It's Never Very Funny With These Clowns

Authoritarians through and through

Yesterday I emphasized the increasing toothlessness of many of the administration’s efforts to punish or intimidate its enemies. And indeed another of their pathetic letters was reported on.

As Finya Swai writes in The Hill:

“A top federal prosecutor warned Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to preserve records related to his investigations into the donors funding President Trump’s White House ballroom project, accusing the senator of using congressional oversight to harass private citizens.

“Aaron Reitz, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, claimed in a letter dated Nov. 11 that Blumenthal’s probe threatened the constitutional rights of Americans who contributed to the roughly $400 million project. He warned that failing to preserve relevant documents could carry ‘significant legal consequences.’”

Blumenthal already made a public response:

Blumenthal has a Bluesky account but did not post his response to the letter there. Pro tip for Blumenthal and any Democratic elected officials who want to get more votes in primaries: communicate with your base.

Whether or not (also) posting to the Elon Musk-controlled platform X is a smart way for Democrats to reach the American people, Reitz sure has an X account, and he replied to Blumenthal:

Reitz’s reply traffics the same pseudoconstitutional nonsense that White House counsel Will Scharf employed in his letter to Representative Robert Garcia. If you’re interested in probing the flimsy grounds on which Scharf and Reitz have constructed this legalistic argument against an inherent constitutional power of Congress, contributing editor Adam Rust discusses it in the first 15 minutes of yesterday’s episode of Liberal Currents Live.

It’s easy to see the flailing, the incompetence, and most of all the threats that have no chance of being carried out, and simply dismiss all of it as a clown show and a joke.

It is unserious, but it is not a joke. Let us not forget that the administration has not stopped its very aggressive investigation into Representative Ilhan Omar over entirely baseless suspicions. Even if Omar and other immediate enemies of the administration like her end up safe in the end, there is frequently collateral damage. 

As Ernesto Londoño and Abdi Latif Dahir reported in the New York Times this week:

“Federal prosecutors filed a felony charge earlier this year against a man who briefly served as a bodyguard for Representative Ilhan Omar in what his lawyer described as an unusual gambit to obtain incriminating information about the lawmaker. …

“Mr. Mohamed’s lawyer, Bruce Rivers, said that prosecutors spent months trying to turn the bodyguard into an informant to bolster their case against Ms. Omar. In a move he described as shocking, Mr. Rivers said that prosecutors repeatedly told him and Mr. Mohamed that the investigation into Ms. Omar was ‘100 percent being run by 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.,’ the address of the White House.

“‘I’ve never seen anything like this in my almost 28 years practicing law in federal court,’ said Mr. Rivers, a veteran criminal defense lawyer in Minneapolis.”

To summarize some of the further details of the case, Mohamed was seeking a green card after marrying an American citizen. He was asked some non-standard questions in his interview, including “whether he had worked on behalf of the Somali government while in the United States and whether he had ‘any interactions with any government officials or politicians in the United States.’” Having poor command of English, he answered the latter inaccurately, and they used this to reject his green card petition and begin investigating him for lying to a government official.

They then tried to flip him to get dirt on Omar. They did not succeed, but they have more or less ruined this one man’s life simply because he was a possible tool for punishing one of their political enemies.

Don’t let either our victories or their failures delude you. These people are rotten to their core and they will continue to hurt, humiliate, deport, and kill to get their way.

Trump cuts Vance down on Iran

Aamer Madhani reports for the Associated Press:

“Trump brusquely told the vice president in a social media post Thursday to shift his energies away from the Iran war to what he argues is a more pressing—and perhaps more politically salient—issue after Republicans were trounced at the polls.

“‘We don’t need a deal with Iran,’ Trump said in the post. ‘Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!’”

Vance’s brief little stint play-acting as an independent voice within the GOP is likely over before it truly begins. Whether his 2028 run is as well, time will tell.

Gerrymandering is still getting worse, not better

Joe Perticone has a good overview in the Bulwark of the continuing race to the bottom on gerrymandering.

“In Texas and elsewhere, the Democratic wave caused recently diluted districts to become more competitive, ultimately resulting in colossal Republican defeats and the election of one of the largest Democratic House majorities in modern history. Now Democrats, who over the past two years have redrawn congressional districts in some states they controlled to counteract Republicans’ efforts, are going on offense, exploring ways they can strengthen their own maps by borrowing from the Republican strategy. But some see major downsides and undue risks in this plan. After all, the public won’t give the party a blue wave in every election cycle. …

“In an interview with WISN, Wisconsin Gov.-elect David Crowley said he would sign legislation ordering the creation of a new map that would theoretically benefit Democrats in the state. As I previously reported, other states, including Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland, are teeming with Democrats eager to adjust their maps in advance of the next election cycle.

“But some of the moderate members with whom I spoke—both Democrats and Republicans—want everyone to lay down their pencils and rulers and implement standards to stop partisan redistricting.”

Contrary to what some might think, our ultimate goal here at Liberal Currents is not to bring about a one-party state under Democratic control. The best outcome here is a new, durable political settlement that actually takes gerrymandering off the table, among many other things. But until we get that settlement, it does not pay for Democrats to unilaterally disarm.

Jensen’s law

Around Liberal Currents

• The First Vibe Shift Left in Years, by Nicholas Grossman: Elections can both shape and be shaped by culture.
• The latest Liberal Currents Live, which was planned to be a discussion of what congressional Democrats would do but instead turned into an impromptu discussion of the religious right due to the expertise of the panel we had assembled.
• 2026 Midterms Political Ad Roundup (Half the Answer #115): The good, the bad, and the absolutely deranged AI slop.

Elsewhere, I was a guest on Jesse Dollemore’s show, where we discussed what Democrats can do with the gains they made. Watch that here: Trump and Cronies Are Shaking in Their Boots After Democrats Send Retribution Warning.

Close the week strong

• “Texas’ Next AG Vows ‘Tremendous Scrutiny’ of Tesla-SpaceX Deal,” by Madlin Mekelburg for Bloomberg.
• “Elon Musk’s Campaign Spending Isn’t Why He’ll Be Investigated. DOGE’s Lawlessness Is,” by Anthony L. Fisher for MSNOW.
• “Hegseth Awards Medal to Soldier Who Reprimanded Him and Aides at Arlington Cemetery,” by Haley Britzky for CNN.
• “Election Denialism Losing Steam as Trump Flip Flops on Accepting Midterm Results,” by Jonathan Shorman in the Ohio Capital Journal.
• “French Presidential Hopeful Melenchon Pledges Economic Stimulus, Renews NATO Exit Call,” by Petra Wischgoll in Reuters.
• “Contractor, Landlord at Site of Deadly Brooklyn Building Collapse Cited for Numerous Violations,” by Evan Simko-Bednarski in the New York Daily News.