Category: Talking Points Memo

There it is. Six months after Election Day, Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin has conceded the North Carolina Supreme Court race to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs.

A note from TPM Reader MA on biomedical research. I’m sharing it because it’s a good simple explanation not only of the nuts and bolts reality of “your cure isn’t going to be there when you need it” but the massive hit to global competitiveness and economic advantage … I’m racking my brain trying to […]

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. The Damage Will Be Done It wasn’t just what the Supreme Court did Tuesday with President Trump’s ban on trans service members in the military. It’s how it did it. The challenge to the ban […]

House Republicans’ work of making sweeping cuts to Medicaid — the social safety net program that provides health care coverage for 72 million low-income and disabled Americans — while publicly pretending they are not doing so continues this week. 

As judges begin to rule on the merits of President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to give him wide latitude to expel alleged Venezuelan gang members, the administration is starting to rack up losses.

The following is very important news about the Trump White House’s unfolding war against biomedical/disease-cure research in the United States. But the set up is a bit complicated. So I want to flag both the complexity and the importance in advance. Because I want to really encourage you to read the set up and the […]

The White House creates AI slop of weeping immigrants being deported, President Trump performs a mocking imitation of a trans weightlifter, the Pentagon wipes government webpages of the military achievements of nonwhite men — this is an administration that luxuriates in Fox News’ A block.

Donald Trump’s Truth Social recently started a streaming service for MAGAs and “pro-family” Christians called Truth+. Hunter Walker was surprised to find that among the top ten most watched movies featured for viewers was a “documentary” about how alien lizard people secretly rule the earth. And that was only the beginning of the fun.

Less than two minutes into the movie, the narrator makes a shocking claim.  “The evidence we are about to present to you has the potential to rewrite thousands of years of human history. It will present evidence that suggests ancient serpent or lizard-like aliens came to earth thousands of years ago,” the narrator says. “We’ll […]

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. Last Undecided Race Of 2024 Nears End Six months after Election Day, a federal judge ordered the North Carolina Board of Elections to certify Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs as the winner of the fiercely contested […]

Politico Nightly has a very interesting observation tied to Trump’s latest fever-dream about a tariff on movies produced outside the United States. Studios are spooked about it and the idea even pushed down entertainment stocks. (As I’ve noted a few times, the current hiatus on the law mattering has a lot of people jumpy.) I’m […]

While most Trump administration officials have avoided weighing in on specifics while House Republicans grapple with how exactly they will try to discreetly slash funding for Medicaid, the Trump admin guy tasked with running the very office overseeing Medicaid and Medicare services offered his opinion on Monday.

About a week ago, both Matt Yglesias and Jonathan Last at The Bulwark had pieces up arguing different electoral strategies for the Democratic Party. Yglesias argued that while the current Democratic Party is at least competitive in national majority votes (good enough for bragging rights and probably the House) they are at a decisive disadvantage […]

Brian Kemp just formally announced he’s not going to run for Senate next year against Senator Jon Ossoff. It’s difficult to convey how big a coup this is for Democrats and how big a setback it is for Republicans for the 2026 midterms. Candidate choice is always important but seldom decisive. This is an exception. […]

Morning Memo comes to you today from Pittsburgh, where my son – whose harrowing path through his college years I’ve previously shared with you – graduated yesterday. Not Normal Three career prosecutors resigned from the Justice Department over a highly unusual post-verdict plea agreement struck by the Trump-appointed acting U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. The […]

Then-candidate Donald Trump and his Republican congressional allies fixated on the great “threat” of noncitizen voting in the 2024 campaigns. Despite copious research showing that this type of voter fraud is extremely rare, it was the election conspiracy theory du jour — out with bamboo fibers, magical voting machines and ballots in dumpsters, in with […]

This is something I’m still trying to get my head around – both the technical legislative details as well as how all this plays in political terms. The details are still fuzzy to me but I want to get the outlines in front of you. At the end of the summer we’ll be coming to […]

Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️ President Trump wants to send to Congress a chunk of the DOGE federal funding cuts that Congress, in a properly functioning democracy, should have voted on in the first place. Its called a rescissions package, and it is a mechanism for Congress to vote to approve […]

I had not seen that David Horowitz died. I have said many very harsh things about Horowitz over the years, going back to one of my earliest pieces in The American Prospect in the late 90s. I even had a few personal run-ins with him. I stand by all of that but it’s not the […]

Close allies of President Trump are asking a judge to give the White House control over much of the federal court system.