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Beatlefan first was published just before Christmas in 1978, so we’re marking its 45th anniversary. Through various landmark anniversaries in the past, Executive Editor Al Sussman, our original New York correspondent, has interviewed Bill and Leslie King about how the … Continue reading →

Trump caught in another recording Motown’s Berry Gordy might have set the recording to music but Detroit News got there first: Then-President Donald Trump personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by The Detroit News and revealed publicly for the first time. On a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, which also involved Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump told Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two GOP Wayne County canvassers, they’d look “terrible” if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to the recordings. “We’ve got to fight for our country,” said Trump on the recordings, made by a person who was present for the call with Palmer and Hartmann. “We can’t let these people take our country away from us.” Trump didn’t insist they “find 11,780 votes,” but you get the idea.

Semafor reports on a recent meeting by some pretty heavy hitters to strategizde how to stop this sabotage campaign by No Labels: A coalition of Democratic and Republican anti-Trump groups are organizing an aggressive, multi-front campaign to stop the independent group No Labels from injecting a third major candidate in the upcoming 2024 election. Their plans, laid out in a private, roughly 80-minute call obtained by Semafor, include legal attacks, opposition research and warnings to potential candidates and donors that involvement with No Labels could make them politically toxic. No Labels, founded in 2010 by a top Washington political fundraiser, Nancy Jacobson, bills itself as an answer to America’s divisive partisan politics, and has sought to present a poll-tested centrist platform. Democrats believe any such effort is far likelier to pull votes from Biden than from Trump, whose support The call, organized by the center-left Democratic group Third Way with the help of the progressive Move On, also included representatives of End Citizens United, the Lincoln Project, American Bridge, Public Citizen, and Reproductive Freedom for All.

Sometimes you just have to let things play out for awhile: More than 15 million people have signed up for health insurance plans offered on the Affordable Care Act’s federal marketplace, a 33 percent increase compared to the same time last year, according to preliminary data released by the Biden administration on Wednesday. Federal health officials project that more than 19 million people will enroll in 2024 coverage by the end of the current enrollment period next month. That total would include those who gain coverage through state marketplaces, continuing the record-setting pace. Despite a recent warning from former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act, the latest surge in marketplace enrollment is a testament to the law’s enduring power. Legislation passed earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic increased federal subsidies for people buying plans, lowering the costs for many Americans.

Churchill just got the color wrong What better reason to invoke the famous Churchill quote: “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last.” Happy Hollandaise!

It’s a real contest but if I had to choose Donald Trump’s most fatuous claim it would have to be that until he became president “nobody could say Merry Christmas anymore.” He said it again just the other day and his ecstatic followers practically went into a collective fugue state and began speaking in tongues they were so thrilled. This war on Christmas has been a theme on the right for many, many years but Trump is the first politician to say that he “won” it. It was smart. After all, the war didn’t exist in the first place so every time anyone says “Merry Christmas” he gets the credit. Boom! I have no doubt that his right wing evangelical fans are thrilled by all this. This is one of Christianity’s most important holidays after all. On the other hand, most of them are also fine with Trump evoking Adolph Hitler’s rhetoric so their alleged reverence for Christmas as a religious holiday may be beside the point.

That would be Christopher Rufo: I had been wondering why there was such out-sized coverage of this issue. I realize that many members of the elite media went to Ivy League schools so it’s of personal interest. But now I see that it’s a right wing hissy fit ginned up by their chief propagandist. Rufo knows exactly what he’s doing. And I have to assume that the mainstream media knows it too. It’s not as if he’s trying to hide it. Keep your eye on this as we go into the election year. These mini-scandals have a way of affecting close elections depending on the timing. I can’t help but think of the Comey sabotage in 2016. Thee is good evidence that if it had happened a week or so earlier, Clinton would have recovered in the polls. (They bounced up and down a couple of points throughout the fall campaign.) These folks know how to get the media excited and they’ll find a way to dominate unless the public remains vigilant and calls them out. Happy Hollandaise!

Been there, done that … For those of you who are wondering about how to deal with this problem, here’s a handy video from the cat whisperer, Jackson Galaxy:

This was your court, John Roberts SCOTUS-watcher Dahlia Lithwick comments on the dilemma in which the Roberts court finds itself. Choose your clichéd metaphor: painted itself into a corner, hoisted on its own petard, shot itself in the foot, chickens coming home, etc. Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife are just one court soap opera. The fact that conservative funders expend lavish sums to sustain the pair in the style to which they’ve become accustomed makes it clear that both the Federalist Society and SCOTUS conservatives believe justice goes to the highest bidder. The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to ban Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot for engaging in insurrection is on its way to D.C. Thomas will surely not recuse himself from that and other Jan. 6 cases involving players with which his spouse Ginny is closely aligned.