Talking Points Memo

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Elon Musk really does care about the size of the government and that Elon Musk, the world's richest man, is genuinely upset that the grotesque and cruel Big Beautiful Bill doesn't cut enough federal spending. Let's assume this is true.

Well, If Elon Musk had spent more time reading TPM and less time pretending to be good at video games, wantonly fathering children, and playing with chainsaws, he would have been aware that, despite insisting otherwise, the GOP has no interest in actually reducing the deficit. He might have chosen his political alliances more wisely, and saved himself the disappointment. 

In 2020, a week after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, our Tierney Sneed and Josh Kovensky wrote about how the incoming Biden administration would do well to avoid what Barack Obama had come to deride as the "mindless austerity" pushed by GOP budget hawks such as Paul Ryan that stifled policy during his term. As Sneed and Kovensky noted, Trump certainly did not even pretend to care about the deficit then:

Within days of Trump being sworn in as President, Republicans were already backing down from their budget belt-tightening crusade. When Congress' GOP leaders were asked by a reporter at the Jan. 2017 GOP retreat to commit to not adding to the end-of-the year government deficit, no such commitment was made, beyond general platitudes about their commitment to being "fiscal conservatives."
 

The biggest legislative achievement of Trump's first term, the 2017 tax cuts, cost the government $1.5 trillion in revenue while benefiting primarily the rich. Vows that the tax package wouldn't add to the deficit were set aside for vaguer predictions that over the course of several years the tax cuts would  prove to be revenue neutral. Promises that it would pay for itself eventually disappeared as well.

In December, TPM Executive Editor John Light noted how the debt ceiling is regularly used by the GOP as a prop for performative concern. It's possible this sort of fiscal cosplay fooled Musk, a political neophyte who is unaware people aren't laughing at his jokes because they are funny.

Going back more than a decade now, Republicans have regularly used the debt ceiling as hostage-taking exercise, risking national default and credit downgrades in a performative effort to look like budget hawks, or what they imagine budget hawks would look like. Because Republicans will start next year in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, there are no hostages to take except themselves. Couple that with their initial 217-215 margin in the House — barely a vote to spare — and there's plenty of opportunity for inflicting Republican-on-Republican pain.

In April, Emine Yücel reported on the GOP's current fiscal hardliners caving on a key vote after being assured by human smarm Mike Johnson that they'd find another $1.5 trillion in cuts somewhere. Alas, they did not and they will not. 
 

So, it's unfortunate for Elon that he was bamboozled into thinking the GOP is the party of fiscal responsibility. But, in his defense, they have this act down. They've been putting on this show in one form or another for decades.

By joining TPM, you can avoid Elon Musk's mistake. 
 

We talk a lot about various reasons to support TPM: We have original reporting, our newsroom is unionized, we are truly independent with no corporate backer, we're not going to lay off reporters and replace them with AI, members get discounted tickets to live events, members get access to the Hive, members get full RSS feeds, we have Josh Marshall, we have the Morning Memo, we have Where Things Stand, we have The Weekender.

But here's another, arguably more cynical reason to become a member: Less ads. If you really hate ads, you can be an Ad Free member and see zero ads.

It definitely boosts our collective ego to know people support TPM just because they feel we should exist, that the journalism we produce materially enhances not just their lives but everyone's lives, that supporting TPM is akin to supporting the First Amendment and democracy and freedom itself. But maybe that isn't you. In that case, we offer you fewer ads so that while you are reading about the daily assault on everything from trans rights to federal land, you can at least experience this misery in peace. Prime members see way fewer ads, and, again, Ad Free members (Josh likes to call this Prime AF because he fancies himself a jokester) see zero ads.

Just today, Josh Kovensky published an important piece about how the so-called GENIUS Act could wreak havoc on our financial system. But as a 21st century internet user, you are probably most annoyed with crypto because of all the advertisements these people have been buying. Crypto.com even sponsors a huge arena where the freaking Lakers play. One small way to remove annoying crypto hawkers from your life would be a TPM membership, in which you see fewer ads in general. 

So, whatever reason you prefer to support TPM, we appreciate it.
 

There's a phrase in the investment world you may have heard: Sell in May and go away. The saying refers to the idea that investment returns, generally speaking, are better from November to April than they are from May to October. There is even a sort of complementary idea, "the Halloween Indicator."

There is apparently data that makes this more than just a folk theory. But when I first heard it while working as an intern at Bloomberg News, I assumed it was just because the weather was nice and rich people would rather go on vacation than mess around with investments. (Anecdotally, I felt this was vindicated, by the way.)
 

I've been in the news business starting to recognize a similar pattern. When the weather gets nice, generally speaking, people are less engaged in the news. This is especially the case coming off a general election. There is a 100-day period of interest and attention to the new administration and, in this case, the carnage. Then people decide they want to enjoy their lives while they can.

One of the good things about TPM and being funded by members and readers is that it's ok if people take a break. We don't need to maximize pageviews to extract every dollar we possibly can from ad revenue. We don't need to drive "clicks," as the anachronism goes. Instead, we focus on creating relationships with our readers so that they think it's important we exist because we provide a valuable service, not just to them but for the world generally. This also allows us to build things that help people keep up with events at their own pace, maybe with a newsletter or a podcast. 
 

If you want to take, or are taking, a hiatus from political news, that's ok. We'll continue covering bad crypto legislation and rogue EEOC chairs and Trump targeting political enemies. Josh and Kate will continue delivering the best political podcast in the biz. 
 

So grab your membership today. We'll be here when you get back.
 

Much of the TPM team is either in Chicago or en route to Chicago. Tomorrow is the second live edition of the Josh Marshall Podcast Featuring Kate Riga.

Last summer something truly historic happened in this city. Something we shouldn't forget. Something that hadn't happened since the 1960s: A Major League Baseball team lost 120 games. Actually, the 2024 Chicago White Sox lost 121, eclipsing the 1962 New York Mets who lost 120. At 41-121, they had the 5th worst record by winning percentage since 1901.

It's easy to celebrate greatness. But we often fail to commemorate the truly awful. But not today. To ensure the 2024 White Sox live on, annual Prime and Ad Free memberships are 41 percent off. At TPM, history matters.

There was once a fellow named John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, professionally known as J.B.S. Haldane. He was a scientist who said all kinds of things and, allegedly, knew all kinds of things. A student of his is said to have once remarked that he may have been the last man to know all there was to know in the world. He's credited as having first posited the possibility of in-vitro fertilization and also provided a possible genetic basis for human cloning. "J.B.S. Haldane was perhaps the most brilliant science popularizer of his generation," the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said. On the other end of the ledger, Haldane said some very favorable things about Joseph Stalin. Anyway, I think he's one of the more interesting figures of the 20th century.
 

The reason I bring him up here is because he said something once that I think about a lot: "The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
 

In the same way a dog cannot understand calculus, no matter how hard we try to teach it, there are things about this world I — we — will simply never understand, or even be aware that we could understand.
 

Every once in awhile, though, I'm humbled, and something completely insane is presented to me. In these moments, I understand this strange rock and the people on it just a little better. Or maybe a little worse. I'm not quite sure.
 

Last week, we're all in the newsroom and I get wind of a story coming down the pike about a "documentary" on Truth Social's streaming platform about lizard people who inhabit planet earth, and another, similar film about how Jesus and The Buddha are aliens. Weird, weird stuff, certainly queerer than anything I could have supposed would be published on Talking Points Memo dot Com, a political news publication. But, these are the times in which we find ourselves.
 

One of the issues with a lot of political news outlets these days is they lack the imagination, the openness — the "beginner's mind," as the Buddha might have called it — to grapple with the challenges we face at the moment. This stuff — lizard people and aliens — it might seem inconsequential and dumb and beside the point. Certainly not as important as voting rights and trans rights and, well, rights in general, which we also cover. But it's all of a piece. It's "flooding the zone" with shit, blurring the lines between documentary and science fiction, what is right and wrong, and who can be trusted.

That's why at TPM we cover all of it. The more traditional, policy oriented stories about how the administration keeps losing cases in which it tries to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport people to how Trump's Devin Nunes-run streaming platform is peddling conspiracy theories in the guise of documentaries about the origin of world religions. It's all important. It all needs to be covered. So we cover it. With verve, I might add.