Hello TPM members and welcome to the weekend. In case you missed it, we did a Reddit AMA with Josh this week. You can see some highlights here.
Here’s what happened in Prime this week.
- Does the Trump administration want to use the 2001 AUMF for war with Iran?
- Jail cell to statehouse: The unbelievable comeback of Joe Morrissey.
- Montana Governor Steve Bullock is mad that he didn’t make it into the first debate.
- Tierney Sneed took TPM’s Instagram account to Capitol Hill with her.
- “On a given day, you could point to any of a number of mal- and mis-feasances and say THAT is the epitome of the Trump administration. Today is the OSC’s smackdown of Kellyanne Conway.”
- Michael Flynn’s new attorney has raged at Mueller’s team for years.
- A border vigilante in a militia we’ve been covering has a side hobby: Wild West re-enactor.
- Here’s how lawmakers’ plan to give themselves a raise totally backfired.
- Josh Marshall: “It is important to understand that perceived electability can create a feedback loop of support in a primary race.”
- Democrats’ hearing to focus on the Mueller report — without Mueller — didn’t really work out.
- A reader writes: “We should devote more attention to the mismatch between expectations by those who voted for Democratic House candidates in 2018 and the slow walking approach of House Democrats since January.”
- Ken Cuccinelli, the immigration hardliner, is just the latest Trump administration official to ascend to the top of an executive branch agency as a result of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, the law that enables Trump’s enthusiasm for “acting,” rather than permanent, agency heads.