Talking Points Memo

If you are struggling to keep up with the barrage of executive orders and lawsuits; Trump's nominations and Trump's purges; if you aren't sure if Trump is even really the president or if Elon is running the show, TPM can help. 

No, we cannot stop these things from happening, but we can provide clarity and understanding. It's no secret that chaos itself is part of the Trump s really going on while the billionaires break into the Treasury Department. So clarity and understanding, while not sufficient conditions for getting through this administration with our democracy intact, are absolutely necessary.

For example, as Kate Riga illustrates in her reporting this week, there's an increasing divide between what Trump's DOJ lawyers are arguing in court and what the Trump administration is actually saying out loud. A third thing — what they are doing — remains at times murky.
 

Given congressional Republicans' professed indifference to his and Musk's power grab, the judiciary is the only institution willing and powerful enough to counter him. 
 

That makes that dividing line between what the DOJ says in court filings and what Trump's coterie fires off on social media critically important. If there's a blurring of that line, if the rhetoric of the latter becomes action unconstrained by the former, Trump has brought us to full-on crisis. 

The court order by a federal judge in Rhode Island handed down Monday may indicate which way the winds are blowing — or, at least, that the administration is too incompetent to fully comply with court orders as it takes a sledgehammer to the federal government: The judge found that the Trump administration is not abiding by his decision to block the federal funding freeze. 

In times like these, a credulous media is nothing but an asset to Trump and Co. Regurgitating what Trump and his cronies are saying about defying the judiciary without narrating  it within the context of what his attorneys are actually willing to say in court — not to mention the historic precedent — would be a disservice to readers. 
 

TPM was built to accurately communicate complexity. I'm not sure we anticipated the stakes were ever going to be quite this high, but nonetheless, the fundamentals of journalism remain the same. Unlike Trump, we're not sloppy. That's how we've survived and thrived for 25 years as a digital media outlet. We hope you'll join us for the next 25.