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John Light

John is TPM‘s Prime editor. His writing has also appeared at The Atlantic, Mother Jones, Salon, Slate, UN Dispatch, Vox, Worth, and Al Jazeera, and has been broadcast on Public Radio International. Before joining TPM, John was a producer for Bill Moyers and WNYC, and worked as a news writer for Grist. He grew up in New Jersey, studied history and film at Oberlin College, and got his master‘s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Articles by John

Since Barr wrote Congress a murky missive on Sunday outlining what he learned from the Mueller report, the media and political world have been flooded with a torrent of bad faith claims. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following.

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Oral arguments begin this morning on three cases the Supreme Court will hear as it continues to weigh whether partisan gerrymandering is constitutional. Tierney Sneed is at the Court. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following.

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It appears Attorney General Bill Barr will be submitting a summary report of special counsel Mueller’s findings to Congress within the next hour.

Hello TPM Members,

This week saw us, and much of the rest of the news media, in a holding pattern, waiting for the Mueller report. On Friday afternoon, we got the news: The report was in Attorney General Bill Barr’s hands.

Through the weekend, we’ll be very interested in the contents of the Mueller report, if any, that leak from the DOJ, or that members of Congress reveal if and when Barr delivers the report or a summary of it to them. In a letter to Congress, Barr wrote “I am reviewing the report and anticipate that I may be in a position to advise you of the Special Counsel’s principal conclusions as soon as this weekend.”

With Josh on vacation, prolific tweeter and New Republic writer Jeet Heer has taken over the Ed Blog.

Here’s what happened in Prime this week.

  • What will Congress get to see? In his confirmation hearings, Barr promised to be as a transparent as possible, but in written follow-up questions, he included strong qualifiers to the promise.
  • The Pentagon’s inspector general is looking into allegations that acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who spent more than 30 years at Boeing before joining the Trump administration, improperly boosted the company as a government official.
  • Now it’s Pete Buttigieg’s turn to have a moment.
  • Are state lawmakers in Florida trying to undermine Amendment 4?
  • Josh Kovensky runs through what was going on when the feds raided Michael Cohen associate Elliot Broidy’s office last year.
  • The conservative fixation with “shadow banning” predates Devin Nunes’ weird lawsuit.
  • Does Nunes’ suit have anything to do with Trump’s calls to relax libel laws?
  • Scott Walker has a new job, in which he’s claiming to be a needed counterweight to Democrats’ focus on redistricting. That doesn’t make sense.

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A growing number of Democratic bigwigs have devoted their near futures to working on redistricting and other voting-related issues. Former Attorney General Eric Holder, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum have all shrugged off calls to run for office and instead decided to use their platform to get voters registered and redraw district maps that Republicans have so effectively shaped to their advantage.

Scott Walker is taking his career in a similar direction.

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