Good Riddance to Joe Manchin

Senator Joe Manchin announced Thursday that he will not seek reelection in 2024, but instead will seek to “fight to unite the middle” ground of American voters.

“I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for reelection to the United States Senate,” the West Virginia Democrat said in a video. “But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”

Manchin was critical to the Democrats’ majority in the Senate, a position he often leveraged for increased influence. He tanked multiple major pieces of legislation and regularly sided with Republicans on issues such as infrastructure, student loan relief, and climate change.

In particular, Manchin often teamed up with Senator Kyrsten Sinema to block Democratic efforts. Both worked to keep the filibuster and prevented Democrats from passing student loan relief.

Manchin’s exit message is not new. In the past year, he has openly toyed with switching his political affiliation to independent. He accused other Democrats of shifting too far to the left and leaving behind more moderate voters.

He has also hinted at a third-party presidential run, insisting that an independent candidate would be able to unite a politically divided electorate. Manchin spoke in July at an event hosted by No Labels, a bipartisan centrist political advocacy group, further fueling speculation.

His announcement on Thursday focused on uniting “the middle”—and this could very well be a sign that he’ll soon announce his 2024 bid for the White House.

If that’s true, it’s worth reminding Manchin: Independent candidates tend to perform terribly, instead siphoning just enough votes away from one of the main party candidates to swing the election towards the other.

Republican senators insist—and some Democratic ones fear—that a Manchin candidacy would pull enough votes away from Joe Biden to tip the 2024 election for Donald Trump. But a July poll by Monmouth University found that if Manchin runs, it will swing the election in Biden’s favor.

Either way, is ending up as a political spoiler a risk Manchin wants to take?

This story has been updated.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday walked back a planned vote to subpoena two megadonors connected to Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The reason? Republicans threw a fit.

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee finally took the first step last week to address the high court’s ethics crisis and announced they would seek to subpoena Republican billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow and ultraconservative activist Leonard Leo. Both men feature prominently in the ethics scandal for their relationships with Thomas and Alito. The committee said it would also seek to subpoena wealthy GOP donor Robin Arkley II.

But Chair Dick Durbin appeared to put that all on hold on Thursday, when he abruptly ended a committee meeting after outraged Republicans threatened to retaliate if Crow and Leo were subpoenaed.

Committee Republicans threatened to file multiple amendments relating to border security, social media use, and liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor in opposition to attempts to investigate conservative justices and donors.

“You’re going to have a complete shitshow, but if that’s what you want, that’s what you’re gonna get,” Senator Lindsey Graham warned.

Senator Josh Hawley accused Democrats of orchestrating a “witch hunt” against Thomas.

Durbin backed down and told reporters the committee may try again next week to vote on the subpoenas.

Judiciary Democrats’ spineless response is disappointing, to say the least. Other attempts to rein in the high court and establish a formal code of ethics have stalled. Meanwhile, confidence in the Supreme Court as an institution is rapidly sinking over the ethics scandal.

Crow, a Nazi memorabilia collector, has repeatedly lavished Thomas with expensive gifts. These include island-hopping yacht vacations, private school tuition for Thomas’s nephew, and buying and renovating a Thomas family property, where Thomas’s mother still lives.

Thomas has also been Crow’s guest at Bohemian Grove, which ProPublica describes as a “secretive all-men’s retreat in Northern California” that attracts major corporate and political players. It costs thousands of dollars for a member to bring a guest to the Grove, but Crow has reportedly brought Thomas there almost every year for the past two decades.

Thomas’s visits to the Grove helped him develop a relationship with the Koch brothers. Thomas has participated in events for the Koch donor network for at least a decade. All of his appearances were arranged with the help of dark-money king Leo.

In addition to securing Thomas’s goodwill, Leo also helped organize a luxury vacation that Alito went on. Neither Thomas nor Alito had disclosed any of these lavish gifts on their financial statements.

Republican Representative Greg Murphy said he would vote to hold members of the Biden family in contempt if they didn’t respond to congressional subpoenas, a complete 180 from his position on subpoenas a few years ago.

House Republicans issued subpoenas Wednesday to President Joe Biden’s brother Jim and embattled first son Hunter, as part of their investigation into the family’s supposed criminal business practices. Led by Representative James Comer, the GOP has for months accused Biden of corruption, despite producing no evidence.

During a Thursday interview, CNN host John Berman asked Murphy if he would vote to hold Jim and Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress should they fail to appear before the House.

“Absolutely!” Murphy said. “What do they have to hide?”

Berman then pointed out that Murphy had voted against holding former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt when Bannon refused to testify before the House January 6 investigative committee. Bannon was ultimately convicted of contempt of Congress in October 2022.

Murphy tried to argue that the circumstances were different this time. “It’s a little bit higher, different standards, John, when you have someone who’s in elected office versus someone who’s not in elected office,” he said.

“Who are you saying is in elected office here when you’re talking about holding people in contempt of Congress for being nonresponsive?” Berman pressed.

“Well, tell me what office Steve Bannon was in?” Murphy demanded.

“Well, tell me what office Hunter Biden was in?” Berman replied.

Murphy was visibly stunned. He was silent for a few seconds before stumbling through arguments about the president’s supposed guilt. Republicans, of course, have not subpoenaed Joe Biden.

If Murphy is interested in holding elected officials accountable, he doesn’t even have to look that far. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who is also at the forefront of Republicans’ Biden investigation, has been avoiding a subpoena from the January 6 committee for nearly 600 days.

Republicans have aggressively sought to prove Biden’s guilt, despite the fact that they consistently fail to produce evidence. Their star witnesses debunk the GOP accusations, and lawmakers have even accidentally admitted that they have no evidence and don’t really care about the accuracy of their claims.

Donald Trump tried to attack “incompetent” foreign policy officials in the Biden administration—before confusing two very different countries.

“We have never been closer to World War III, and only for one reason. We have incompetent people talking on our behalf,” Trump said during an event in Florida that took place at the same time as Wednesday night’s Republican debate.

He then began to defend previous comments in which he lauded various world autocrats. “Well, what am I supposed to say? They’re stupid people?” Trump asked the crowd. Trump named Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, whom he previously called “smart” and “very talented.”

In classic Trump style, the former president followed up a defensive litany by seemingly confusing North Korea and China. “Kim Jong Un leads 1.4 billion people, and there is no doubt about who the boss is. And they want me to say he’s not an intelligent man.”

The population of North Korea is in fact closer to 26 million, meaning in the best-case scenario, Trump inflated the population by about 1.3 billion people. In the probably more accurate version, Trump mixed up two Asian countries.

China has a population of 1.4 billion, and this isn’t the first time Trump has mixed up countries. During a speech last month, Trump mixed up two fascist leaders who adore him, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Donald Trump and his three oldest children have all testified in their New York business fraud trial, but most of them will probably be back on the stand soon enough.

Over the past two weeks, Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, and his daughter Ivanka have testified in court about the Trump Organization’s business practices. The New York attorney general has accused them and their allies of fraudulently inflating the value of their real estate assets to get more favorable terms on bank loans. Ivanka is not a co-defendant, because an appeals court ruled that the statute of limitations on her alleged involvement had run out.

But the testimony for all four Trumps spelled disaster, and they may try to rectify it.

“I think on balance, it was bad for the Trump family,” legal expert Lisa Rubin told MSNBC Thursday, referring to the family’s testimonies. “But I will caveat that, saying, we expect three of those four Trumps to come back.”

Rubin explained that the questioning so far has been limited to the scope of Attorney General Letitia James’s lawsuit. Trump, Eric, and Don Jr. will likely testify again so that they can try to give more context to their previous testimony.

“[Trump’s] lawyers want to elicit testimony from all three of those male Trumps that goes beyond what the attorney general was interested in,” Rubin said. “And so they will bring them back to afford them … the latitude that they think the former president and maybe future president … should be afforded to explain himself.”

To say the Trumps’ testimonies went poorly is an understatement. They were repeatedly caught undermining their own defense. Trump, Eric, and Ivanka all had to admit they were involved in working with the organization’s financial statements.

Trump himself effectively admitted Monday that the organization’s financial statements were made with an eye to encourage favorable loans. The New York attorney general’s office revealed that Trump had signed financial documents intended to look good for banks.

The trial, which is only to set damages, has not been going well for Trump. He has been grasping at straws in an attempt to avoid accountability, using an argument the presiding judge has already deemed “worthless” and incorrectly insisting he was president in 2021.