I’m not sure why this isn’t being mentioned more, but: IRS policy for 50 years has been that the sitting president & VP get audited every year, in an effort to reassure the public they’re not corruptly abusing the office to enrich themselves.

Again, this Trump IRS thing is not a “settlement” or a “deal” or something with any legal basis at all. It’s pure corruption; colluding with his Acting AG to loot the Treasury; pay off his mob; and preemptively immunize himself and his heirs against investigation for fraud.

Trump did not reach a settlement with the government. There was no case to settle. He has not created a slush fund. He has colluded with Todd Blanche to steal money from the US Treasury. This is not a “deal.” This is a crime for which Trump & Blanche must be prosecuted. It ia a crime.

Have thought a bit about this over the years and this is exactly right (and the only way to get it done).

I say without hyperbole that this is the most brazenly corrupt action in US Presidential history. That it does not immediately lead to impeachment is a dangerous sign of how far the rule of law has declined.

Republicans are so cravenly complicit that I don’t think reporters really bother to ask them about this. But it doesn’t help that Dems are so afraid of phantoms that they’ll never say what the correct remedy here is. There’s no impetus to ask, “will you launch an impeachment inquiry as Dems demand?”

On the left is an Onion headline from March. On the right is Reuters, today.

In addition to fighting back against GOP gerrymandering, here’s another reason why state-level races so important in 2026: if Dems win trifectas in combo of MI, PA, WI, NV & AZ they can put National Popular Vote Interstate Compact over 270 electoral votes & elect next president with popular vote

The honest version of this post would note that these are white Republicans trying to eliminate the district of the state's only Black US rep. You cannot tell this story properly without headlining the racism.

Justice Alito complaining about the Court granting a stay without any reasoning is, shall we say, rich? He's been in the majority in scores of such cases, many involving elections.

A phenomenal breakdown of the bias in how the NYT treats the Trump family’s corruption vs how it has treated Democrats in the past

I’m a broken record, but it’s facially insane that the SCOTUS’s position is that the interest of a political party—an entity with no special constitutional protection—in gerrymandering is more important than black people’s right to vote, which we have several constitutional amendments addressing

I am very tired of the stupid-savvy 'oh you think politicians were honest before Donald Trump' take, like yes there has in fact been a qualitative change in the way modern american politics have been conducted that is largely attributable to him, and is bad.

Killing the VRA when they did & dropping any pretense that the “too late to make election changes” rule applies fairly to the GOP ensured that: 1) The GOP could gerrymander several states 2) It’s too late for Dems to sue or pass new maps in 2026 Trump is desperate because he’s losing the midterms

Democrats lose procedural battles and revert to the same recourse: "We just have to win the next election." But that's always how a party should feel. Of course you have to win. This default approach throwing everything into the basket of electoralism has failed. www.offmessage.net/p/the-failed...

Really hard to imagine a crew more comprehensively crude, malign, incompetent, corrupt and shameless getting hold of a previously mostly functional state than the appalling specimens now running this country into every available ditch.

I'm quoted in Margaret Sullivan's excellent piece suggesting 5 ways the news outlets can upgrade their political coverage and stop getting manipulated by liars. I especially like: "Don’t put lies or falsehoods into headlines or news alerts." @sulliview.bsky.social

As I told some people on the Hill recently, Trump is writing the Dems’ ads for them. He’s at -50 on handling prices, and 50% of persuadable voters say the economy/prices is their top issue, and they trust Dems by 10 on it (will likely increase with new data). This is a huge easy W for Dems

we can keep trying to kick Lucy's football or we can acknowledge that the cause of American democracy requires deep structural reforms to the Supreme Court

This is absolutely outrageous. SCOTUS reinstated Texas gerrymander 15 weeks before primary because they claimed it was too close to election to block it but now allowing Alabama to gerrymander one week before primary after trial court found map was intentionally discriminatory against Black voters

One reason FDR's court-packing plan failed to catch on is that the Supreme Court was perceived by many Americans as apolitical and therefore a victim of unwarranted aggression from the president. This court, however, is nakedly partisan. And any Democrat in power should be saying so early and often

i think it is a testament to the inherent radicalism of the reconstruction amendments that the supreme court’s main project with regards to them has been to limit and weaken their impact on american society.

I just don't think democracy is formally compatible with an apex court that views itself as unanswerable to its coordinate branches and which exercises its docket control so to hand down unreasoned judgments that reshape congressional elections in favor, consistently, of one party over the other.

It's that simple. It's not even a 'thumb on the scale' or 'Republicans win close questions' issue. SCOTUS doesn't bother maintaining the pretext of consistently apply judicial methodology, they're just constantly maximizing GOP political power, no matter what that requires.

If you're left-of-center and still subscribed to the New York Times -- whose leaders absolutely despise you and everything you hold dear -- I'm going to assume you're just a masochist at this point. There are good reporters there, but their bosses? They fucking hate you. They hate hate hate you.

WELCOME BACK, CLAIRE EMSLIE 🗣️ LA’s favorite Scot and star forward has been moved to the active roster for the club for the first time since going on maternity leave. Get loud for Claire in the chat!

Still waiting for the first hero to stand up and say something to Trump as he berates and personally attacks another female reporter who asked a legitimate question. It will probably never happen because some things are more important than decency and courage. I guess.

yes. change the statute on which this decision turned and redistrict according to the legitimacy conferred by the people of the state

Virginia Gov @abigailspanberger.com and Democratic legislature should pass immediate legislation to redistrict anyway. If the old confederate states can do it post Callais - so can Dems in Virginia if they care about saving our democracy.

personally I think it's a very big deal that the Canada bureau chief for the @nytimes.com — certainly one of the highest-paid journalists in the country — asked an unspecified "AI tool" what Poilievre said & published its AI-hallucinated quotes in her reporting.

Ludicrously anodyne framing from NYT here effectively launders the Trump/GOP rigging of elections and reduces it all to a simple "who's winning, who's losing" formulation. Explains a lot about why we're in our current mess.

Classic and par for the course.

The three dissenting justices have the goods: "...today the majority has broadened the meaning of the word 'election,' as used in the Virginia Constitution, to include the early voting period. This is in direct conflict with how both Virginia and federal law define an election."

Judge Colleen McMahon (74 years old) has an objectively better understanding of LLMs than every single person affiliated with DOGE, including (ahem, especially) Elon Musk.

This headline from Justice Roberts and the red banner of what Tennessee just did to Memphis after the SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act..

An awful lot of credulous quoting of “federal law enforcement” sources in the coverage of the Louise Lucas matter. Given the manifest politicization of Trump’s DOJ and FBI, why should media agree to quote any of these sources on background?

“The dismantling of USAID, according to models from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children,” Gawande wrote.” hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-s...

These guys are like "if we just call it something else, its not a war" and they do this because it will probably work

We know that if and when Iran reopens the strait, Trump and every bad faith actor in his orbit will pretend to believe Trump is vindicated—and that really, only he could’ve triumphed so exquisitely. It’s thus very important to set the bar now: a humiliating, pointless, eternally discrediting defeat.

Good to see: Senator Adam Schiff tells me that if Dems win Congress, wholesale fumigation and reform of DOJ will be essential due to Trump's world-historical corruption. "DOJ is in shambles," Schiff says. He and others lay out ideas on preventing future travesties: newrepublic.com/article/2099...

Marco Rubio explains that the Trump administration's goal now is merely to reopen the Strait of Hormuz -- the prevailing state of affairs before Trump launched his pointless war

De-MAGA-fication is going to be a massive project. Future Congresses are going to have to think big. The reforms might have to be bigger than those that came after Watergate: newrepublic.com/article/2099...

@sulliview.bsky.social is essential reading, as always.

If you're curious about how Altio's "how dare you question my integrity" concurrence responds to this point about the Purcell "principle ;)" from Jackson, the answer is that it doesn't, because there's just nothing you can say at this point www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

Must. Must.

I'm utterly fascinated by the modern art of journalistic simulacrum at no point do this piece's four authors consider wandering anywhere close to the idea of corruption, or that Trump says a lot of things that are utterly meaningless, or that our regulators no longer function in the public interest

This line in particular makes me feel ill: "The dissent would require that the 2026 congressional elections in Louisiana be held under a map that has been held to be unconstitutional." SCOTUS' Republican majority has long required elections to be held under illegal maps—when it hurts Dems.