A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Hate To See Rudy Roasted
Under indictment in Arizona for his alleged role in the 2020 fake electors scheme there, Rudy Giuliani had managed for the past few days to avoid being served in that new criminal case.
Feeling cocky, Rudy went on X/Twitter Friday night and began taunting Arizona prosecutors. His gloating didn’t last long. Shortly thereafter, Rudy was served in Palm Beach at his 80th birthday bash, hosted by Trumper Caroline Wren.
That prompted this retort from Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes:
UPDATED: No Trump Verdict Til At Least Next Week
The cross examination of Michael Cohen should end this morning, but we won’t have closing arguments until next Tuesday, the judge just said in open court.
TPM’s Josh Kovensky is liveblogging the trial here.
The wild cards that remain:
(1) How much longer will the Cohen testimony go? We could end up in a bit of a dance of redirects and re-crosses that drag today out a bit – or we could be done with Cohen by late morning. Stay tuned.
(2) Will Trump testify? He loves to promise it, but don’t expect him to deliver. It would be madness.
(3) Will Trump put on any kind of defense case? It will be spartan if he does.
Ed. note: This item was updated based on the new developments Monday morning.
… But Their Yard Signs!
Justice Samuel Alito’s “explanation” for why his wife was flying the American flag upside down at their home as a pro-insurrection protest in the days before Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration is for the ages.
The neighbor dispute that Alito describes – including accusing some of his neighbors of being “very political” natch – doesn’t actually explain anything. “My neighbors were rude in blaming me for Jan. 6 so I proceeded to retaliate by showing my support for Jan. 6” is a first-class non sequitur.
Counter-programming my neighbor’s “Fuck Trump” sign with a symbol warning that America has been taken over by enemy forces in the name of Joe Biden maybe has an internal logic to it but it remains quite insane, especially at the home of a Supreme Court justice.
Many others have imagined the fallout in a scenario where one of the liberal justices let their true flag fly. You get it.
Judge Cannon Is Not Fit For This Moment
Former CIA lawyer Brian Greer: It Is Inexcusable How Judge Cannon Is Delaying the Trump Documents Case
Pelosi’s Husband’s Assailant Must Be Resentenced
The man who broke into then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer was sentenced Friday to 30 years in prison for the attack – but sentencing has been reopened because the judge in the case failed to give the defendant a chance to speak during the sentencing hearing.
The Latest Hunter Walker Special
TPM’s Hunter Walker: Lawsuit Exposes Internal Feuds And Inner Workings Of Stew Peters’ Extremist Media Empire
2024 Ephemera
- David Corn: Here Come the Russians, Again
- Politico: Trump at NRA convention floats 3-term presidency
- NYT: 2 Liberal Groups to Spend $5 Million on State Supreme Court Races
It’s Fundamentally Not An Insurance Problem
The NYT is out with its own version of the “homeowners insurance crisis” story, and it’s better than most in emphasizing that climate change is driving this issue. But it’s still mostly trapped in a framing where instead of treating the lack of insurability as a symptom of the larger problem, it focuses on it as the problem.
The story gives away the game though when it talks about state-backed high-risk pools for homeowners, like in Florida:
So many homeowners have flooded into Florida’s state-backed high-risk pool that it is now the state’s largest insurer, with rates that are too low to reflect the risk it faces in the event of a major hurricane.
It doesn’t matter how big of a pool you create to disperse the risk if the baseline risk is simply too high insure against. And if you don’t price the risk properly on top of that, you’re just shifting the risk from insurances companies and homeowners to taxpayers with no appreciable reduction is risk or in the ultimate cost. It’s a recipe for financial disaster alongside each natural disaster.
It’s Bad Out There For EV Drivers
I have had to make a conscious effort not to turn Morning Memo into a long-running diatribe about the state of EV charging infrastructure in this country. I’m almost four years into owning my first EV. Love the car (2019 Kia Niro EV), love how EVs drive, love the low maintenance. I’d never go back to an IC car, all else being equal. But the public charging infrastructure for EVs remains spotty and often shitty.
I thought I was making the shift as the EV wave was beginning to crest in 2020, but the availability of public EV chargers has gotten only marginally better in the time I’ve owned an EV – and their reliability still stinks. Showing up at a charging station with only some of the chargers working is 100% normal. Showing up where none are working is not uncommon. That only adds to the length of the lines to get a recharge and uncertainty of longer trips.
A couple of things that may make my situation a little different from the optimum EV owner that I knew meant I’d be pushing the envelope a little: I haven’t had off-street parking so no home charger, and I wanted to use the EV for occasional trips up and down the East Coast of as long as 500 miles each way.
I have a higher tolerance than most people for turning what should be casual road trips into white-knuckle adventures. But it’s no way to live, really. I was mostly willing to endure the indignities of being a relatively early adopter, figuring it was a small contribution to nudging along the energy transition. But it’s not getting better as fast as it should, and it’s going to end up being a impediment to the wider adoption of EVs, if it isn’t already.
With a reliable charging network, I’d have been fine. But the charger situation has muted even my enthusiasm for EVs. Not enough to dissuade people from making the plunge, but when people ask how I like my EV, my response is always the same: “The car is great! But lemme tell you about the charging situation …”
For The Ages …
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