trump is engaged in.

Where activists can magnify the good reporting on both Trump’s corruption and his pardons is to focus on the victims. This is actually showing up in the reporting on both topics. WaPo focused on the victims of Trevor Milton who might have gotten restitution had Trump not pardoned him. LAT similarly focused on the victims fucked over by Trump’s pardon of David Gentile.

Rosenberg, a retired wholesale produce distributor living in Nevada, has supported Trump since he entered politics, but the president’s decision in November to commute the sentence of former private equity executive David Gentile has left him angry and confused.

“I just feel I’ve been betrayed,” Rosenberg, 68, said. “I don’t know why he would do this, unless there was some sort of gain somewhere, or some favor being called in. I am very disappointed. I kind of put him above this kind of thing.”

Trump’s decision to release Gentile from prison less than two weeks into his seven-year sentence has drawn scrutiny from securities attorneys and a U.S. senator — all of whom say the White House’s explanation for the act of clemency is not adding up. It’s also drawn the ire of his victims.

“I think it is disgusting,” said CarolAnn Tutera, 70, who invested more than $400,000 with Gentile’s company, GPB Capital. Gentile, she added, “basically pulled a Bernie Madoff and swindled people out of their money, and then he gets to go home to his wife and kids.”

This superb Bloomberg story on the extent to which the Juan Orlando Hernández pardon unraveled years of work starts with a murder arranged by the network.

Five minutes later, González was circling a roundabout when a gray van braked in front of him. At the same time, a green SUV crowded his rear bumper. A motorcycle carrying two men emerged on his left. A man on the back of the bike fired six shots through the driver-side window. González’s head slumped toward his shoulder, and he tilted forward, held upright by the seatbelt. He died instantly.

More than a dozen men streamed out of the two vehicles that had sandwiched his Nissan. They scrambled to collect the spent shell casings on the ground, then scattered other casings across the pavement—decoys to complicate ballistics tracing. They jumped back into their vehicles, circled the roundabout and took the same road Julián had just driven down.

When they approached the Slaughterhouse, the gates opened to let them in, then closed behind them.

Every one of these pardons has a victim — and that’s before you get into the people newly victimized by people who’ve been pardoned by Trump, which NYT covered in November and others are tracking as well.

A New Jersey fraudster who was pardoned by President Trump in 2021 was sentenced to 37 years in prison this month for running a $44 million Ponzi scheme, one of a growing number of people granted clemency by Mr. Trump only to be charged with new crimes.

The man, Eliyahu Weinstein, was pardoned by Mr. Trump in 2021 and was re-indicted by the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey three years later. He was accused of swindling investors who thought their money was being used to buy surgical masks, baby formula and first-aid kits bound for Ukraine, and a jury convicted him in April of several crimes, including conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud.

[snip]
Some of those pardoned for their role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol have quickly drawn new attention from law enforcement. The group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said in June that at least 10 of the more than 1,500 who were pardoned had been rearrested and charged, and the number has only grown since then.

Earlier this month, a man who was pardoned after having participated in the Jan. 6 attack was charged with sex crimes against two children. Another man whose original sentence Mr. Trump commuted in 2021 was recently sentenced to 27 months in prison after convictions on physical and sexual assault, among other crimes.

These stories provide an important way to explain the costs of Trump’s corruption.

Brand Trump as the criminal he is

And while we’re talking about telling these stories: We must never ever cede the ground of crime to Stephen Miller’s attempt to brand immigrants as criminals.

Trump — a felon who freed hundreds of cop assailants on his first day on the job — has an entire infrastructure devoted to trying to spin brown people as criminal. Every time that infrastructure goes into action, including with the effort to brand Somalis in Minnesota as inherently fraudulent when Trump himself is a serial fraudster, we need to repeat, relentlessly, that Trump is a serial criminal who coddles other criminals.

This is something Gavin Newsom just started doing, with an entire website devoted to cataloging Trump’s crime and that of his pardon recipients.

Do not let a conversation about crime go by without focusing on how much of it Trump does.

Crime, in Trump’s era, is a rich white man’s thing. And while it will take a lot of work to adjust a lot of racist priors, until people start seeing Trump as a criminal it will be far too easy for them to make excuses for him.

Hold Stephen Miller accountable for his failures

I focused on Stephen Miller — and the import of making his failures clear — last week.

The import of shifting how we speak of Miller’s considerable power is clear. That’s true because he frankly has done huge damage, even to Trump’s goals, and well more so to average Americans. He’s someone that people, including Republicans, can scapegoat for Trump’s failures (and they’ll be right). And if we don’t make sure that happens, then he’ll scapegoat brown people.

Again, are Somali day care workers or billionaires systematically defrauding average people the problem? One easy to way to drown out Miller’s case that it’s the former is to make it clear how much he personally has harmed average Americans.

Visualize how Stephen Miller took money for cancer research and veterans care to pay for a goon army snatching grandmothers

Relatedly, particularly as the huge injection of funding Republicans approved last year starts landing at DHS, it will become increasingly necessary to tie the goon squads in the streets to the loss of benefits elsewhere.

We need to make it clear that this is a direct trade. 50,000 ICE goons in, 300,000 other government employees out, including people who cure cancer, help learning disabled kids get through school, protect our National Parks, ensure your Social Security comes on time, and care for veterans.

Christopher Ingraham did a handy graphic to show the trade-off.

Stephen Miller’s dragnet is unpopular in the abstract and wildly unpopular in the lived sense, even — if meekly — among local Republican leaders.

But it still retains support of a big chunk of the population, probably because Trump officials routinely blame their own failures to address American problems on migrants, when as often as not, Trump’s response to immigration is the source of the problem.

America can’t have nice things, like cures for cancer and welcoming public schools, because Republicans in Congress took the money used to pay for those things and gave it to Stephen Miller to use to invade America’s neighborhoods.

Discredit Key Spokespeople

Right wingers like Jonah Goldberg and David French have expressed alarm by an old promo for a 60 Minutes piece (the piece itself was from October) that an influencer reposted yesterday, describing dozens of times when the government lied in court filings.

Judges have caught Trump’s DOJ in several major lies since then. In Chicago, Judge Sara Ellis wrote a 233-page opinion documenting the many lies DHS has told about their Chicago invasion.

And in December, judges in both Kilmar Abrego’s case caught the government obfuscating. In the criminal case, on December 30, Judge Waverly Crenshaw unsealed a December 3 opinion describing how Nashville’s US Attorney lied about how centrally involved Todd Blanche’s office was in demanding Abrego face trial.

The central question after Abrego established a prima facie case of vindictiveness is what information in the government’s control sheds light on its new decision to prosecute Abrego, after removing him from the United States without criminal charges. These documents show that McGuire did not act alone and to the extent McGuire had input on the decision to prosecute, he shared it with Singh and others. (Doc. No. 178-1). Specifically, the government’s documents may contradict its prior representations that the decision to prosecute was made locally and that there were no outside influences. For example, Singh contacted McGuire on April 27, 2025, to discuss Abrego’s case. (See Doc. No. 229 at Abrego-Garcia000001). On April 30, 2025, Singh asked McGuire what the potential charges against Abrego would be, whether the charging document would reference Abrego’s alleged MS-13 affiliation, and asked for a phone call before any charges were filed. (Id. at Abrego-Garcia000007–000008). In a separate email on April 30, 2025, Singh made clear that Abrego’s criminal prosecution was a “top priority” for the Deputy Attorney General’s office (Blanche). (Id. at Abrego-Garcia000037). He then told McGuire to “sketch out a draft complaint for the 1324 charge [making it unlawful to bring in and harbor certain aliens].” (Id.). On May 15th, McGuire emailed his staff that “DAG (Blanche) and PDAG would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later.” (Id. at Abrego-Garcia000060).

And as I’ve already noted, Judge Paula Xinis cataloged the many deliberately ignorant declarations DOJ filed about whether DHS had deportation plans for Abrego when she ruled that he must be released.

Respondents showcased Cantú’s ignorance about the content of his Declaration pertaining to Costa Rica. As the pointed questions of Respondents’ counsel made clear, Cantú’s lack of knowledge was planned and purposeful.

Counsel: So paragraph 4, final sentence [of the Cantú Declaration], do you see where it says the word—the words “certain understandings”?

Cantú: I found it. Yes, I do. I see it.

Counsel: What are the certain understandings referenced in the last sentence?

Cantú: I don’t know . . .

Counsel: What are the “contingencies” referenced in the last sentence?

Cantú: I do not know . . .

Counsel: What are the “interim developments” referenced in paragraph 5?

Cantú: I don’t know.

ECF No. 107 at 26:8–27:12 (counsel for Respondents, Jonathan Guynn (“Guynn”), questioning Cantú). See also id. at 53:8–9 (Guynn, at sidebar with Court, stating “I’ll just say I told you this was exactly what was going to happen,” regarding the witness’ ignorance on Costa Rica as a viable country of removal).

Ultimately, Respondents’ calculated effort to take Costa Rica “off the table” backfired. Within 24 hours, Costa Rica, through Minister Zamora Cordero, communicated to multiple news sources that its offer to grant Abrego Garcia residence and refugee status is, and always has been, firm, unwavering, and unconditional.

It’s a problem that, after huge scoldings like these, right wing critics of Trump don’t understand how much Trump’s people lie — not least because the Supreme Court still credits the most outlandish claims Trump makes, even after they’ve been thoroughly debunked by lower court judges.

Many of these lies are coming from the same people: Stephen Miller, Todd Blanche’s office, DHS spox Tricia McLaughlin, and Greg Bovino.

It is remarkable that so many of these people have been caught lying to courts (or publicly, about people before courts). But it needs to become common knowledge for everyone, so every time Tricia says something, they start from the assumption she’s lying, because she almost always is.

There comes a time when the credibility of systematic liars not named Trump collapse entirely such that every utterance they make discredits the claims they try to sell. Tricia McLaughlin, at least, is close those levels of propaganda, and Stephen Miller is not far behind.

Use Trump’s claimed opposition to antisemitism against him

Within days of his inauguration last year, Trump signed an EO — adding to one he signed in 2019 — claiming to oppose antisemitism. There has been some discussion about the bad faith of this EO and a DOJ lawyer implementing it, Michael Velchik, once wrote a paper from Hitler’s perspective. While it is explicitly targeted at universities (and has been a key tool to attempt to takeover universities), it nevertheless claimed to oppose antisemitism everywhere.

It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.

This is the kind of statement of principle that can form the basis of political pressure — particularly as the MAGAt movement splinters around the overt antisemitism of people like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owen, and as political opportunists like Ted Cruz attempt to exploit that splinter.

We’re going to have to fight this battle in any case. As part of the revocation of everything Eric Adams did after he was indicted for bribery yesterday, Zohran Mamdani revoked an EO that gave Israel preferential treatment, which Israel is using to stoke division; yet Mamdani preserved the office Adams opened to combat antisemitism.

We need to call out the dripping antisemitism of Trump’s team, from top (at least JD Vance, who refuses to disavow Fuentes) to bottom.

There are two key Trump aides who should be targeted. Most notably, Paul Ingrassia, who had to withdraw his nomination to be Special Counsel after Politico exposed texts in which he confessed to a Nazi streak been installed at GSA instead. In addition, Kingsley Wilson became DOD spokesperson in spite of Neo-Nazi comments. NPR has done good work unpacking these ties.

Reclaim disinformation research

Republicans plan on exporting fascism via US tech platforms.

That’s not new. I’ve been talking about Elon’s plans to use Xitter as a machine for fascism for some time.

But since then, Trump’s minions worked it into the National Security Strategy.

And, in the wake of the EU’s sanctions against Elon Musk for — basically — lying about why I have a blue check, Marco Rubio stripped the visas of five people, including US Green Card holder Imran Ahmed, a long time adversary of Elon’s.

But there are several developments that suggest it is time to renew efforts to defend disinformation research, not least the White House’s absurd effort to attack real journalism, what is sure to be a snowballing failure on Bari Weiss’ part to make propaganda popular, and the meltdown the head of DOJ’s Civil Rights division, Harmeet Dhillon, had over the holidays about right wing “misinformation” targeting Pam Bondi.

The right wingers are doing what they themselves established is unlawful. And that presents both political and legal opportunities to demonize their propaganda.

Which in turn cycles back to the increasing problem of AI propaganda, including Grok’s flagrant willingness to nudify children in recent days.

Some people write short resolutions. I guess I write 4,000-word To Do lists. Join me in my efforts!

Peeling Off MTG

December 30, 2025/54 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election, Economics, emptywheel, Epstein, Financial Fraud, Tariffs /by emptywheel

Robert Draper did a 1,000-word piece describing the Four Takeaways of his much longer magazine profile describing Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump. It focuses on four steps in the process, which he presents out of chronological order:

“Trump’s speech at Charlie Kirk’s memorial was a clarifying moment,” because it contrasted Erika Kirk’s forgiveness with Trump’s lack of Christian faith
“Greene’s demands to release the Epstein files seemed to be the last straw for Trump,” because MTG’s threat to reveal the names of those who abused Epstein’s victims would hurt Trump’s friends
“Her disillusionment with Trump goes beyond the Epstein files,” in which Draper lumps tariffs and Gaza but focuses primarily on the way Trump’s stochastic terrorism led to threats against MTG’s son
“Greene said she was wrong for accusing Democrats of treason in the past,” which simply doubles down on the apology MTG made already on CNN and explained that MTG realized Christians don’t do such things

I don’t doubt that Draper thinks of the transformation he describes as dominated — bullets one and four — by MTG living by her faith, but the word “Christian” only appears in the 8,100-word profile six times.

And word frequency is just one tell that Draper may be indulging MTG’s own retroactive reconstruction of it.

The profile is based on interviews that took place earlier this month, though as Draper recounts, he has been covering MTG closely since 2021 and met with her repeatedly before this month. The Kirk memorial with which Draper began both his profile and his Four Takeaways occurred on September 21. He describes MTG’s perception of the difference between Erika’s forgiveness and Trump’s doubling down as the moment when, “the stress fracture that had been steadily widening between Greene and her political godfather became an irrevocable break.”

But his stress fracture comment introduces a paragraph listing five policy splits with Trump, most of which predate the Kirk memorial, the most important of which — her support for releasing all the Epstein files — predates the memorial by several weeks and gets its own paragraph here and a more focused treatment later.

Declaring the war in Gaza a “genocide”
Objecting to cryptocurrency and artificial-intelligence policies that, from her perspective, prioritized billionaire donors over working-class Americans
Criticizing the Trump administration for:
- Approving foreign student visas
- Enacting tariffs that hurt businesses in her district
- Allowing Obamacare subsidies to expire
Argu[ing] that all investigative material pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein should be released

Much later, the profile describes that well before the Epstein break came the realization that Trump does not return loyalty (including a campaign disloyalty similar to the one that drove Elise Stefanik’s later break), followed by Trump’s targeted harassment when MTG opposed his cryptocurrency graft.

She considered running against Senator Jon Ossoff but announced in May that she had decided not to.

Greene’s stated reasoning at the time was that “the Senate is where good ideas go to die.” But the week after her announcement, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had shared with her a survey from his pollster, Tony Fabrizio, projecting that Ossoff would beat her by 18 points. Later, Trump would claim in a Truth Social post that their split “seemed to all begin” when he sent her the poll — suggesting, in effect, that Greene was pouting over his lack of support: “All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” Greene insisted to me, “It wasn’t about a Fabrizio poll.” She added: “I never had a single conversation with the president about it. Instead, he told me all the time, ‘You should run for governor — you’d win.’”

Still, Greene told me, it began to dawn on her that when it came to the president, loyalty is “a one-way street — and it ends like that whenever it suits him.” Being disabused of the idea that subservience would be rewarded appeared to have a liberating effect on her.

In June, Greene did an about-face on the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill after conceding that she voted for it without realizing that it contained a provision that would prevent states from enforcing restrictions on artificial intelligence for a period of 10 years. If the Senate did not strike the moratorium from the bill, Greene publicly warned, “when the O.B.B.B. comes back to the House for approval after Senate changes, I will not vote for it with this in it.” On July 1, the Senate voted to sever the provision from the bill, which Trump signed into law three days later.

Greene broke again from Trump on July 17, arguing on X that his cryptocurrency bill could permit a future president to “TURN OFF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT AND STOP YOUR ABILITY TO BUY AND SELL!!!!!” This time, Trump made his displeasure known to her — and to her peers.

That same day, Greene and roughly a dozen other House Republicans who also had reservations about the bill were summoned to the Oval Office. In Greene’s recollection, Trump focused his wrath on her. “When you have a group of kids,” she said, “you pick the one that is the most well behaved, that always does everything right, and you beat the living shit out of them. Because then the rest of them are like: ‘Oh, man, holy shit. If Dad does that to her, what would he do to me?’” A White House spokeswoman disputes that the meeting was contentious. “Not surprising to me at all,” Greene replied when I informed her of this. “They have major problems, and it’s only starting to build.”

That all preceded the date when MTG signed the Epstein discharge petition, which Tom Massie initiated in July, the day before Trump told her that his friends would get hurt if she exposed their names.

After the hearing, Greene held a news conference at which she threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women. (Greene says that she didn’t know those names herself but that she could have gotten them from the victims.) Trump called Greene to voice his displeasure. Greene was in her Capitol Hill office, and according to a staff member, everyone in the suite of rooms could hear him yelling at her as she listened to him on speakerphone. Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his intransigence. According to Greene, Trump replied, “My friends will get hurt.”

When she urged Trump to invite some of Epstein’s female victims to the Oval Office, she says, he angrily informed her that they had done nothing to merit the honor. It would be the last conversation Greene and Trump would ever have.

Along the way, Draper inserts something between the Epstein break and the Kirk epiphany and the ultimate break: the 8-week recess, during which MTG stewed as she heard complaints about affordability from her constituents.

But there was one more important ingredient.

As noted, Draper describes the evolving relationship he had with MTG. He first flew down to Rome, GA, in 2022, and honored MTG’s confidences, which built trust. She blew off a meeting for drinks during last year’s convention because Trump was giving her pride of place at the Convention, but shortly thereafter met with a NYT team and scoffed at their claim Trump would pursue retribution. Draper persisted with someone who adhered to the axiom that real news was fake for years.

There are a lot of lefties who hate this profile: They feel it goes easy on her (and given the Christian reconstruction, I’d agree). They see it as a willingness to let MTG rebrand herself, even while it foregrounds her transphobia. They hate the glam photo of her, which nevertheless provides helpful context to MTG’s claim she always opposed the plastic femininity of Mar-a-Lago (and provides a useful contrast with the still fresh Karoline Leavitt portrait).

In particular, she told me recently: “I never liked the MAGA Mar-a-Lago sexualization. I believe how women in leadership present themselves sends a message to younger women.” She continued: “I have two daughters, and I’ve always been uncomfortable with how those women puff up their lips and enlarge their breasts. I’ve never spoken about it publicly, but I’ve been planning to.”

I would add that Draper still treats Trump as the actor — Trump banished MTG, rather than she stood her ground in face of his demands.

It has been tempting for some observers to predict that the meteoric crash and burn of the MAGA movement’s loudest champion signals the beginning of the end for its leader as well. But it is Greene who is exiting the stage, while Trump continues to dominate it, as he did through impeachments and indictments and other controversies that no other politician would have survived.

Still, Draper hedges his bets. Maybe she will be a harbinger.

But because it represents an evolution for Greene, she may yet again prove to be a harbinger of a sea change in the movement she once helped lead.

By far the most fascinating part of the profile to me is how Draper traces MTG’s cognitive dissonance. In 2022 — and still today — MTG is certain there’s no way Joe Biden could have won the election in 2020.

One autumn evening in 2022, I ventured to ask just how she thought the 2020 election was stolen. Did she really think that a grand conspiracy, perhaps masterminded by the Obamas and the C.I.A., had secretly rigged the results?

“Robert,” she replied with a searching look, “do you really think Joe Biden got 81 million votes without even campaigning?”

“Yes,” I said. “They counted all the votes. That was the final tally. Why wouldn’t I believe it?” The look she then gave me, which I will never forget, was one of bottomless pity.

But the contrast between the earnest stories of the survivors followed by hearing Trump complain that naming those who abused Epstein’s girls would hurt his friends broke through a belief created by the bubble of Fox News.

The reason for her lack of concern, as Greene explained it to me, might seem improbable to anyone who is unfamiliar with how the mainstream press and the right-wing media cover the same story differently — or not at all. “The story to me,” she said, “was that I’d seen pictures of Epstein with all these people. And Trump is just one of several. And then, for me, I’d seen that Bill Clinton is on the flight logs for his plane like 20-something times. So, for people like me, it wasn’t suspicious. And then we’d heard the general stories of how Epstein used to be a member of Mar-a-Lago, but Trump kicked him out. Why would I think he’s done anything wrong, right?”

For Greene, the decades that Epstein spent eluding justice for exploiting and sexually assaulting countless girls and young women while amassing a fortune, and the seeming efforts by the government to cover up the injustice, “represents everything wrong with Washington,” she told me. This September, Greene spoke with several of Epstein’s victims for the first time in a closed-door House Oversight Committee meeting. She knew that the women had paid their own way to come to Washington. She saw some of them trembling and crying as they spoke. Their accounts struck her as entirely believable. Greene herself had never been sexually abused, but she knew women who had. In her own small way, Greene later told me, she could understand what it was like for a woman to stand up to a powerful man.

One of the most important parts of MTG’s split from Trump has been an evolving relationship with the media, especially Fox News, and therefore, the truth, but with Draper always there persisting. That is, MTG had to work through the cognitive dissonance of learning that Trump really did have ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking, that he really was trying to cover it up, before she got to the point of retconning it all inside a faith narrative. Her own banishment from Fox News may have helped work through the cognitive dissonance.

I talk a lot about one of the ways you fight fascism is to peel off members of Congress, four in the Senate or eight in the House. I’ve laid out repeatedly how central the Epstein scandal was to that process.

Whether you like the Draper profile or not, whether or not MTG’s split from Trump will be a harbinger of more (like Stefanik’s) to come, what this profile does do is show what it took for one diehard MAGAt to go through it: political betrayal, real policy differences, retaliation, and then cognitive dissonance regarding Epstein, the Kirk epiphany, until finally responding to his terrorism in a dramatically different way than almost every other Republican, whether MAGAt or not.

There’s a process.

Four Ways to Fight Fascism: Checking In

December 19, 2025/38 Comments/in 2026 Mid-Term Election, Economics, Epstein, Immigration, Impeachment, Russo-Ukrainian War, Tariffs /by emptywheel

Throughout this year, I have argued there are four ways to fight fascism — and doing so through the guise of the Democratic Party (especially DC Democrats) is not yet the best way to do so.

I argued these were the four ways to peacefully fight Donald Trump’s authoritarianism:

The Erica Chenoweth rule, which says that if you can get 3.5% of a population in the streets, it often leads to regime change.
Beginning to peel off four people in the Senate or eight or nine people in the House.
Rescuing Republicans from a predictable catastrophe like Democrats did in 2008 and 2020.
Waiting until 2026, winning at least one house of Congress, and beginning to rein in Trump that way.

Since for many of you, today will be the last normal day of the year, and unless Trump sets off a predictable catastrophe, today will also be the last Nicole Sandler show we do, I wanted to check in on how we’re doing on these four issues.

The 3.5% rule

Start with people in the streets.

If 6.5 million people attended October’s No Kings rallies (some estimates go as high as 7 million), it would amount to about 1.8% of the US population. That would make them the biggest protests in American history, but still just halfway to that 3.5% mark, and not directly in response to a particular outrage. The organizing and openness of those protests was a huge accomplishment and, at the very least, taught a lot of people who had never protested before how to do so.

But it wasn’t enough to oust Trump.

A more interesting measure of people in the streets, however, is Chicago (and other anti-ICE/CBP protests). I have no idea what population of Chicago took part in mobilizing to oppose Stephen Miller’s goons. But there are aspects of that mobilization — perhaps most importantly the way media coverage arose from citizen witness to local media to independent media to mainstream outlets — that provided real lessons in how to thrive in a disastrous media environment.

One point I keep making about this kind of opposition: it does not have to be, and arguably is far more successful if it is not, coincident with the Democratic party. Some of the most powerful moments in Chicago’s opposition came when right wingers in conservative suburbs joined in — holy hell those people were assholes!!

Whatever else Stephen Miller’s terrible dragnets have done, they have renewed civil society in most places the invasions happened.

Peeling off defectors

Both Axios and Politico took a break from Dems in Disarray or ragebait stories this week to instead focus on Hakeem Jeffries, both focusing on Jeffries’ success at getting four “moderate” Republicans to vote for his discharge position extending ObamaCare subsidies for three years.

Time and again this year, Democrats under Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have maneuvered to successfully undercut the GOP agenda and put its leaders on the back foot. From a daily drumbeat on health care to the long-running saga over the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to a new focus on the rising cost of living, they believe they’re succeeding by making the party in power talk about Democratic priorities, not its own.

Their success was underscored this week when four House Republicans joined a Jeffries-led effort to force a vote on expiring Obamacare insurance subsidies — a major embarrassment for the GOP speaker.

“Our message to Mike Johnson is clear — you can run, but you cannot hide,” Jeffries said as he took a victory lap on the House steps Thursday.

And as Politico notes, it started (actually, two months earlier than they credit) with the Jeffrey Epstein effort.

Indeed, since Tom Massie and Ro Khanna, with Jeffries’ cooperation, chased Mike Johnson away a week earlier in July for fear of Epstein votes, Johnson has largely vacated his majority.

There have been limited instances where Republicans have defected on other issues. Just before the SCOTUS hearing on Trump’s illegal tariffs, for example, a handful of Republicans defected to pass resolutions against Trump tariffs.

Where things may get more interesting in the new year — on top of what is sure to be a frantic effort to fix the healthcare crisis Republicans are causing — is on Russia. The NDAA Trump signed yesterday included a number of restrictions on European and Ukrainian funding and troop alignment, measures that directly conflict with Trump’s National Security Strategy.

In a break with Trump, whose fellow Republicans hold majorities in both the House and Senate, this year’s NDAA includes several provisions to boost security in Europe, despite Trump early this month releasing a national security strategy seen as friendly to Russia and a reassessment of the US relationship with Europe.

The fiscal 2026 NDAA provides $800m for Ukraine – $400m in each of the next two years – as part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which pays US companies for weapons for Ukraine’s military.

It also authorizes the Baltic Security Initiative and provides $175m to support Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia’s defense. And it limits the Department of Defense’s ability to drop the number of US forces in Europe to fewer than 76,000 and bars the US European commander from giving up the title of Nato supreme commander.

To be sure, thus far, Congress has done nothing to police Trump when he spends money in ways they tell him not to. But these restrictions (along with a few things to make Whiskey Pete Hegseth behave) might set up a conflict early in the year.

Remember: recruiting defectors actually takes efforts to reach out to them, often the opposite of what people think they want.

And while all that is not enough defectors to stop Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene may set off a stampede for the exit. And that could make it easier for Jeffries, at least, to continue to pants Mike Johnson.

Predictable catastrophe

Democrats have done a good job of seeding the ground to get credit for rescuing the country from Trump-caused catastrophes in healthcare and the economy — and both will exacerbate the other in days ahead.

I’m less sanguine that Democrats have prepared to rescue the country (and claim credit) for other likely Trump catastrophes, like a collapsing AI bubble or epidemic. Laying the ground for both is really critical, in the former case bc AI bros plan to spend big in 2026 in the same way crypto bros did in 2024, and in the former case, because bigots are trying to blame rising measles (and, now, whooping cough) on migrants rather than assholes like RFK Jr.

2026

Democrats are doing surprisingly well to position themselves for 2026, both because they’re overperforming by numbers that suggest they will do well (including in elections, like TN-07, with midyear-levels of turnout), and because they’re matching Republican redistricting efforts (and Stephen Miller’s goon squads mean the redistricting in Texas may not turn out like Trump wants).

But it will be harder to achieve a true Blue Wave than in 2018.

Even as this year’s election results have left many in the party encouraged they can mount a massive blue wave, next year’s battleground is a far cry from 2018 — with fewer Republican-held seats for Democrats to easily target.

Democrats don’t need to win as many seats this time around, netting just three seats rather than two dozen to claim a majority. But the hill to reach a comfortable majority like the 235 seats they held after the last blue wave has grown much steeper, driven by multiple rounds of gerrymandering — including ongoing redistricting in several states that threatens to erode the battlefield even further.

The result is that Democrats could post a bigger national swing than in 2018 and still end up with a slimmer majority than they had after that year.

Where Democrats are doing better is in promising consequences if and when they do get a majority.

I’m more interested in Democrats promising those capitulating to Trump — whether it be law firms or Paramount — that there’ll be consequences in 2027 than I am in discussions about impeachment (except for people like RFK Jr, such discussions will work against other Democratic efforts, IMO).

Such efforts, in my opinion, are one way to do more to lay out Trump’s accountability for predictable disasters.

All in all, opponents of fascism have more momentum than they had when caught flat-footed in January. But there’s still a lot of work to do.

Fridays with Nicole Sandler, Thanksgiving Wednesday Edition!

November 26, 2025/31 Comments/in Foreign Policy, January 6 Insurrection, Jim Comey prosecution /by emptywheel

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

“Groceries,” and Other Secrets of Managing Donald Trump

November 23, 2025/58 Comments/in 2026 Mid-Term Election, 2028 Presidential election, Epstein, Ukraine /by emptywheel

Three things happened in the last week that have befuddled a lot of observers, but which might best be understood as the kinds of developments we’ll see increasingly as the power structure around Trump grows fragile and fluid:

A positively giddy Trump welcomed Zohran Mamdani to the White House
“The White House” rolled out yet another plan to sell out Ukraine to Russia
Marjorie Taylor Greene announced she will quit in early January

All of these, in my opinion, arose out of and reflect Trump’s increasing political weakness, his separate mental and physical decline, and the fight for power that results.

Mamdani speaks of Trump voters, groceries, and building

Much of the focus on the Trump-Mamdani meeting was on what Trump did, such as his interruption before Mamdani had to answer whether he believed Trump was a fascist, rather than on what Mamdani said. But if you look closely at what Mamdani said — which was often simply a restatement of his campaign pitch — he managed to say them in such a way that Trump parroted them as his own.

Both men centered their statements on their shared love of New York City, which is real and has been underplayed.

Mamdani’s first comment did so — as did his relentlessly disciplined campaign did — in terms of affordability; Mamdani mentioned “groceries,” the awkward shorthand Trump’s handlers have had him use to address affordability.

Mr. Trump: You know, we had some interesting conversation, and some of his ideas really are the same ideas that I have. A big thing on cost. The new word is “affordability.” Another word, it’s just groceries. It’s sort of an old-fashioned word, but it’s very accurate. They are coming down. They are coming down.

Mamdani repeatedly spoke in terms of Trump’s voters (again, a line directly from his campaign).

Trump had no idea that Mamdani targeted Trump voters, and as the coalition that elected him last year abandons him in the polls, Trump took notice when Mamdani explained that.

When I spoke to New Yorkers who had voted for the president last November on Hillside Avenue and Fordham Road, I asked them why. I heard, again and again, two major reasons. One was that they want an end to forever wars — they wanted an end to the taxpayers’ dollars we had funding violations of human rights, and they wanted to address the cost-of-living crisis. And I appreciated the chance to discuss both of those things.

Mr. Trump: He said a lot of my voters actually voted for him.

Mr. Mamdani: One in 10.

Mr. Trump: And I’m OK with that.

[snip]

Reporter: First of all, for the mayor-elect: You’re both from different parts of the political perspective. You’re both populist, though, and I just wonder to what extent the president’s campaign styles — his techniques, his social media use — inspired any part of your campaign?

Mr. Mamdani: Well, I actually told the president that, you know, so much of the focus of our campaign has been on the cost-of-living crisis, and when we asked those New Yorkers who had voted for the president — when we saw an increase in his numbers in New York City, that came back to the same issue. Cost of living. Cost of living. Cost of living.

And they spoke about the cost of groceries, the cost of rent, the cost of Con Ed, the cost of child care.

Mamdani seems to have reminded Trump that Trump got a historic number of votes last year (the voters Mamdani kicked off his campaign by canvassing) by running on affordability.

Reporter: Mr. President, you said you grew up in New York City. Mr. Mamdani, does New York City love President Trump?

Mr. Mamdani: New York City loves a future that is affordable. And I can tell you that there were more New Yorkers who voted for President Trump in the most recent presidential election because of that focus on cost of living, and I’m looking forward to working together to deliver on that affordability agenda.

President Trump: Got a lot. I got a lot of votes. One more, go ahead. One or two more. Go ahead.

Mamdani’s focus on Trump voters became a way to dodge very contentious questions.

Mr. Mamdani: I appreciate all efforts toward peace, and I shared with President Trump, when I spoke to Trump voters on Hillside Avenue — including one of whom was a pharmacist that spoke about how President Trump’s father actually went to that pharmacy not too far from Jamaica Estates — that people were tired of seeing our tax dollars fund endless wars.

By the end, Trump spoke of the way he himself (thinks he) picked up Bernie voters.

Mr. Trump: We agree on a lot more than I would have thought. I think he’s — I want him to do a great job, and we’ll help him do great job. You know, he may have different views, but in many ways, you know — we were discussing, when Bernie Sanders was out of the race, I picked up a lot of his votes, and people had no idea, because he was strong on not getting ripped off in trade and lots of the things that I practiced, and been very successful on.

Tariffs, a lot of things. Bernie Sanders and I agreed on much more than people thought, and when he was put out of the race — I think quite unfairly, if you want to know the truth — many of the Bernie Sanders voters voted for me, and I felt very comfortable frankly seeing that and saying that. And you know, it just turned out to be a statistical truth.

Perhaps the most fascinating reflection came when Trump appeared to parrot Mamdani’s shift of discussions about ICE into a question about crime, whence Trump immediately addressed building.

Mr. Trump: What we did is, we discussed crime. More than ICE, per se, we discussed crime. And he doesn’t want to see crime, and I don’t want to see crime, and I have very little doubt that we’re not going to get along on that issue. And he wants to — and he said some things that were very interesting, very interesting, as to housing construction, and he wants to see houses go up. He wants to see a lot of houses created, a lot of apartments built, et cetera. You know, we actually — people would be shocked, but I want to see the same thing.

Trump repeated that progression later, and specifically said Mamdani told him things Trump had not seen in coverage.

He wants to see no crime. He wants to see housing being built. He wants to see rents coming down, all the things that I agree with. We may disagree on how we get there. The rent coming down — I think one of the things I really gleaned very, very much today, he would like to see them come down ideally by building a lot of additional housing. That’s the ultimate way. He agrees with that, and so do I.

But, if I read the newspapers, and the stories — I don’t hear that. But I heard him say it today. I think that’s a very positive step. Now, I don’t expect — I expect to be helping him, not hurting him. A big help, because I want New York City to be great.

Look, I love New York City. It’s where I come from.

None of Mamdani’s success should be that surprising. He’s a rock star in whose aura Trump would like to bathe.

Mamdani simply managed Trump the same way everyone does: by getting alone in a room with him and making him adopt your ideas as his own.

Kirill Dmitriev continues to cultivate the people alone in the room with Trump

Which brings us to the latest Ukrainian “piece” plan, a 28-point plan to force Ukraine to capitulate to Russia on threat of losing US intelligence and arms (though Cristo Grozev believes there are two bullets that Russia did not release publicly).

Phillips OBrien announced, hopefully prematurely, that this was the long-awaited denouement of Trump’s long con of pretending he cares about Ukraine.

Instead, what actually happened on November 21 was that the Trump Administration came for Ukraine—as they always intended to do. The Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, a very close associate of VP JD Vance, went to Kyiv and tried to bully the Ukrainians into accepting Trump’s 28 Point Plan to neuter Ukraine. Driscoll formally presented the plan to divide Ukraine now, and end it later, and the reality of what Ukraine and Europe was facing finally sunk in. Here was how the Atlantic story on the meeting began.

Dan Driscoll kept everyone waiting. The United States secretary of the Army had been due to arrive earlier today at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Kyiv to speak with diplomats from NATO member states. The guests were eager to hear about the 28-point peace plan Driscoll had delivered on behalf of the Trump administration to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But what they heard when Driscoll finally got there left some of the Europeans infuriated. “I feel nauseous,” one diplomat told us afterward. “It’s like the world is shattering around us, and we are watching it in real time.”

The most depressing thing from the above story was that the diplomat was surprised at what the administration was doing; or I should say that the unnamed diplomat had fallen for the Trump Administration’s long con. The long con was that they would ever do anything meaningful to hurt Putin and help Ukraine, that somehow they were honest brokers in this war. They never were. They have always wanted Putin to get the best deal possible and they have always wanted to severely weaken Ukraine. Whatever steps the administration took to seem to help Ukraine were performative; steps that were designed to make it look like they would be tough on Putin, but in the end never were more mirage-like than anything else.

Michael Weiss catalogs all the signs that the deal was, instead, Kirill Dmitriev successfully manipulating the press.

What struck me as odd about this whole affair was that for such a multi-authored, monthlong project, no one from the American side was willing to go on the record to talk about it. Everything was on-background comment — except for Dmitriev, who was only too happy to gibber. Moreover, the State Department was silent; all journalist inquiries directed at Foggy Bottom were not even redirected to the White House, which is highly abnormal on matters of foreign policy sensitivity. Then, late Wednesday night, Rubio, under his personal account, tweeted this: “Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas. And achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

To anyone on nodding terms with diplomatese, this sounded like the whirr of the backpedal, Rubio’s way of trying to downplay expectations created by Dmitriev and Axios and the resulting press frenzy. An “extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas” was not, after all, a signed, sealed, and delivered plan of action, which Politico’s Dasha Burns had described (citing a “senior White House official”) as a “fait accompli,” cobbled together without the input or consent of Brussels. “We don’t really care about the Europeans,” said that same senior White House official, even though the EU and NATO will have an outsize say in determining the future of Ukraine and Europe, from sanctions relief to security assistance.

[snip]

Was Trump really acquainted with the deal in all its details? What did his “support” for Witkoff amount to? Recall that the preliminaries for the doomed Anchorage summit consisted of Witkoff misinterpreting what the Russians were offering (easy enough to do when you rely on an SVR translator) and making it seem as if they’d conceded things they hadn’t. This caused some dyspepsia in the Oval, and Trump later “jokingly” dismissed Witkoff’s ability to parlay with the Russians.

Could this be happening again? And could it be even worse now that Trump (distracted with his imploding MAGA coalition at home, a flush-worthy approval rating, a battering at the polls on Nov. 4, and bloodlust for the domestic opposition) is too busy to care about the finer points of his big, beautiful peace deal for Ukraine? “Sure, Steve, sounds great, keep going” sounded like what amounted to the Trump seal of approval here, but we don’t know because no one bothered to ask this question (or, at least, no one managed to have it answered).

[snip]

Politico now clarified that “a number of people who would have normally been informed of such a plan at the White House and State Department were also not consulted about Witkoff’s renewed push,” with one U.S. official saying there was “zero interagency coordination.” You don’t say.

Reuters (including Erin Banco revisiting her past reporting on Dmitriev’s efforts to do precisely this in Seychelles in 2017) describes some of the machinations in Miami that went into this production.

U.S. officials and lawmakers are increasingly concerned about a meeting last month in which representatives of the Trump administration met with Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian envoy who is under U.S. sanctions, to draft a plan to end the war in Ukraine, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The meeting took place in Miami at the end of October and included special envoy Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Dmitriev, who leads the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), one of Russia’s largest sovereign wealth funds.

The most telling development, however, are competing and quickly evolving stories from Senator Mike Rounds (who would lead opposition to such a plan in the Senate) and Marco Rubio about whether this is a US plan.

Rubio reassured Senators mobilizing opposition to this development that it wasn’t a done deal, but then backtracked to avoid losing his place in the room.

As Yaroslav Trofimoev quipped,

Foreign nations now have to deal with rival factions of the U.S. government who keep major policy initiatives secret from each other and some of which work with foreign powers as the succession battle for 2028 begins, is how one diplomat put it.

One thing that’s happening is that Marco Rubio has survived in the Trump White House as long as he has because he is very good at mirroring, usually passively so. He says, and his State Department says, what his State Department babysitters say, people like Darren Beattie and Christopher Landau. But Rubio has generally remained in the room even at key times, and particularly with Ukraine, has thus far managed to prevent the worst from happening.

Importantly, though, Dmitriev’s tremendous success at manipulating the other people in the room with Trump comes at a time when Tom Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene — neither big backers of Ukraine — showed how to beat Trump: by bypassing Mike Johnson to force a politically difficult vote, and to do so with enough success to force the Senate’s hand.

Brian Fitzpatrick and Don Bacon, both staunch backers of Ukraine in the House, have initiated an effort to replicate that approach.

There are the numbers right now to pass sanctions against Russia: at least 218 in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Those numbers just happen to be similar to the same numbers as it would take to impeach Trump.

Which is to say, the very thing that made it possible for Dmitriev to recruit (ahem) the people in the room with Trump — the flux in the White House now — is also the thing that makes him more vulnerable than he was a month ago.

Exit Marjorie Taylor Greene, for now

There’s a lot about MTG’s departure I’m not much interested in: making Trump the primary actor, making Marge the victim, debating whether she’ll be friend or foe, focusing more on the timing as it relates to getting her pension than as it relates to the healthcare crisis Republicans will soon own.

MTG is far smarter than people give her credit for and she’s very adept at using the tools of right wing politics.

In recent months the good old boys in Georgia and even Trump’s top aides refused to let her run for state-wide office in Georgia, believing she could risk an increasingly purple state.

That was part of, but only part of, the background to her willingness to take a leadership position on Epstein. She does genuinely care about the issue and/or she does recognize its salience among populists.

The part of MTG’s statement that generated the most attention (which appears in ¶¶33 and 34 of her statement) — her prediction Republicans will lose the House and have to stave off a Trump impeachment…

I have too much self respect and dignity, love my family way too much, and do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms. And in turn, be expected to defend the President against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me.

It’s all so absurd and completely unserious. I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.

… Comes long after (¶¶4-12) a series of paragraphs that could be spoken by a racist Zohran Mamdani, and with all the charisma and political acumen he has.

No matter which way the political pendulum swings, Republican or Democrat, nothing ever gets better for the common American man or woman.

The debt goes higher.

Corporate and global interests remain Washington’s sweethearts.

American jobs continue to be replaced whether it’s by illegal labor or legal labor by visas or just shipped overseas.

Small businesses continue to be swallowed by big corporations.

Americans’ hard earned tax dollars always fund foreign wars, foreign aid, and foreign interests.

The spending power of the dollar continues to decline.

The average American family can no longer survive on a single bread winner’s income as both parents must work in order to simply survive.

And today, many in my children’s generation feel hopeless for their future and don’t think they will ever realize the American dream, which breaks my heart.

MTG is taking her significant campaign cash and selling high, and promising to be there to buy low after whatever upcoming catastrophe happens.

When the common American people finally realize and understand that the Political Industrial Complex of both parties is ripping this country apart, that not one elected leader like me is able to stop Washington’s machine from gradually destroying our country, and instead the reality is that they, common Americans, The People, possess the real power over Washington, then I’ll be here by their side to rebuild it.

Until then I’m going back to the people I love, to live life to the fullest as I always have, and look forward to a new path ahead.

She rode Trump’s coattails until she decided the coattails weren’t worth the effort anymore.

Speaker Mike Johnson Demands Better Treatment for Israel’s Prime Minister Than Given the President of the United States

July 24, 2024/136 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Ahead of Bibi Netanyahu’s address to Congress, much of the attention has focused on those — starting with Vice President Harris — who will not attend. Speaker Emerita Pelosi is one of a growing number of Democrats who will instead meet with the families of those still held hostage by Hamas.

Right wingers are trying to make a big stink out of Democrats’ decision not to attend an address by a guy accused of war crimes who openly sides with Republicans (I’ve altered this cover slightly).

What has gone unmentioned, however, is that Speaker Mike Johnson sent out a letter ordering members and their guests to maintain decorum.

In the interests of all involved, we will enforce a zero-tolerance policy for disturbances in the building.

All Members should kindly inform their guests that any disruption of the proceedings of the House is a violation of the rules and may subject the offenders to prosecution. If any disturbance does occur, the Sergeant at Arms and Capitol Police will remove the offending visitor(s) from the gallery and subject them to arrest.

As Members, it is incumbent upon us all to likewise model respect and proper decorum as representatives of the American people and our institution, and as ambassadors of the United States on the world stage.

This is, of course, greater reverence than Republicans have offered of late to Democratic Presidents, most recently when Marjorie Taylor Greene interrupted President Biden’s State of the Union.

It’s not Israel that has been left behind, Speaker Mike.

Trash Talk: Won’t Somebody Think of the Children Edition

September 16, 2023/114 Comments/in Culture, Football, Republicans, Trash Talk /by Rayne

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Bonus second Trash Talk today, a day with perfect football weather here in Michigan — temperatures in the upper 60s to low 70s , partly cloudy, light wind out of the southwest. The scent of freshly mown grass mingled with smoke from tailgaters’ grills, heightening anticipation for today’s games. Depending on where you live, games may already have wrapped or are underway as they are in East Lansing, Michigan.

~ ~ ~

Anticipation doesn’t fully describe what Michigan State University fans and students are likely feeling today. You may already have heard about a new scandal centered on MSU’s football coach, Mel Tucker, who has been accused of sexual harassing behavior by activist Brenda Tracy.

The entire situation reeks because MSU was caught flat footed in its response to the situation in spite of the university’s past history dealing with scandal related to sexual abuse. You’ll recall the prosecution of former osteopathic physician Larry Nassar based on charges he sexually abused dozens of girls and women gymnasts during his practice affiliated with USA Gymnastics and his career with MSU. It took nearly a decade from the first complaints by athletes before Nassar was convicted and jailed.

Here’s a timeline of events related to the allegations about to Mel Tucker:

April 28, 2022 — During a phone call between Tracy and Tucker, Tracy alleged Tucker made sexual comments about her and engaged in nonconsensual masturbation.

December 2022 — Tracy filed a Title IX complaint with MSU.

July 25, 2022 — Rebecca Leitman Veidlinger, an outside investigator hired by MSU, completed the Title IX investigation into Tracy’s allegations.

September 10, 2023 — USA Today published a story disclosing Tracy’s allegations against Tucker, revealing Tracy’s identity. Though Tucker acknowledged to the investigatore he masturbated while on the phone with Tracy, he claimed they were engaged in consensual phone sex, denying misconduct.

September 10, 2023 — MSU suspended Tucker without pay and asked former associate head coach/co-defensive coordinator Harlon Barnett to assume the role of Acting Head Coach in addition to his role as Secondary Coach.

September 13, 2023 — Michigan State University Trustee Dianne Byrum demanded MSU conduct an investigation in the leak of Tracy’s identity which appeared in USA Today’s report. “I am disturbed and outraged by recent reports indicating the name of a claimant in a sexual harassment investigation was intentionally released in an apparent effort to retaliate against her. We should unequivocally condemn attempts to silence or retaliate against victims,” Byrum said.

September 14, 2023 — MSU announced the return of retired former head coach Mark Dantonio to assist Barnett. Dantonio will take on the role of associate head coach.

A hearing has been scheduled for the first week of October, the outcome of which may decide Tucker’s continuing employment with MSU.

Reporting about the allegations has been far from neutral. This report by USA Today — Mel Tucker made millions while he delayed the Michigan State sexual harassment case — published on September 14 assumed Tucker was deliberately delaying the hearing when he refused to accept the August 22-23 dates.

Never mind that August is the busiest month for an NCAA coach. MSU Spartans players attend a preseason camp beginning August 3. Dorm move-in dates are August 22-24. First classes are August 28. The team had 15 practices scheduled between the end of camp and the season opener on September 1.

But sure, Tucker was delaying the hearing. Never mind that USA Today then hammered on Tucker’s wages which surely reflects the intense pressure Tucker’s been under to improve on the Spartans’ past lackluster performance.

The inability to find workable dates in September was a more legitimate problem, but September with a new team is also just as sensitive for NCAA football coaches. The October date makes a lot more sense (and is hardly the kind of extension a certain former president demands for criminal charges).

The intense public scrutiny about this case also wouldn’t have emerged had not USA Today decided to publish its September 10 and 14 pieces. The public would have heard after the October hearing that Tucker was fired if it was determined he violated Title IX, or perhaps the public would never have heard anything if it was determined his behavior had no affect on education under Title IX.

Detroit Free Press shared an interview conducted by FOX 2 Detroit with Tucker’s employment attorney, Deborah Gordon. She’s one of the best employment attorneys in the state and also recommended for representation in Title IX cases. Her explanation of what Tracy and Tucker can expect from the hearing is worth a listen. And yet the Free Press also takes a position by not pushing back against Gordon’s claim to FOX 2 that Tucker was a “high profile guy” who Tracy wanted to “go after. And she did it.”

Of course Tucker’s attorney would say this. What kind of attorney wouldn’t do that for their client?

MSU Spartans play No. 8 ranked Washington Huskies at home in Lansing today – kickoff was at 5:06 p.m. ET.

Expect players, their families, friends, and fans to be quizzed about the scandal because the media needs clickbait.

Can’t imagine what current students and their families as well as prospective students and families are discussing at home about this situation, because nobody in the media is thinking about them at all, nor teaching them about the concept of assuming innocence until one is proven guilty.

~ ~ ~

Disgust as a “conservative” emotion — ?

We kicked around some disgusting GOP behavior in comments last evening beginning with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s skanky on-again-off-again-can’t-stop affair with GOP consultant and alleged sexual harasser Corey Lewandowski. I mentioned studies I’ve run across which found “conservatives” respond more negatively and more intensely to prompts which are often labeled disgusting. See the study linked below for a list of research, some of which underpinned the article in The Atlantic also linked below.

Elad-Strenger J, Proch J, Kessler T. Is Disgust a “Conservative” Emotion? Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2020 Jun;46(6):896-912. doi: 10.1177/0146167219880191. Epub 2019 Oct 16. PMID: 31619133.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31619133/

McAuliffe, Kathleen. “Liberals and Conservatives React in Wildly Different Ways to Repulsive Pictures.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 7 Dec. 2022, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/the-yuck-factor/580465/.

The fundamental problem with this is that many so-called conservatives regularly engage in disgusting behavior and yet this doesn’t shape their voting.

Take the obnoxious example of Lauren Boebert who acted like a particularly nasty spoiled brat recently. TPM has an overview and a video documenting Boebert’s latest public wretchedness:

There’s Videotape! Annals of Feral Lauren Boebert …

Why do GOP voters in Boebert’s district put up with her? This isn’t the first shitty behavior on her part. Even her business which has poisoned consumers giving them bloody diarrhea hasn’t been enough to stop them from voting for her. “Conservatives” in her district didn’t care. They voted her back in for a second term in 2022.

Ditto for Marjorie Taylor Greene and her sorry love life — okay, sex life, because her experiences don’t sound like they’re based on deep affection (It’s the DailyMail, brace yourselves for the photos of her extramarital partners). Just sex and a general disrespect for the traditional Christian institution of marriage with its demand to have and hold a partner while forsaking all others.

Why aren’t “conservatives” in her district disgusted by her readiness to swap sweat, voting her nastiness back into office?

You can surely think of many other examples of disgusting behavior by right-wing candidates and officeholders, like former GOP Senate candidate and spouse abuser Eric Greitens.

Or the mack daddy of marital disrespect, Newt Gingrich, who’s treated animals better than his ex-wives.

And of course The Donald whose proclivities have been hidden by catch-and-kill operations, although not always successfully.

We all know by now that hypocrisy makes not a lick of difference to so-called conservatives. They’re happy bashing on Hunter Biden for his drug addiction, trashing Joe Biden for continuing to love and support his son in spite of Hunter’s challenges.

Why do conservatives’ brains react differently, then to images of disgust, while failing to act constructively on disgusting behavior?

How does the left more effective appeal to conservatives’ disgust when it’s also obvious their disgust can be generated deliberately, as Chris Rufo demonstrated with his attacks on critical race theory?

How do we address this disparity between research results and real life in a way that makes a difference to our nation’s children? Because they’re being taught sexual infidelity and abuse is okay if you’re a Republican, disrespect for vows, oaths, partners is also okay, and other sordid behavior like vaping in shared public space disregarding others’ health is just fine if you’re a Republican.

The Smell of Flop Sweat and Circus Peanuts

July 21, 2023/124 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election, Congress, Republicans /by Rayne

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Buckle up, cupcakes. You know it’s about to go down when the ringmaster summons the clowns.

Like this sad doofus.

[Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, GA-14) sharing stolen photos* attributed to Hunter Biden during a GOP-led House Oversight Committee hearing July 19, 2023.]

She can’t even entertain and distract us on her own without flesh-colored props stolen from someone’s computer.

How entirely predictable this goat rodeo was on Wednesday, though. You could set your watch by the triggers.

~ ~ ~

First, the truth is slowly beginning to seep into the public’s consciousness that lifelong scofflaw Donald J. Trump is in deep shit which is about to meet the oscillator.

As Marcy shared in a post on Tuesday, Trump had a tantrum in his personal social media platform. He acted out after Special Counsel Jack Smith sent him a target letter with a deadline Thursday — today — to appear in front of a grand jury.

Lashing out against law enforcement is far from constructive — unless it serves another purpose like whipping up the base for grifting.

Up to now the angry hyperbole flung at Special Counsel and other investigations hasn’t helped Trump much in public opinion, according to a Politico/Ipsos poll published July 6, a month after Trump was indicted related to possession of classified documents and presidential records.

While right-leaning outlets posted headlines like “Nearly a quarter of Republicans say classified docs charges make them more likely to support Trump: poll” in The Hill, Ipsos’ published its results under a headline which read, “Most Americans think Trump should head to trial before the 2024 election.”

This is not a pretty picture for Trump one month after his indictment, before even more evidence emerges about the case.

Trump will continue to respond the same way until these numbers improve because he’s running out of options.

~ ~ ~

Second, in his tantrum online, Trump called upon the House GOP and whined for their support, demanding “REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS MUST MAKE THIS THEIR # 1 ISSUE!!!”

Why the GOP-led House and not some other political group? Because members of the House are protected by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate clause, Article I, Section 6, Clause 1:

“The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

Clowns like Big Marj and Jim “Ignore the OSU sex abuse” Jordan (R, OH-04) can blab in front of cameras and microphones, say the most obnoxious crap on behalf of their mob boss, and never be held to account so long as they do it while ostensibly representing their constituents.

They’ll keep doing this until voters get fed up with this trash juggling which does nothing to address the country’s real needs.

Really, what does a bunch of stolen nude images of Hunter Biden have to do with tax law enforcement — laws which have already resulted in Hunter Biden being charged with a guilty plea expected in court this next week. This isn’t even a question you’ll note.

These images had jack-doodley-squat to do with the investigation by IRS personnel who should have been looking for documentation of unreported income or fraudulent write-offs and not nudes of a white male in his late 40s engaged in consensual sex with adults.

Because the erstwhile IRS investigators have also not been held to account for their shoddy work which amounts to little more than digging through a digital underwear drawer, they’ll be used over and over again like goats in this clown-riddled rodeo.

~ ~ ~

Third, the influence operation(s) which resulted in disinformation relying on stolen digital nude photos is being picked asunder and exposed for what it is. This site’s readers who’ve been following Marcy’s painstaking effort digging through documentation know well the narrative created by Trump, the GOP, and other entities is falling apart.

One major tell: the attack on this website after Marcy published her most recent post examining media outlets’ role in the influence operation suggests the details she’s shared have hit a nerve.

Not only has the ringmaster summoned the clowns to change the subject as loudly and obnoxiously as possible, but an attempt was made to shut down and silence an open source investigation.

Can’t imagine why that would be necessary given how entertaining the truth has been.

~ ~ ~

Lastly, there’s another narrative both the ringmaster and a certain clown needed to drown out in a big fat hurry.

Oops.

So utterly predictable which clown would be in the center arena of the big top Wednesday.

When the next federal indictment of Trump is announced, which flop-sweaty clown do you think will appear first? Place your bets.

Consider this an open thread. Bring everything not on topic in other threads to this one.

_____
* Image blurred by me because nobody needed to see that; a citizen’s bodily autonomy and personal privacy deserved protection and shouldn’t have been treated like revenge porn without their consent no matter if they failed to pay some of their federal income taxes or carried a handgun while addicted to illegal substances.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Admits Kevin McCarthy Should Have Considered National Security before Harming It

February 28, 2023/41 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, January 6 Insurrection /by emptywheel

CNN reports that in a GOP leadership meeting, concerns were (anonymously) expressed about the way that Kevin McCarthy gave exclusive access to sensitive security footage from the Capitol to a self-described fan of Vladimir Putin, Tucker Carlson.

[S]ome lawmakers in the closed-door leadership meeting asked whether sensitive security protocols or certain evacuation routes would be exposed by taking that step.

Others questioned how long the footage is going to be dragged out in the press, with some lawmakers concerned about the optics of appearing to try to downplay a deadly insurrection in the US Capitol.

“Let’s just rip the Band-aid off and get this over with,” one GOP lawmaker told CNN.

Sources said McCarthy assured his leadership team that he wants to move swiftly, but said they need to be deliberate about how they handle it to ensure the release does not endanger their security.

Remarkably, it was Marjorie Taylor Greene who had to voice, on the record, the potential danger of showing where the secure back hallways of the Capitol were.

[Marge] told CNN she played a role in McCarthy’s decision to turn the footage over to Carlson, but she wouldn’t go into further detail.

Greene, who was not in the Monday night meeting, said she’s spoken with McCarthy, and that the speaker’s office is coordinating a process for how to release the footage more widely, beyond Fox News, while also ensuring it doesn’t violate any security concerns.

“We can’t give away our national security,” Greene said, “Everyone in Congress agrees. And I think the American people agree. We don’t want Russia or China or any of these other countries being able to study all the entries and exits of our capital. That’s foolish.”

Greene told CNN that Carlson’s team was also given certain parameters for what they could and couldn’t air. “Yes … of course (there were parameters) they’re being extremely careful and responsible.”

Except no one cited in this article — not Marge, not Elise Stefanik (who showed less understanding about the security concerns than Marge), and not CNN itself — raised the problem here.

Kevin McCarthy has already shared this sensitive video with someone that — as a Gang of Eight member — he must know was in discussions about setting up a back channel with Putin, purportedly a long-term effort to set up an interview. Tucker’s own FOIA suggests that effort extended for at least thirty months, as of July 2021. Tucker continues to proudly root for Putin.

The problem is not, just, in Tucker airing surveillance footage that compromises the security of the Capitol. It’s not just that Russian spies might watch Tucker Carlson and decide how to attack the Capitol.

The problem is also that Tucker will either give it to Putin, or store it insecurely and make it available to Russian hackers, a means of obtaining sensitive records that Russia has used in the past.

One of the first things Kevin McCarthy did as Speaker was to give exclusive access to security information to someone openly rooting for Putin, someone who has launched hostile operations against US democracy in recent years.

And McCarthy is only now considering the security implications of having done so.

Kevin McCarthy Makes Sensitive Security Footage Available to the Insurrectionists’ Propagandist

February 21, 2023/73 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, January 6 Insurrection /by emptywheel

Yesterday, Mike Allen revealed that Kevin McCarthy had made all the security footage from January 6 available to Tucker Carlson.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 riot, McCarthy sources tell me.

Carlson TV producers were on Capitol Hill last week to begin digging through the trove, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds. Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks.

Why it matters: Carlson has repeatedly questioned official accounts of 1/6, downplaying the insurrection as “vandalism.”

That he did this is not a surprise. As Allen himself writes, McCarthy has been working on this since early February. And the extremists who used McCarthy’s Speakership to demand concessions have been calling for this almost from the start.

Of particular note, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who spent part of the day yesterday calling for the red states (which may no longer include Georgia) to secede, again, like the last time white supremacists grew impatient with living in an aspiring democracy, spent much of the rest of her day taking credit for the release, tying it directly to her support for McCarthy as Speaker.

Let me repeat that: The person who took credit for this release was, just two hours earlier, calling for Civil War.

And McCarthy provided access to this video to the biggest propagandist for those who attacked the Capitol. Starting almost immediately after some of his viewers attacked the the Capitol, Tucker has been running insanely stupid conspiracy theories, claiming the attack was launched by the Deep State rather than his own viewers and allies. Tucker eventually packaged the propaganda into such a slick propaganda film, it led conservative journalists to leave.

This time around, Tucker might opt for instructing his viewers how to succeed with the next attack rather than lying about the last one.

Depending on the terms via which McCarthy made this footage available, it could also be shared with foreign adversaries. Tucker has long been chummy with Viktor Orbán, and he himself revealed he had been picked up on intercepts seeking a back channel with Russia.

The outcome of this release is hard to measure at this point.

While defendants already have access to any video to their case, when stuff gets released via an alternate channel like this, they often use it to launch new legal challenges and claims of discovery violations. At the very least, this will create new delays and headaches for already overburdened prosecutors.

The security implications, however, are more serious. I did a post in December 2021 showing how video from just one camera over the course of the day — in this case, from the Tunnel through which Joe Biden would walk to be inaugurated weeks later — would reveal where key security cameras were and how to disable them.

It’s likely that the Capitol police has replaced some of these cameras in the interim because the process of prosecuting all those who attacked the Capitol has already compromised their effectiveness.

The other thing making all the video available at once will do is identify where there aren’t (or weren’t) security cameras.

One of those places is McCarthy’s own office.

It’s bad enough that McCarthy made the unilateral decision to release these. It’s bad enough that he decided to release these to someone who, the Dominion lawsuit just revealed, was willing to undermine the democratically elected government of the country for partisan gain.

But McCarthy released them exclusively to Tucker Carlson, meaning they won’t be used to crowdsource more identifications, but will instead be used solely for the purpose of propaganda.

We have yet to get a full accounting for all the commitments McCarthy made to be elected Speaker. But this decision makes clear that he was willing to sell out the country to get the position.

Update: WaPo has a really helpful story on what this means.

The decision by McCarthy to provide the video to Carlson raised serious questions about whether the release of the footage would force U.S. Capitol Police to change the location of security cameras and why the speaker would give the material to a Fox News host who has peddled conspiracy theories about the attack and not share it with other news organizations.

McCarthy, who made numerous concessions to the far-right flank in his GOP conference to win enough votes to become speaker, has said that Republicans would investigate the work of the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee. McCarthy also vowed that Republicans would launch their own inquiry into “why the Capitol complex was not secure” on the day.

[snip]

People familiar with the video footage say that the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection had access to a special dedicated terminal installed in the committee office that had password- protected access to the volume of footage. The committee asked for permission from U.S. Capitol police before they used any of the footage in public hearings, these people said, as they did not want to publicly disclose the location of security cameras in the building.

The committee cut and minimized use of the footage accordingly, these people added.

“We used the material that we thought was most important in demonstrating findings, and we were extremely cautious in what we chose to use,” said a former committee staffer who expressed concerns about the security risks posed by Carlson’s access to the entire trove of surveillance footage. The individual spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk freely about the internal work of the panel.

Posts

Where We Go from Here

Treat Epstein as the base layer

Focus on the Broligarchs and AI

Emphasize Trump’s loser stench

Visualize Trump’s corruption

Brand Trump as the criminal he is

Hold Stephen Miller accountable for his failures

Visualize how Stephen Miller took money for cancer research and veterans care to pay for a goon army snatching grandmothers

Discredit Key Spokespeople

Use Trump’s claimed opposition to antisemitism against him

Reclaim disinformation research

Peeling Off MTG

Four Ways to Fight Fascism: Checking In

The 3.5% rule

Peeling off defectors

Predictable catastrophe

2026

Fridays with Nicole Sandler, Thanksgiving Wednesday Edition!

“Groceries,” and Other Secrets of Managing Donald Trump

Mamdani speaks of Trump voters, groceries, and building

Kirill Dmitriev continues to cultivate the people alone in the room with Trump

Exit Marjorie Taylor Greene, for now

Speaker Mike Johnson Demands Better Treatment for Israel’s Prime Minister Than Given the President of the United States

Trash Talk: Won’t Somebody Think of the Children Edition

The Smell of Flop Sweat and Circus Peanuts

Marjorie Taylor Greene Admits Kevin McCarthy Should Have Considered National Security before Harming It

Kevin McCarthy Makes Sensitive Security Footage Available to the Insurrectionists’ Propagandist

Interesting links

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