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The DC insider sheets are already buzzing about the exciting news: House Republicans plan a new round of debt limit hostage taking next year. Of course, this is all treated as somehow totally normal, as opposed to an unconstitutional form of legislative terrorism. This piece in Axios walks through the ins and outs of it, noting the following ….

The debt limit turning into a “political football” has become a “pattern in divided government,” particularly with a Democratic president, Neil Bradley, chief policy officer for the U.S. Chamber of Congress, told Axios.

This is a crock. Let’s be honest. Only Republicans do this. It only happens with Democratic presidents. Perhaps understandably, the head of the pro-business Chamber — which is, paradoxically, somewhat reviled now in the Trumpite GOP — can’t say this directly. But journalists don’t have to repeat their nonsense. The leading contender for the key committee chairmanship that would call the shots on this is already being clear on what Republicans will do. Tell the President that he has to repeal his 2021-22 legislation or the country has to declare national bankruptcy.

If you look at recent polls, there’s definitely a drift away from Democrats in a number of key races. The shifts are tiny if you look at the race averages. They may simply be the sloshing back and forth of poll numbers which is essentially noise. My best guess, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, is that Republicans have gotten back on the airwaves in a number of key races and been helped by a few weeks or ominous economic news — market declines which create a backdrop of disquiet even for people who have little or no direct exposure to equities markets. These things are mostly beyond Democrats’ and individual Senate candidates’ control. But what campaigns do control or have some real impact on is what an election is about. And it is always critical to make the election “about” whatever it is on which you have the strongest hand. In this case, for Democrats, that’s on abortion rights.

This Washington Post article paints a picture of Kevin McCarthy completely at odds with the real life Kevin McCarthy many of us has observed for years. As the piece tells it, McCarthy is backroom enforcer you don’t want to cross. Not content to relive the fates of predecessors John Boehner and Paul Ryan, McCarthy has worked behind the scenes to prune the House GOP of the kinds of bomb throwers and fame-seekers who made Boehner’s and Ryan’s jobs so thankless. Says one McCarthy insider: “He is not a guy to be trifled with. It’s like they say in the Marine Corps, ‘No better friend, no worse enemy.’ And they mean it, and they act on it.”

Over the weekend I started thinking about a hypothetical: is there anyone in the Russian national security apparatus who thinks to themselves, “Yep, decision to pull the trigger on the invasion back in February … great call!”

I emphasize “think” rather than “say” since the mood in Russia doesn’t seem like one where doubts are likely to be expressed openly, at least at the upper levels of the national security establishment. People find ways not to ask themselves these questions, even in the privacy of their thoughts. But it is hard to imagine many managing to say yes. The suffering is overwhelmingly in and to Ukraine; they are the victims. But it is hard to imagine a greater self-inflicted wound than the one Russia brought on itself back in February, entirely at a time and place of its choosing.

I raise this question because, as you likely know, President Putin recently declared a “partial mobilization” in Russia, the first since the Second World War, which gives the state power to draft about 300,000 new recruits, though there are signs on the ground that the mobilization is actually far from partial.

The Post has another updated narrative of the events surrounding Florida’s shipment of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. It is mainly more human detail about the journey of one Venezuelan migrant named Jose. But it does give a bit more flavor or “Perla’s” MO, including offering McDonald’s voucher to migrants who’d gone without food in exchange for signing a transport waiver most of which hadn’t been translated into Spanish. The other thing that is clear is that reporters seem to have more detail than made it into this article about the contracting arrangements by which Florida paid for these operatives in Texas to run their operation for them.

Back on March 30th, little more than a month into the Russo-Ukraine War, I published an email from TPM Reader BF who I identified as from the U.S. national security world. You can read the post here. But the gist, according to BF, was that I had it all wrong, that “notwithstanding its battlefield embarrassments and mishaps Putin is on the verge of getting everything he wants and Ukraine is on the verge of what amounts to surrender.”

Last week I heard from another reader asking for an update from BF in light of the last six months. That follow-on note was a bit ungenerous in its tone and somewhat tendentious in its read of BF’s comments. But the overall suggestion seemed worthwhile. When I asked, BF was game. So here’s his response …

[ed. note: BF’s response was written on September 15th, so before the recent mobilization announcement.]

The congressional generic ballot continues to drift slowly in the Democrats’ direction. But there’s been some tightening in key Senate races that have looked promising for Democrats. These are all very small shifts that are as likely to be noise as actual trends. But the fact that most of these small moves are in the GOP direction suggests it’s something more than noise. The simplest explanation is that a variety of factors allowed Democrats to dominate the airwaves through the late summer. Republicans had fundraising challenges; they hadn’t settled yet on nominees; their various committees and mega-donors were feuding among themselves. That’s changed now. And that change seems to be showing up in the polls.

There was a scramble at Delaware Coastal Airport near Georgetown, Delware Tuesday as state authorities and immigrant support organizations rushed to be ready to receive a plane filled with migrants from Texas. The DeSantis administration leaked word to reporters in Florida about the flight. There was no official word from anyone in Delaware but rumors abounded that such a flight was on its way from Texas and would arrive by 1:30 p.m. But the plane never showed. Courtesy of TPM Reader DC we have a report on the commotion here. Later, DeSantis spokesperson Christine Pushaw tweeted that the whole flight rumor was “disinformation.” But it wasn’t. Venezuelan migrants in San Antonio had been recruited. A charter flight had been booked.

A three judge panel of the 11th circuit has granted the Justice Department motion to stay a key part of Judge Cannon’s recent special master ruling. Cannon ruled that they could not continue using the classified documents in their criminal investigation while the special master, Judge Dearie, is doing his work. This three judge panel has overruled Cannon on that point. It’s an important win for the DOJ, though it is perhaps slightly less consequential since Judge Dearie has signaled he plans to move rapidly to do his review. Two of the three judges are Trump appointees.