Illustrations TPM/Getty Images Audio: Youtube-AverytheCubanAmerican/Jackie Wilhelm
Some of you sick people have been waiting for this all year 🫶🏻
TPM’s 17th annual celebration of our beloved Golden Duke Awards – the season where the TPM community comes together to celebrate those who have given us new highs (lowers) in the realm of public treachery, political corruption, venality and absurdity – is special this year. Not only is it TPM’s 25th anniversary as an independent news outlet born from our coverage of the lawlessness of the George W. Bush administration, but it is a special, if sad, year for those who have grown to love TPM’s annual toast to our country’s most stubborn political trolls.
And in honor of TPM’s 25th anniversary, we’ll be giving away free 25th anniversary hats and/or t-shirts to readers whose nominations we like best and choose to include in the voting that begins next week!
Submit your nominations for the 2025 Golden Duke Awards below and may the biggest hustler win.
In memory, we change things. Instead of asking you, dear readers, to submit nominations for these deliciously corrupt public actors in each of the traditional categories (Best Scandal – General Interest, Best Scandal – Sex and Widespread Carnality, Best Scandal – Local Location, Meritorious Achievement in Madness), we are asking you to flood our submission form below ⤵️ with anyone you think deserves praise for their disastrous behavior this year, and why. The options are endless.
And in honor of TPM’s 25th anniversary, we’ll be giving away free 25th anniversary hats and/or t-shirts to readers whose nominations we like best and choose to include in the voting that begins next week!
Submit your nominations for the 2025 Golden Duke Awards below and may the biggest hustler win.
This year’s awards, however, bring an important distinction. Duke Cunningham – the former congressman who accepted millions from defense contractors in exchange for lucrative federal government contracts and whose other outrageous misdeeds and sex parties amused us so much (more grisly details here) that we decided to create an annual tradition of saluting the buffoonery in his honor – died in August of this year, at the age of 83. Our thoughts are with his friends and family.
In memory, we change things. Instead of asking you, dear readers, to submit nominations for these deliciously corrupt public actors in each of the traditional categories (Best Scandal – General Interest, Best Scandal – Sex and Widespread Carnality, Best Scandal – Local Location, Meritorious Achievement in Madness), we are asking you to flood our submission form below ⤵️ with anyone you think deserves praise for their disastrous behavior this year, and why. The options are endless.
And in honor of TPM’s 25th anniversary, we’ll be giving away free 25th anniversary hats and/or t-shirts to readers whose nominations we like best and choose to include in the voting that begins next week!
Submit your nominations for the 2025 Golden Duke Awards below and may the biggest hustler win.
Since taking over TPM’s annual commemoration of those who have best betrayed the public, I have found myself offering readers a similar caution: The Golden Duke Awards were created at a time when the corruption we have cataloged was less endemic. Now that American politics has been overtaken by some of the worst people in the country (billionaire oligarchs and racist extremists who love political violence now literally run the government), the corruption at the heart of the Golden Duke Awards seems quaint.
This year’s awards, however, bring an important distinction. Duke Cunningham – the former congressman who accepted millions from defense contractors in exchange for lucrative federal government contracts and whose other outrageous misdeeds and sex parties amused us so much (more grisly details here) that we decided to create an annual tradition of saluting the buffoonery in his honor – died in August of this year, at the age of 83. Our thoughts are with his friends and family.
In memory, we change things. Instead of asking you, dear readers, to submit nominations for these deliciously corrupt public actors in each of the traditional categories (Best Scandal – General Interest, Best Scandal – Sex and Widespread Carnality, Best Scandal – Local Location, Meritorious Achievement in Madness), we are asking you to flood our submission form below ⤵️ with anyone you think deserves praise for their disastrous behavior this year, and why. The options are endless.
And in honor of TPM’s 25th anniversary, we’ll be giving away free 25th anniversary hats and/or t-shirts to readers whose nominations we like best and choose to include in the voting that begins next week!
Submit your nominations for the 2025 Golden Duke Awards below and may the biggest hustler win.
Since taking over TPM’s annual commemoration of those who have best betrayed the public, I have found myself offering readers a similar caution: The Golden Duke Awards were created at a time when the corruption we have cataloged was less endemic. Now that American politics has been overtaken by some of the worst people in the country (billionaire oligarchs and racist extremists who love political violence now literally run the government), the corruption at the heart of the Golden Duke Awards seems quaint.
This year’s awards, however, bring an important distinction. Duke Cunningham – the former congressman who accepted millions from defense contractors in exchange for lucrative federal government contracts and whose other outrageous misdeeds and sex parties amused us so much (more grisly details here) that we decided to create an annual tradition of saluting the buffoonery in his honor – died in August of this year, at the age of 83. Our thoughts are with his friends and family.
In memory, we change things. Instead of asking you, dear readers, to submit nominations for these deliciously corrupt public actors in each of the traditional categories (Best Scandal – General Interest, Best Scandal – Sex and Widespread Carnality, Best Scandal – Local Location, Meritorious Achievement in Madness), we are asking you to flood our submission form below ⤵️ with anyone you think deserves praise for their disastrous behavior this year, and why. The options are endless.
And in honor of TPM’s 25th anniversary, we’ll be giving away free 25th anniversary hats and/or t-shirts to readers whose nominations we like best and choose to include in the voting that begins next week!
Submit your nominations for the 2025 Golden Duke Awards below and may the biggest hustler win.
