Heritage Foundation Implodes Over Carlson-Fuentes Lovefest
A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.
Groyper’s takeover of the GOP
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ initial defense of Tucker Carlson’s interview with rabid anti-Semite Nick Fuentes has now sparked an open revolt within the venerable right-wing think tank, WaPo reports.
Although Roberts backed away from her initial full-throated defense of Carlson, her apology didn’t stop a Heritage staff meeting Wednesday from turning into a shitshow. Some of the highlights of WaPo:
- “During the meeting, legal scholar Amy Swearer called Roberts’ handling of the controversy ‘a master class in cowardice that covered up the most deranged dregs of the far right’ and described a loss of confidence in his leadership.”
- “Asked later in the meeting about his use of the term “globalists” – a common dog whistle for a conspiratorial view of global “Jewry” – Roberts responded that he did not mean to imply criticism of anyone of a particular faith. »
- When Roberts’ speechwriter complained that responding to accusations of anti-Semitism might mean he would be forced to attend a Shabbat dinner and violate his own faith, another Heritage executive retorted: “I am deeply sorry that you could not have seen this as a generous offer but rather as a personal attack on you.” »
At least five members of Heritage’s anti-Semitism task force have resigned in protest, including attorney Ian Speir, who emailed WaPo:
When Kevin Roberts repeatedly defended Tucker Carlson after his glove treatment of Nick Fuentes, I lost faith that Heritage is the right institution to take on this important fight. We cannot allow this malicious evil to intrude further into our political and civil discourse. This will literally destroy us.
On one level, it’s amusing to see conservatives squirm at their party’s Groyperism – even though they have been very slow to respond to what has been obvious for years.
“The distance between Fuentes and the mainstream Republican Party isn’t really that great,” Richard Hanania told the New York Times, whose description of him is itself instructive: “a conservative writer who once published under a pseudonym on white supremacist forums. (He has since denounced his past writings.)”
Back at Heritage, Roberts threw his own chief of staff under the bus for writing the speech that landed Roberts in so much hot water:
On Monday, Roberts reassigned his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, to a lower-ranking position. As of Tuesday, Neuhaus was no longer employed by Heritage. On Wednesday, Roberts called him a “good man” who “made a mistake” and said he was largely responsible for writing Roberts’ controversial remarks.
Most striking was this sentence: “Two people close to Neuhaus said he saw his departure as an attempt to appease Jewish Republicans. »
Happy reading
WaPo: The secret circle of donors that helped bail out JD Vance is rewriting MAGA’s future
Bad day for Trump tariffs at SCOTUS
One could feel the legal community breathing a sigh of relief that even the Roberts Court could not bring itself to adopt President Trump’s tariffs. His extremely broad view of presidential power at the expense of Congress was a bridge too far in yesterday’s oral arguments. How many judges will rule against Trump and how they will do so remains open questions, but the alternative – a ruling in Trump’s favor – would have resulted in almost unlimited executive power and the collapse of an already shaky constitutional order:
- TPM’s Layla A. Jones: Liberal Justices Brazenly Use Conservatives’ Favorite Legal Theories to Push for Ruling Against Trump on Tariffs
- WSJ: A justice-by-justice analysis of Trump’s tariffs
- Politico: 5 takeaways from the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in the Trump tariff case
Trump: ‘They’ll probably never get power’
Early electoral theories
It will take some time to analyze Tuesday’s election results — and early analyzes are often wrong — but of the many analyzes floating around in the ether, these three caught my attention:
- Pollsters struggled to identify the expected electorate — the partisan makeup of those who would actually vote. Angela Kuefler, pollster for the campaigns of Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, told the WSJ that the most accurate partisan mix turned out to be the 2017 election, the first year of Trump’s first term. “Polls that used the 2017 electorate as a guide produced a Sherrill victory of 12 or 13 points, consistent with the actual result,” the newspaper reported.
- The Democrats managed to win over “a modest but significant slice” of Trump supporters, reports Nate Cohn. “[T]The available data generally suggest that Democratic gains were generated slightly more by toppling Mr. Trump’s supporters than by benefiting from higher turnout,” according to Cohn’s analysis of the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey.
- Perhaps the internecine dispute over whether to attack Trump or focus on kitchen table issues is a false dichotomy, writes Greg Sargent: “The Democratic Party’s resounding victories Tuesday night underscore a fundamental reality of the Donald Trump era: anti-Trump politics. East financial accessibility policy and financial accessibility policy East anti-Trump politics.
Judge scolds Comey prosecutors
At a first procedural hearing in the prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick lamented the government’s “charge first and investigate later” approach.
A frustrated Fitzpatrick said the prosecution was not a “traditional case” and that “the procedural posture of this case is very unusual.”
Fitzpatrick largely sided with Comey, ordering prosecutors to turn over by today “all current prosecution transcripts and grand jury documents as well as evidence that FBI agents seized during a previous leak investigation in 2019 and 2020,” NBC News reported.
Quote of the day
“Obviously, some of these conditions are, in my opinion, disgusting. Having to sleep on the floor next to an overflowing toilet, that’s obviously unconstitutional.”U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman of Chicago, who ordered the federal government to provide bedding, hygiene products, daily showers, clean toilets and three meals a day at the ICE facility in Broadview.
For your radar…
In the case of Chanthila Souvannarath, who was deported to Laos last month despite a federal court order barring her deportation, U.S. District Judge Shelly D. Dick in Baton Rouge allowed limited written discovery of the circumstances of the deportation.
It is “clear that there are factual questions about the timing and circumstances of this Court’s alleged violation of the TRO,” Dick said in his latest ruling. The Trump administration says it only received the court order after Souvannarath’s deportation.
Echoing the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration argues, among other things, that Dick lacks jurisdiction because Souvannarath was deported from his judicial district to Alexandria, Louisiana, while the case was pending and because it cannot compel the government of Laos to remove him.
Venezuela Watch
Trump’s DOJ is working on a legal justification to target Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a military operation, the WSJ reports.
Someone should ask the Groper-in-Chief about this
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum files a complaint after being groped in the street while walking from the National Palace to the Ministry of Education: “If this is done to the president, what will happen to all the young women in our country?
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