Greg Sargent Profile picture
Staff writer at the New Republic
94 subscribers
Feb 22 7 tweets 5 min read
Remarkable: Trump's own pollster just found that in swing House districts, Dems lead by 5 points and voters want tax policy to prioritize working people, per Politico.

Yet GOP is about to slash the safety net and give the rich huge tax cuts!

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/191841… Trump's pollster found that in 18 swing House districts, 68% are unhappy about their financial situation. Majorities want ACA's expanded subsidies to continue and oppose corporate tax cuts.

Swing voters want the opposite of what Trump/Rs are set to do.

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Feb 19 4 tweets 3 min read
Scoop --> Trump-Musk cuts just resulted in the firing of numerous top researchers at NIH's center for combating Alzheimer's, sources tell me. They predict big setbacks to fighting dementias.

This cause was once championed by *Republicans.*

Details here:
newrepublic.com/article/191702… These firings just hit the Roy Blunt Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias. Yes, you read that right. It's named after a GOP Senator.

Yesterday afternoon employees were informed of layoffs, including its highly-regarded incoming director. Details:

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Feb 15 4 tweets 3 min read
Awful: Internal USAID memo instructs employees to refrain from talking to the media about cuts in aid to the most vulnerable or they may get fired, WaPo reports.

Trumpworld knows this is a big political problem for them. Keep the focus on it.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/191578… Given this memo ordering USAID employees not to talk to the press, also recall that Trump fired USAID's IG for revealing that the freezes put $500 million in food aid at risk of spoiling.

Dem strategists warning against talking about this are wrong.

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Feb 8 9 tweets 6 min read
In December, NYT revealed that Elon Musk and SpaceX were failing to meet govt reporting protocol designed to protect state secrets while they haul in billions in Pentagon contracts.

This triggered three reviews, per NYT. One was from the Defense Department inspector general. 1/ It's time to ask: What's going on with those reviews into Musk/SpaceX's failure to meet basic reporting protocol linked to their billions in Pentagon contracts?

Dems tell me they fear these investigations might get killed under Trump. 2/

(link)
newrepublic.com/article/191330…
Feb 6 5 tweets 4 min read
It gets worse: Trump's Treasury Dept has a new letter spinning Musk's access to payment data as a mere "audit" that expands on work done during Biden admin. It's a sham. The letter simply ignores the biggest Qs about this scandal.

New piece from me:
newrepublic.com/article/191191… For instance, if Musk's access expands on a review started under Biden, why did Treasury Sec Bessent allow a member of DOGE to oversee it, rather than a career official?

Plus, Sen Wyden tells me former officials are unaware of any previous audit:

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Jan 31 4 tweets 3 min read
The awful news that Elon Musk clashed w/top Treasury official in an effort to access govt payment systems raises a crucial question: Did Trump authorize this, or not?

I talked to former officials who explain why this is a key Q, and why it's so alarming:
newrepublic.com/article/191014… I spoke to former Treasury and OMB officials, and they said Elon Musk accessing government payment systems could give him the power to selectively turn off payments. They described what this really means in very clarifying terms. See below:

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Jan 25 5 tweets 4 min read
The ugly celebration of mass deportations by Trump, the WH, and Karoline Leavitt is vile on its own. But it also has a purpose: It's a pretext for Trump to vastly expand his powers. That's what the "invasion" imagery is really about.

New piece from me:
newrepublic.com/article/190696… WH is pumping out imagery of migrants being marched on to military planes while claiming deportations "have begun." But crossings are down, and as @ReichlinMelnick notes, removals by plane go back years. The point is to portray a state of permanent war.

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Jan 23 4 tweets 3 min read
Good piece by @AdamSerwer identifying a key through line of Trumpism: Creating subordinate, inferior classes that are more easily subjected to persecution and abuse 1/
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Adding to @AdamSerwer, another one of Trump's executive orders also does this: It effectively declares that by pronouncing us under "invasion," Trump is now unbound by Congress or statute in determining what to do w/the "invaders," as I reported. 2/

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Jan 18 5 tweets 4 min read
Scoop --> Republicans didn't intend this, but it turns out the Laken Riley Act gives Steve Bannon a big weapon against Elon Musk. Bannon tells me he'll use it to get MAGA AGs to sue to block H1B visas. Rs created a big mess for themselves here.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/190405… What folks have missed is that the Laken Riley Act's provision empowering state AGs gives Bannon a way to block H1B visas.

Bannon says he'll now get friendly AGs to sue to stop HB1s from, say, India. He's right: He absolutely can do this. Details below

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Dec 14, 2024 5 tweets 4 min read
Ominous: GOPers are now saying Trump is picking Kash Patel to "clean out" FBI and restore its "integrity." This will be their cover to go along w/Trump's scheme to unleash FBI on enemies. Media already credulously echoing this claim. Awful.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/189406… Nobody is required to pretend GOPers actually believe it when they say Trump is picking Kash Patel to "reform" the FBI in any meaningful sense. It's a lie. Rs know Trump is only picking him to target enemies and they should be hounded on this point.

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Dec 9, 2024 7 tweets 5 min read
Trump's win confirmed once again that our information ecosystem is a total dumpster fire, and that Dems need a real answer to it.

I asked three leading candidates for DNC chair how they'd fix this.

Here's what they said. 1/

(new piece from me)
newrepublic.com/article/189147… First note that Elon Musk spent $20 million on the RBG PAC, which sought to deceive people into thinking Trump's abortion stance is similar to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's.

This and X becoming a right wing disinfo machine show the depths of the problem. 2/

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Dec 5, 2024 6 tweets 4 min read
Striking: In numerous cases, Republicans or GOP-aligned industries are now admitting that mass deportations and rolling back Biden's climate agenda could prove disastrous in their parts of the country.

In my new piece, I've compiled many examples of this:
newrepublic.com/article/189054… In Georgia, some local Republicans are openly saying that repealing green energy investments will result in shuttered factories and job loss.

This shows what a scam Trump pulled by claiming the green transition existentially threatens the working class.

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Dec 1, 2024 7 tweets 2 min read
This is a good discussion but on immigration in particular this is not an intellectually adequate frame for understanding what happened. The groups did not dictate the Biden/Harris immigration agenda. If anything they were sidelined/ignored more aggressively than under Obama 1/ At this point someone will note that Harris took left wing positions on immigration in 2019. True, but the vast bulk of GOP attacks concerned the Biden/Harris handling of immigration *while in office,* and there Biden was mostly at odds with the groups all throughout 2/
Nov 27, 2024 5 tweets 4 min read
This is getting overlooked, but the whole premise of Trump's threat of tariffs is based on a lie. He's claiming Mexico must be bullied into stopping migrants. But Mexico is *already* doing this. That's a big reason crossings have dropped. 1/

(new piece)
newrepublic.com/article/188854… Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum's harsh response to Trump went viral for its claim about US guns trafficked to Mexico. But she also noted that Mexico has a comprehensive policy in place for stopping migrants traveling north to the border. That's important. 2/

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Nov 21, 2024 7 tweets 5 min read
A Trump-appointed judge just struck down a Biden rule expanding overtime pay to 4 million working people.

It's really surprising how little media coverage this has received. Trump faced no real questions about this issue during the campaign. 1/

(link)
newrepublic.com/article/188663… Remember the media frenzy about "Rich Men North of Richmond," the song MAGA claimed as their anthem? The media spent weeks obsessing over it as a cry of anguish from the blue collar heartland aimed at elites.

That song was all about overtime pay! 2/

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Nov 15, 2024 7 tweets 5 min read
Awful: Senate investigations into Trump's solicitation of $1 billion from Big Oil and Jared Kushner's financial dealings with Saudis will now hit a wall with GOP control, Dems tell me. We're headed for unchecked elite corruption under Trump.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/188467… For many reasons, conditions are ripe for right wing elites to loot the place from top to bottom. Remember when Trump vowed to give Big Oil execs what they want in exchange for $1 billion in campaign funds? Now we'll likely never get to the bottom of it.

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Nov 9, 2024 6 tweets 5 min read
Disturbing: A big reason Trump won was undecideds couldn't be persuaded that millions of jobs lost in 2020 and death of Roe were Trump's fault, internal Harris campaign polling showed. Biden/Ds let Trump rehab himself to disastrous effect.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/188238… Internal testing in the battlegrounds over many months showed that Dems were having a very difficult time persuading undecided voters that Trump was a bad president, per sources. They didn't hold him responsible for things they disliked about his presidency.

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Nov 5, 2024 5 tweets 4 min read
How did Harris close the gap w/Trump on the economy?

Here's how: Harris campaign and Dem groups have spent a whopping $225 million on ads about the economy, per data provided to me by AdImpact. GOP caught napping, outspent by $70 million.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/187950… Harris campaign/Dem groups spent $225 million on econ ads from 7/21, when Biden bowed out, to the present, per AdImpact data. Trump/GOP: $155 million.

This challenges idea that Ds are so obsessed w/Trump hatred that they took eye off the ball on econ.

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Oct 31, 2024 9 tweets 3 min read
Today’s NYT featured a headline above the fold that read as follows:

“Biden Misstep Delivers Grist to Harris Foes”

This gets at one of the very worst things about the way political media has functioned during the Trump era. Here's a thread on the problem. 1/ I'm not sure what Biden meant w/the "garbage" comment. But even the harshest interpretation of it can only be that he meant Trump supporters *who openly make virulently racist displays* are "garbage."

That's news, I guess. Cover it, sure.

But what made it *front page* news? 2/
Oct 28, 2024 5 tweets 4 min read
People keep saying Trump's rally was originally intended as his closing argument, but devolved into a hate rally instead.

But the rally we all saw IS his closing argument. He is running explicitly on much of what we witnessed on that stage.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/187616… Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden is best seen as an explicit, very public declaration that if he wins, well, he told you exactly what you were going to get, so you’d better bend the knee and get ready to swallow all of it.

It's a coming-out party.

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Sep 25, 2024 6 tweets 5 min read
Utterly repulsive: Trump is now attacking Haitians in a small PA town with truly vile smears.

But the town manager tells me all Trump's claims are lies:

*Haitians not taking Americans' jobs
*No 2000% population increase
*No uptick in crime

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/186331… At a rally this week, Trump claimed Charleroi PA has seen a 2000% population boost due to Haitians.

But as town manager Joe Manning told me, if this were true, its pop would have gone from 4K to nearly 100K. He literally burst out laughing at the idea.

newrepublic.com/article/186331…

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