In his Politico article, “Fox News reaches $787.5 million settlement in Dominion’s defamation lawsuit,” Matt Taylor reports “Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation lawsuit over false election claims on Tuesday, a massive sum that spared some of the biggest names in conservative media the witness stand.”

Taylor explains further, “Dominion, a voting machine company that has worked in over two dozen states, accused the conservative network of deliberately spreading bogus conspiracy theories about its products after the 2020 election in a bid to win back viewers.” As Taylor reports, ““The truth matters. Lies have consequences,” Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said while trumpeting the payout outside the Leonard L. Williams Justice Center on Tuesday. “Over two years ago, a torrent of lies swept Dominion and election officials across America into an alternative universe of conspiracy theories, causing grievous harm to Dominion and the country.”

The bad news is that the public will be deprived of the jolly spectacle of Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Rupert Murdock being grilled on the witness stand. The slightly good news is that Fox News will have to carefully frame its election denier rants to avoid future lawsuits.

Among discerning news consumers, Fox didn’t have much respect even before the trial. But the settlement insures that the mere mention of the Network in future reports will frequently be accompanied by noting the $787 million the company shelled out in acknowledgement of its own wrong-doing. Also, as Michelle Goldberg writes in her New York Times column, it is “one of the largest defamation settlements in history and is one that constitutes a humiliating admission of fault by the network, even though, as The New York Times’s Jim Rutenberg reported, the deal doesn’t require Fox to apologize.”

The settlement will be emblazoned in media history accounts as proof of one of the most grotesque examples of reportorial bias ever.

The thing is, the disaster isn’t over for Fox News. As Goldberg notes, “Smartmatic is still suing Fox for $2.7 billion, though no trial date has been announced yet. “Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign,” Smartmatic lawyer J. Erik Connolly said in a statement on Tuesday. “Smartmatic will expose the rest.”

More than any other media outlet, Fox News has stoked political polarization, served Trump’s rise and supported the GOP. But every media company has a shelf life and will eventually be replaced. Newsmax may get a temporary upward bump in its influence, or perhaps morph into a more influential news source for the right.

Amy Watson notes at Statistics.com that “In February 2023, Fox News was the most watched cable news network in the United States and continues to do well in terms of its primetime audience, with 2.2 million primetime viewers in that period. Fox News viewers in the 25-54 demographic reached 299 thousand, whilst MSNBC had just 119 thousand…..Cable news networks like Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are engaged in a monthly battle to hit the top spot during primetime and grab the highest cable news ratings during those precious evening hours. Fox News ratings during primetime are generally higher than its two direct competitors….”

Meanwhile there is no reason to expect a mass maga head exodus by network viewers. Fox had pretty much whittled its regular viewership down to the hard core, which is admittedly large. Some will see the settlement as normal p.r. management, others as yet another example of the vast liberal conspiracy and many of them will shrug it off or not care enough to switch networks. It will likely not be big a game-changer in. terms of public opinion.

The wild card, however, is what happens with the Smartmatic lawsuit. If it results in an equally-large settlement, we may see a more significant dip in Fox News viewers, at least for a while. But even that probably won’t influence many votes in the next election.

Here’s a trend that provides a problem and perhaps an opportunity for Democrats: “After a tumultuous year in the markets, America’s preparedness for retirement has gotten shakier, Axios’ Erica Pandey writes….By the numbers: More than half — 52% — of Americans are not on track to comfortably pay for their retirement, according to a new report from Fidelity, the nation’s largest provider of 401(k) plans….401(k) accounts lost 23% of their value last year, compared with 2021, per another recent Fidelity report….And 55% of those between the ages of 18 and 35 have put retirement planning and saving on hold, Fidelity notes….Between the lines: “Roughly half the workforce, we’re talking 50 plus million people, work for an employer that doesn’t offer a retirement plan,” said David John, a senior policy adviser at AARP. That could mean a small business or gig work….And millennials and Gen X-ers are far less likely to have traditional pensions than their Boomer counterparts, John said….What to watch: Gen Z is more prepared for the future than previous generations, said Rita Assaf, vice president of retirement at Fidelity. Gen Z’s creation of new IRA savings accounts was up 30% in 2022, compared to 2021….The bottom line: Retirement preparedness among young people, especially millennials, isn’t where it should be, Assaf notes. “The good news is they still have time.” The big problem is that a lot of older voters are quite shaken that their retirement assets tanked an average of 23 percent in one year, and along with inflation at the gas pump and grocery market, they may want to blame the incumbent President. That’s not an easy fix. But Biden can at least propose a significant tax break for retirees. There is another opportunity – loudly propose irresistible tax incentives for employers, plus self-employed workers – that half of the workforce who are not in a retirement plan – to enroll in one. The big idea is for Biden and the Democrats to become the unrivaled champions of a decent retirement for all workers. It could help. Trump got 52 percent of voters over age 65 in 2020, compared to 48 percent for Biden. Census data indicate that voters over age 65, about one-fourth of all voters, had the highest turnout rate — 74 percent, in 2020.

Is ‘No Labels” a GOP front? According to Daniel Strauss at The New Republic, “For many years, Third Way and No Labels have been thought of by inside Democratic observers as peas in a pod. Both are moderate groups—Third Way explicitly Democratic, No Labels avowedly bipartisan—but both occupy, too many observers, the same general space on the ideological parking lot. Both groups are close to or involved with some of the same senators and House members, and both certainly have suffered their share of scorn from groups to their left….So it was awfully interesting Thursday when Third Way executive vice president Jim Kessler wrote an email to friends and colleagues lambasting No Labels: “The group No Labels is holding its nominating convention in Dallas to select a 3rd Party candidate that most assuredly would hurt Biden and elect Trump or whoever wins the GOP nomination. They have already raised $70m. They are already on the ballot in a bunch of states. And in a map they recently published showing their absurd path to 270 electoral college votes, they’ve targeted 23 states for victory—19 won by Biden and 4 won by Trump. That gives you an idea of what they’re up to and who they really want to elect. And as a reminder, No Labels endorsed Trump in 2016.”….As Kessler’s missive indicates, No Labels has set out to get on the ballot as its own political party in a number of states….on Friday, Third Way co-authored an op-ed in The Washington Post with a couple of unlikely allies among the constellation of Democratic groups: the Center for American Progress Action Fund and MoveOn. The effort really covered the waterfront. Third Way is centrist, CAP mainstream liberal, and MoveOn represents the party’s more progressive wing. The Post op-ed was co-bylined by the three group leaders: Third Way’s Jonathan Cowan, CAP’s Patrick Gaspard, and MoveOn’s Rahna Epting….“We understand the sentiment that has driven donors to the No Labels banner,” the three wrote. “But there is simply no equating a party led by Biden to today’s MAGA Republican Party. One side believes in American democracy, while the other has attacked it. One is governing from the mainstream, while the other champions extremism. One seeks to work collaboratively on the issues; the other has given way to conspiracy theorists and cranks”….This isn’t the first former friend No Labels has lost. William Galston, the respected centrist scholar at the Brookings Institution, said in late March that he would separate himself from the group over its plans for a third-party challenge.”

Strauss also profiles “The Democrat Who’s Betting Her Senate Bid on Gun Control” at TNR, and writes that Rep. Elisa Stotkin “has been an important centrist envoy to the Great Lakes State. The 7th Congressional District she represents, in the south central part of the state, has a population of less than 800,000, and she had won her first congressional campaign in 2018 by threading the needle between her farm-life experience in the district (she grew up in rural Holly, population less than 6,000) and her bipartisan foreign policy background: She was recruited by the CIA after graduating from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in 2003. She spent five years in Iraq with the CIA, and later, at the National Security Council, serving in both the Bush and the Obama administrations. (Subsequently, Slotkin worked at the State Department, then Defense.) It didn’t hurt that the Slotkin name was well-known in Michigan: Her grandfather, Hugo, ran Hygrade Food Products, the company behind Ball Park Franks. Slotkin is also a member of the New Democrat Coalition and the Problem Solvers Caucus, groups that liberal Democrats occasionally feud with—a fact that may endear her to some of her constituents. (Like some in the moderate caucus, she declined to support Nancy Pelosi for speaker in 2021, but she’s been a reliable vote on the House floor….Now, she’s taking aim at guns. “I’ve had friends close to me be killed by rockets,” she said back in February, referencing her time in Iraq, but “our schools and our communities are not war zones….These are civilians.”….Although Congress passed, and President Joe Biden signed, compromise gun control legislation last year, passage of any further restrictions in the current Republican-controlled House is hardly likely. Still, she is pushing ahead. By late March, her office was preparing to help roll out a new set of proposals in Congress, such as $50 million in funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to finance gun violence research (co-sponsored with Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts), mandatory waiting periods for firearm purchases, and prohibiting those convicted of misdemeanors involving guns to own firearms for three years….“I think I’m the only congressperson to now have had two school shootings in their district,” Slotkin said. “I hope I’m the only one.”

At ‘The Downballot’ at Daily Kos, David Nir observes, “We took a look at which states could amend their constitutions to guarantee the right to an abortion. It’s quite a few. Last year, California, Michigan, and Vermont all voted in favor of amending their constitutions to guarantee abortion rights. They were the first states to do so. It turns out that, at least at the moment, another 23 states could do the exact same thing. There’s a reason why amending your constitution really is so important both in blue states, but especially in purple or red states. It’s the most permanent, longest-lasting way of guaranteeing abortion rights. It’s more difficult than simply passing a statute, but sometimes it’s your only option….In fact, there are two ways to go about getting an amendment on the ballot. In every state, the legislature can refer a constitutional amendment to the ballot. Since we know that Republicans, of course, will never support such a thing, that means we can expect that only blue states are going to be able to have their legislatures put an amendment on the ballot. That’s what happened in California and Vermont….In some states, you only need a simple majority of the legislature. In some states, you need a two-thirds supermajority. There are even some blue states where the legislature doesn’t have enough votes to put an amendment on the ballot….But there are 18 states where voters themselves can put amendments on the ballot. They can do so by using the initiative process, which means that they gather a sufficient number of signatures from voters across the state, and then voters get to vote on that amendment if they qualify with enough signatures. This really opens up a lot of doors because it gives abortion rights advocates the chance to amend constitutions in purple and red states that are otherwise hostile to abortion or have even banned the practice….There are, in fact, two efforts underway right now that we know of in Ohio and South Dakota to qualify measures for the ballot….Florida also allows citizen initiatives on the ballot. They are expensive, they take a lot of time and effort, you have to gather large numbers of signatures. But with the courts so hostile in so many ways to abortion rights, it really is a smart move for Democrats to pursue….And also, as we saw in 2022, it’s not just the blue states where abortion rights are popular. In, once again, Montana, but also Kentucky and Kansas, voters rejected restrictions on abortion rights. Now asking them to vote for guarantees of abortion rights, a positive measure as opposed to voting against a negative restrictive measure, that’s something different….this is really an area that advocates and Democrats need to be focusing on.”

In her article “Montana GOP Has a Ploy to Sink Sen. Jon Tester: A New Election Law” at The Daily Beast, Ursula Perano reports on the Republican scheme to defeat the MT Senator — and bury his example of how a common sense Democrat can win in a “red” state. As Perano writes:

After three Senate elections in which Democrat Jon Tester narrowly beat the Republican candidates by—collectively—40,000 votes, Montana Republicans are striking back.

The GOP-controlled state legislature is considering a radical change in election law—a change that is nakedly targeted at taking down Tester and could, in effect, flip one of the most vulnerable Senate seats well before November 2024.

Montana Republicans are trying to take a page out of California’s playbook and switch their primary election to the controversial top-two primary system, otherwise known as a “jungle primary.”

But it’s only for next year, when Tester, Montana’s last statewide Democrat, is up for re-election. After that, the change would expire, supposedly so lawmakers could assess how things went.

It’s a move that would obviously benefit the GOP—with suspiciously convenient timing. After the bill stalled in committee, the measure quickly sped through the state Senate, and now seems on the fast track toward becoming law.

Democrats, many flabbergasted by the ploy, are calling out the move.

They shouldn’t be flabbergasted. But they should be alarmed. Anyone following recent politics will not be surprised that the Republicans would try a sleazy back door gambit under the guise of “electoral reform” to unhorse one of the most impressive U.S. Senators. Perano notes further,

Republicans, hands down, would have preferred Tester not to run for re-election in 2024. He’s considered the only Montana Democrat prepared to actually compete for the Senate seat. And he’s managed to hang on through his past three elections, even as the state more broadly trended red.

But with a top-two primary, the math could sway in the GOP’s favor.

In a jungle primary, all candidates of both parties run in the same primary, and the top-two vote getters head to a runoff. That could mean that two Republicans simply beat Tester during the primary and only they go to the final vote during the general election. More likely—but potentially just as consequential—it could mean that Tester and a Republican go head-to-head during the general election, and third-party candidates, namely Libertarians, wouldn’t have a spot on the ballot.

In two of Tester’s previous three races, Republicans and Libertarians combined got more votes than Tester’s Democratic total. If there were no Libertarian option, the working assumption is Republicans would likely pick up those votes.

The GOP sees Tester as vulnerable and his seat as a potential pick-up in their quest to win a senate majority. But it may be that they fear his “template” as a rare elected Democrat who supports a moderately progressive agenda with eloquent, plain talk even more. As one of the smartest Democratic senators, Tester connects with working class voters in a way that wins their support.

Unlike Republican leaders who ride around in pick-up trucks they don’t need and fondle rifles in their campaign ads, or other “all hat and no cattle” ranchers, or GOP preppies in mega hats, Tester has authentic blue collar cred few Republicans can match. He’s the real deal, a guy who loves working on his farm, but not posing with hay bales and enjoys repping his state and keeping up with the issues that really matter to Montana farmers and working families. Try to think of a Republican senator who has even a shred of that “look.”

If the new generation of Democratic candidates replicated Tester’s example even in approximate ways, it could spell disaster for Republicans, and they know it. If events turned in such a way that Tester became a presidential candidate, even worse for them. The GOP would love to cancel Tester and blot out his example.

Don’t let them. Anyone can contribute to Tester’s re-election at this link.

New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall shares a scary warning about the GOP’s well-planned “authoritarianism.” Edsall writes “Theda Skocpol, a professor of political science and sociology at Harvard, contended that many of the developments in states controlled by Republicans are a result of careful, long-term planning by conservative strategists, particularly those in the Federalist Society, who are developing tools to build what she called “minority authoritarianism” within the context of a nominally democratic system of government….Skocpol outlined her thinking in an email: The first-movers who figured out how to configure this new “laboratory of democratic constriction” were legal eagles in the Federalist Society and beyond, because the key structural dynamic in the current G.O.P. gallop toward minority authoritarianism is the mutual interlock between post-2010 Republican control, often supermajority control, of dozens of state legislatures and the SCOTUS decision in 2019 to allow even the most extreme and bizarre forms of partisan gerrymandering….These organized, richly resourced actors, she wrote, have figured out how to rig the current U.S. system of federalism and divided branches, given generational and geographic realities on the ground, and the in many ways fluky 2016 presidential election gave them what they needed to put the interlock in place. They are stoking and using the fears and resentments of about half or so of the G.O.P. popular base to undo American democracy and enhance their own power and privileges. They are doing it because they can, and they believe in what they are doing. They are America’s G.O.P. Leninists.” Considering the recent follies of DeSantis, Abbot, Trump, Santos, Graham, Pence, MTG and hundreds of bomb-throwers in various state legislatures, there’s not a lot of room left the GOP clown car. They are going to need one of those long, accordion busses by Election Day 2024. In light of Skocpol’s insights, they are the distractor front men and women, while the organizers lay the groundwork for a takeover. To stop them, Dems are going to have to get smarter, better-organized and unified.

Speaking of ideological bomb-throwers in the state legislatures, read “Tennessee Republicans may have just handed a lifeline to Democrats” by Politico’s Liz Crampton, who explains: “A blue turnaround in Tennessee seemed like a pipe dream just a few weeks ago — and maybe still does. Democrats are outnumbered, out-resourced and hamstrung by a legislative map drawn to favor Republicans. It’s also a state that suffers from one of the lowest voter turnouts in the country….Party insiders and organizers are the first to concede just how bad they have it….“Nothing changes the fact that these districts are highly gerrymandered,” said Lisa Quigley, a former chief of staff to Rep. Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat who didn’t seek reelection after his district was effectively eliminated in redistricting last year. “It’s going to take some really smart organizing all over the state, because none of us vote very well.”….But if there was ever a moment when the party stood a chance, it’s now. The state Democratic Party has been flooded with donations and interest since the GOP started moving against three Democrats for participating in a gun safety protest on the state House floor, and ultimately expelling two of them last week for violating decorum rules….On the day that state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two Black millennial freshmen, were kicked out of the Legislature, 33,000 people called into the state party office looking to get involved, Democratic Party Chair Hendrell Remus said. So far, nearly 10,000 have signed up to volunteer, he said in an interview, and hundreds of people have expressed interest in running for office — many in districts where Republican lawmakers ran unopposed in the midterms. More than half of Republican lawmakers serving in the statehouse today were uncontested in November.” TN’s right-wing bomb-throwers have just laid a shiny new political forklift at the door of the Dems — if they use it to help build wisely.

Regarding political investment strategy, check out “The Billionaire Gap in American Politics: Financiers on the American right marshal money in the relentless pursuit of power, while their left-leaning counterparts spend it on vanity projects” by Chris Lehman at The Nation. As Lehman observes, “financiers on the American right marshal money in the relentless pursuit of power, while their left-leaning counterparts spend it on vanity projects premised on the assumption that they already have power.” Lehman shines a revealing light on the past financial strategies of the right and left and observes, “The left-leaning donor world is much less ideologically driven, in part because it traffics in the more traditional philanthropic theology of “giving back” in a fundamentally settled social order—i.e., financing benevolent undertakings as a sort of spiritual reputation laundering for the filthy rich….In the age of neoliberal capitalism, charitable giving follows far more circumscribed channels of neoliberal policy, such as school privatization, agricultural microlending, and anything that can be depicted as technologically disruptive. Former New York Times reporter Anand Giridharadas chronicled this philanthropic turn in his 2018 book Winners Take All, which showed how signature liberal philanthropies such as the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation now work to shore up the foundations of wealth inequality.” Nothing wrong with “benevolent undertakings” for a host of progressive projects. But Dems clearly need more sugar mommas and daddies focused on electing good candidates at the federal, state and local levels.

Kyle Kondik takes a look at “How the Other Half Votes: The Southwest” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “We’re applying our top half/bottom half presidential voting analysis to 5 key states in the Southwest: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas. Unfortunately, this method of analysis — comparing how a state’s biggest counties that cast roughly half the statewide vote have changed from 2012 to 2020 versus the bottom half counties that cast the remainder of the statewide vote — does not work well with Arizona and Nevada, the most competitive states in the region and 2 of the 7 states that were decided by less than 3 points in 2020. That’s because each has a single dominant county that casts considerably more than half of the statewide vote…As recently as 2004, George W. Bush carried all 5 of these states, but there’s been a Democratic trend in the region more broadly in the years since, with Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico voting Democratic in each of the last 4 elections, and traditionally Republican Arizona flipping to Joe Biden in 2020. Meanwhile, the megastate Texas — which now has 40 electoral votes — is showing signs of becoming markedly more competitive even as it is still clearly positioned to the right of the nation….Because Arizona and Nevada don’t really have comparable top and bottom halves to the other 3 states, we’re not going to rank these 5 states in comprehensive tables (like we did for the Midwest and East previously). However, we do have a few concluding takeaways:…— Clark County in Nevada is still more Democratic than Maricopa County in Arizona, but we could imagine the counties converging in the not-too-distant future. If that happened, Arizona would very likely move to the left of Nevada….— The top halves of both Colorado and New Mexico are both blue to varying degrees, and the bottom half of Colorado stands out as actually voting for Biden in 2020….— Democrats have made some progress in both the top and bottom halves of Texas, but they need the top half of Texas to look more like that of Georgia to win the state.”

Lest Democrats get too optimistic about their great victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, David Daley, author of “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy” brings the bad news at The Guardian: “The lack of anything resembling a basic, functioning democracy in an American state placed outsized importance on Tuesday’s state supreme court election, won decisively by liberal Janet Protasiewicz. Her victory flipped what had been a 4-3 conservative majority on a court that not only aided and abetted the newest Republican gerrymander, but only narrowly declined a Trumpian gambit to toss out 220,000 votes from Democratic-leaning counties after the state’s tight 2020 election….The stakes of this race were huge. There’s a good reason why this election shattered records for the most expensive state supreme court race ever. There will be an immediate effort to bring new litigation to un-gerrymander the state’s toxic legislative map. The 1849 anti-abortion law will be challenged before a court that is now friendly to reproductive rights. It will be more difficult for Republicans to use Wisconsin courts in 2024 to subvert presidential election results in a state where the outcome could determine the nation’s leader….Nevertheless, democracy has not been restored in Wisconsin and the threat has not receded. No one should be under any delusion that Wisconsin Republicans, so accustomed to ruling with impunity, will operate any differently. They don’t have to change. On Tuesday, just as voters statewide tipped the court to progressives, a special election for a crucial state senate seat went Republican, ensuring a Republican supermajority. Republicans have already threatened that they might impeach liberal justices, including Protasiewicz….It is dreary to be cynical the day after a hard-won victory that activists worked many years to secure. Yet it is hard not to look at Wisconsin and see Charlie Brown and the football once more. Democrats spend a decade playing by the rules and executing a 12-point plan to undo the after-effects of the 2010 redistricting, step by careful step. And if Democrats win, Republicans use their gerrymanders to take away their power or make some pretend doctrine and take it to their equally unearned and illegitimate supermajority on the US supreme court….One outcome of the news from Wisconsin is that it might finally be clear to everyone that, in today’s America, judges have become little more than robed partisans. But it needs to become equally clear that without a national fix for gerrymandering and structural reform to the US supreme court, that hope in Wisconsin – and perhaps your state next – will be little more than fool’s gold.”

Are references to the Republicans’ “War on Democracy” overstated? Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch doesn’t think so, and he makes a compelling case in his article, “GOP wages an asymmetrical war on democracy because it can’t get the votes.” Bunch references the “sour grapes” comments of the conservative candidate who lost the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, and then notes that “the GOP majority in the Wisconsin legislature are — and this is hard to believe — already talking about impeaching Protasiewicz even before she takes the oath of office. A new state senator who won a special election to give Republicans a supermajority in Madison said he’d “seriously consider” impeaching the new justice, citing the flimsy pretext of her record as a circuit judge in “failing” Milwaukee.” Also, “Anyone doubting Republicans’ impeachment bluster in Wisconsin could take a look around to Nashville, Tenn., where white GOP lawmakers stunned the nation by expelling two Black colleagues and disenfranchising their roughly 140,000 predominantly African American constituents because the men had, from the floor of the Capitol, joined a thousand or so young people protesting gun violence….” Bunch also cites “a flurry of moves including state takeovers of Democratic school boards in large red-state cities like Houston and legislation in states from Georgia to Missouri aiming to sharply curtail power and potentially remove progressive DAs elected by urban voters, such as the impeachment of Philadelphia’s twice-elected prosecutor Larry Krasner. Even Congress got in on the act with legislation to nullify a sweeping criminal justice overhaul that Washington, D.C.’s, majority-Black city council had approved 12-1.” Bunch also notes, “What’s more, this political counterrevolution in legislative corridors is taking place right as the conservative movement’s grand project of the last half-century — a ruthless, multimillion-dollar crusade to install unaccountable, lifetime right-wing judges across the federal bench — is coming to full fruition. Good Friday’s decision by Amarillo, Texas-based federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Donald Trump appointee rooted in ultra-conservative networks, seeking to undo approval of the abortion drug mifepristone after 23 years on the market is a huge end run around democracy in a nation where a majority of voters support abortion rights. Conservatives routinely file lawsuits in Amarillo because Kacsmaryk is that district’s lone judge.”

Bunch also references the Justice Clarence Thomas scandal, Trump’s arraignment and the January 6th riot and writes, “Democrats are waging conventional warfare on the political frontlines — at the ballot box, trying to get votes with the power of their ideas — and in much of America they appear to be winning. It happened on Tuesday, with the coalition that produced the Protasiewicz landslide in Wisconsin, and with Chicago voters rejecting the reactionary, cop-union conservatism of Paul Vallas to elect progressive upstart Brandon Johnson as their new mayor. But then, it’s happened on the bigger stage since 1992, as Democrats have won the national popular vote in seven of eight presidential elections, as the United States grows more diverse and less in thrall to the conservative hierarchies around race, gender, sexuality, and intolerance…. Republicans are responding with an asymmetrical civil war against democracy, constantly looking for the weak points to deploy their IEDs of autocracy, determined to blow up the American Experiment if that’s what it takes to retain power by any means necessary. Their tactics are working well, unfortunately. Darth Vader’s Death Star had just one opening to exploit, but U.S. democracy has many — gerrymandering, the filibuster, the Electoral College, the undemocratic makeup of the U.S. Senate, statehouse power plays against home rule for Black or brown or progressive-minded communities, a take-no-prisoners hijacking of the judiciary. The only shock of Thursday’s next-level expulsion of two duly-elected Black lawmakers in Nashville was the proof that — as Republican ideas become more unpopular — there is no bottom to how low this movement will go….And yet there is also reason for great hope. America’s young people — the ones who left their classroom last week and overran the state capitol in Nashville to plead for real action against gun violence, the ones fighting book bans in their schools and speaking out for radical action on climate — are the bravest and boldest generation this nation has seen in some time. Their moral authority, and their rising power at the ballot box from Eau Claire to Memphis, is why a decrepit GOP is lashing out. History will surely remember what happened in Tennessee as an affront to democracy — and the last throes of a dying movement.”

You probably won’t be too surprised to learn that “According to one scholar’s research on democracy in the US, Tennessee is indeed the least democratic state in the entire country.” That’s “democratic” with a small “d.” The report, by Zach Beauchamp at Vox continues, “The research here comes from University of Washington political science professor Jake Grumbach, who wrote a 2022 paper (later expanded into a book) developing the first-ever numerical system for ranking the health of democracy in all 50 US states….Grumbach’s State Democracy Index (SDI) grades each state on a series of metrics — like the extent to which a state is gerrymandered at the federal level, whether felons can vote, and the like — and then combines the assessments to give each state an overall score from -3 (worst) to 2 (best).” It is a 5-year old study, conducted in 2018. Nonetheless, “Tennessee’s low score in 2018 has a lot to do with its egregious partisan gerrymanders at both the state and federal level — a problem that only got worse in the post-2020 census redistricting cycle. Research from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project shows that there is not a single competitive seat in the state senate — Democrats are so efficiently packed in a handful of strongly Democratic districts that Republicans have a near-guaranteed super-supermajority (over 80 percent of seats!) in the statehouse’s upper chamber.” Beauchamp provides a map indicating that “Tennessee is by far the lightest-colored state on the 2018 map — meaning it has the lowest score of any state in the country….It’s not exactly clear, from Grumbach’s research, why Tennessee is particularly anti-democratic. But what his research does show is that it’s not isolated: The state is part of a general trend where democracy has degraded in Republican-controlled states.” All of which helps explain why talk of boycotts against Tennessee is increasing. The Republicans who just gutted free speech and democracy and blocked gun safety reform in the Volunteer State may end up costing TN many millions in convention and tourist revenues.

In “A New Path to Diversity” at Dissent magazine, Richard Kahlenberg proposes a novel approach to promoting diversity in education that has the potential to unify, instead of divide people:

The impulse behind racial affirmative-action programs comes from a very good place: the desire to provide extra support to Black, Hispanic, and Native American people—groups that have been oppressed throughout American history. But it appears that these programs will soon be outlawed. The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to jettison racial preferences following oral arguments in October in cases challenging the admissions processes at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. And regardless of their legal status, these programs are unpopular. Three-quarters of Americans—including 59 percent of African Americans—oppose using race as a factor in college admissions.

The good news is that there is a politically popular and legally sound alternative that can produce high levels of racial and economic diversity: preferences based on socioeconomic disadvantage. While the U.S. Supreme Court has long been wary of government policies that treat people differently on the basis of race, the modern Court does not have this sort of hesitation about programs that treat citizens differently on the basis of economic status—from the progressive income tax to means-tested programs like food stamps.

Prominent left and liberal voices in the 1960s and ’70s, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, advocated for this sort of approach, arguing that affirmative action based on class disadvantage could help address the legacy of slavery and segregation. Recent researchfinds that although preferences based on income alone are unlikely to produce sufficient racial diversity at selective colleges, the consideration of additional factors, such as family wealth and neighborhood poverty levels, can lead to high levels of both racial and economic diversity.

Kahlenberg notes that “Colleges fiercely resist the class-based approach to creating racial diversity, however, because the current system of racial and legacy preferences, which mostly benefits well-off students, is cheaper than providing financial aid for low-income and working-class students.” He provides examples showing how the concept of class-based policies also promote equal opportunity.

In his conclusion, Kahlenberg writes,

Polls find that this sort of class-based affirmative action garners support from almost two-thirds of Americans. And such policies could help the left move beyond the kind of unpopular liberalism that preaches diversity while shunting class to the margins.

The irony is that a conservative Supreme Court decision could provide a boost for progressive multiracial coalition building. Right-wing divide-and-conquer efforts have historically sought to motivate white working-class people to vote their race rather than their class. Moving from race-based to class-based preferences will remind working-class people of all colors what they have in common.

The Republicans have been skillful in leveraging culture war issues to distract their supporters from getting involved in multi-racial coalitions for needed educational reforms. Making socioeconomic fairness a priority in college admissions and funding could help promote broader support for public education reforms that serve everyone – and make Democrats look good for leading the way forward.

Take a peek at the Cook Political Report’s “2023 Cook PVI℠: District Map and List (118th Congress),” which provides a measure of the “partisanship” of each of America’s 435 congressional districts. As the report notes, “In August of 1997, the Cook Political Report introduced the Cook Partisan Voting Index (Cook PVI) to provide a more accurate picture of the competitiveness of each of the 435 congressional districts. With the 2022 PVI release, we made a slight change to how we calculate PVI scores: instead of using a 50/50 mix of the two most recent presidential elections to assess partisanship as we had done in the past, we switched to a 75/25 weighting in favor of the more recent presidential cycle. Using the updated formula, we are now re-releasing PVI scores for every Congress since the 105th (1997-1998).” Hover your mouse/finger over any congressional district in their interactive map, and the pop-up tells you the number of the district, the name of the incumbent, his or her party identification and the 2023 PVI. For the “118th Congress District Map and List (2023-2024)….The 2023 Cook PVI scores were calculated following the 2021 round of redistricting, using 2016 and 2020 presidential election results. They are identical to the PVI scores released in 2022.” For example, the PVI for NC-12 (incumbent Alma Adams) is D+13, meaning the district leans Democratic by 13 points, based on the results of the 2020 and 2016 presidential elections, weighted for the more recent 2020 results. One of the most competitive districts in the U.S., IA-3 (incumbent Republican Zach Nunn) has a PVI of R+3. Glancing at the interactive map, we learn such tidbits as the mountain west states of UT, CO and NV have no deep red districts, while most of the land in PA’s districts are in deep red territory. NM is bathed in light blue, with no red districts, while GA’s Democratic strength is heavily concentrated in metro Atlanta. The 2023 hover map is a freebie, but access to PVI charts before 2016 runs through a paywall.

Some nuggets from “The last 48 hours revealed the GOP’s intractable 2024 dilemma: Trump and pro-lifers own the Republican Party. That’s bad for its political future” by Zack Beauchamp at Vox: “First, Donald Trump was formally indicted in New York — a move by prosecutors that appears to have unified the party around him, cementing his already rising poll numbers and making it harder to imagine the GOP ever moving on. This is despite the fact that 60 percent of Americans approve of the indictment, and he remains politically toxic among the majority of Americans….Second, Republicans lost control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an off-year election — a campaign where abortion was “the dominating issue,” per University of Wisconsin political scientist Barry Burden. The repeal of Roe v. Wade brought back an 1849 state law, never technically repealed, that banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy (with an exception for the mother’s life). Janet Protasiewicz, the liberal candidate in the Supreme Court race, openly campaigned on her support for abortion rights. She won by a comfortable margin in a closely divided state — yet another sign that strict abortion bans are seriously unpopular….Third, the Florida Senate on Monday approved a six-week ban on abortion — a bill pushed and supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The GOP’s most plausible non-Trump candidate has now tied himself to one of its most unpopular policy positions with a proven capacity to power Democratic electoral wins….“Banning abortion without any exceptions is probably as unpopular, or more unpopular, as defunding the police,” David Shor, a leading Democratic data analyst, told me last year. After Dobbs, “abortion went from being a somewhat good issue for Democrats to becoming the single best issue.”

Piling on here, Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. notes, “The victory of liberal Milwaukee Judge Janet Protasiewicz over conservative Dan Kelly was nonpartisan in name only. Her win ratified the importance of the two issues that helped Democrats block a Republican wave in November: abortion rights, in the wake of Dobbs, and the battle for democracy, in the wake of the Trump presidency. Protasiewicz prevailed by 11 points a state Joe Biden carried in 2020 by less than one. And in a bitter Chicago race for mayor, Brandon Johnson, a little-known county commissioner six months ago, edged out former schools executive Paul Vallas, who expected to ride deep anxieties about crime into City Hall….Both are Democrats, but Johnson painted Vallas as a closet Republican who had once said he would convert to the GOP and had been heard calling the impeachment effort against Donald Trump “a witch hunt.”….Wisconsin was a case of exceptional Democratic unity and mobilization. Protasiewicz not only overwhelmed Kelly in the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee and Madison but also held down his margins in traditionally Republican areas.” But Dionne also observes that “In what may be the key message from both contests, [WI Democratic Party Chair Ben] Wikler argued that Democrats needed to address the crime issue directly in order to pivot to the broader messages on which they can win elections….“The essential thing for Democrats is to make clear that they care about public safety and then to make clear which candidate takes freedom seriously,” he said. “You have to do both things. The right-wing argument about crime only works if it’s not effectively neutralized.”

Just after the euphoria for liberal Democrats following the big win in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race and the Chicago Mayor’s election, comes a big bummer, the flipping of North Carolina’s state legislature into a veto-proof majority for Republicans.  The party-switcher in this instance is NC State Rep. Tricia Cotham, who won her last election as a Democrat by 20 points in Charlotte’s ‘burbs. At CNN Politics, Dianne Gallagher and Devon M. Sayers note that “Cotham’s switch could have major implications for lawmaking in the Tar Heel State. Republicans already held a supermajority in the North Carolina Senate. Cotham’s flip gives them 72 seats in the state House – and enough votes in both chambers to override any veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.” Cotham trotted out the predictable blah blah about how the Dems no longer rep her pristine values. Cotham, whose mother, Pat Cotham, was a DNC member and whose ex-husband, Jerry Meek, was chair of the state Democratic Party, was first appointed by Democratic Governor Mike Easley to fill a seat vacated by a retirement in the state legislature in 2007. NC’s Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton commented that ““HD112 is a 60% Democratic district….And they did not choose to elect a Republican. They chose to elect a Democrat.” In the past, she claimed to support abortion access, voting rights reforms and a doubling of the minimum wage, all of which are opposed by state Republicans. There is usually a power politics and/or other lucrative reward behind the stated reason for a decision to switch political parties, but it often takes a while before it becomes clear.  There are always some careerists who more interested in their own success than the public good sprinkled among razor-thin majorities, particularly in state legislators. Unfortunately, there are no recall provisions in NC law.

Democrats have won what may be 2023’s most important election. As Eric Bradner reports at CNN Politics:

Democratic-backed Janet Protasiewicz will win Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, CNN projects, flipping majority control in liberals’ favor in what could be the most consequential election of the year with abortion access, election rules and more on the line in the key swing state.

Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County circuit court judge, will defeat conservative Daniel Kelly, a former state Supreme Court justice, in a race that shattered spending records on state judicial elections. Her win likely breaks an era of Republican dominance in a state that has been ensnared in political conflict for more than a decade.

The race was a critical gauge of whether and how the issue of abortion is motivating voters nearly a year after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The state’s high court is poised to settle a legal battle in the coming months over Wisconsin’s 1849 law that bans abortion in nearly all circumstances.

Conservatives currently hold a 4-3 majority on the court. But the retirement of conservative Justice Patience Roggensack put that majority at stake.

Wisconsin is one of 14 states to directly elect its Supreme Court justices, and winners get 10-year terms. Judicial races there are nominally nonpartisan, but political parties leave little doubt as to which candidates they support. Spending in this year’s race – which reached $28.8 million as of March 29, according to the Brennan Center – far surpassed the previous record for spending on a state judicial contest: $15.4 million in a 2004 Illinois race.

It doesn’t look like there will be a yuge outpouring of election denial regarding the results. Protasiewicz won by double digits, 55.5 percent to 45.5 percent, with 95 percent of the vote counted, according to the Associated Press.  Bradner notes, “Kelly acknowledged his defeat, telling supporters at his election night event that “this didn’t turn out the way we were looking for.” Bradner adds,

Democrats saw the race as an opportunity to end Republican dominance in Wisconsin that began with Gov. Scott Walker’s election in 2010 – a victory that was followed by the passage of union-busting laws and state legislative districts drawn to effectively ensure GOP majorities, all green-lit by a state Supreme Court where conservatives have held the majority since 2008.

Walker lost his bid for a third term to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2018. But Evers has been hamstrung by the Republican-led legislature, with the conservative Supreme Court breaking ties on matters such as a 2022 ruling during the once-a-decade redistricting process in favor of using Republican-drawn legislative maps rather than ones submitted by Evers. The decision cemented Republicans’ solid majority in the state legislature.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is also positioned to play a critical role in determining how the 2024 election is conducted and settling disputes that arise.

The court played a pivotal role in the outcome of the 2020 election in Wisconsin: Justices voted 4-3, with conservative Brian Hagedorn joining the court’s three liberals, to reject former President Donald Trump’s efforts to throw out ballots in Democratic-leaning counties. And last year, the court barred the use of most ballot drop boxes and ruled that no one can return a ballot in person on behalf of another voter.

Further, Bradner explains, “But the most immediate battle likely to reach the justices as early as this fall is over Wisconsin’s 1849 law that bans abortion in nearly all circumstances….In a debate last month, Protasiewicz said she was “making no promises” on how she would rule. But she also noted her personal support for abortion rights, as well as endorsements from pro-abortion rights groups. And she pointed to Kelly’s endorsement by Wisconsin Right to Life, which opposes abortion rights.”

In a closer election yesterday, the more liberal candidate, union organizer and Country Commissioner Brandon Johnson, was elected mayor of Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, according to The Associated Press.

At Slow Boring Matthew Yglesias writes: “The widespread ownership of guns in the United States is the predominant reason we have so much more homicide than the developed countries of Europe and Asia. Differential availability of guns also largely explains why, inconveniently for Republicans, there is generally more murder happening in red states than in blue ones….The standard GOP cope is to argue that the murders are happening in “blue cities,” but that just reflects the fact that essentially all cities are blue in the contemporary United States. When you look at the rare city with a Republican mayor like Jacksonville in Florida, you see a lot more homicide than in New York. That’s because criminals aren’t magicians or kung-fu masters; their ability to kill people depends on their access to lethal weapons. And unfortunately there is substantial interplay between the legal market for guns and the black market for guns. The NYT ran a great piece last week about the large number of guns used in crimes that are stolen from parked cars— the more guns floating around, the more people get shot. Morgan Williams has a great paper looking at a gun policy reform in Missouri where the state legislature made it easier to buy guns legally with the result that shootings surged in Kansas City and St. Louis. Non-gun homicides actually fell because assailants were equipping themselves with better weapons. But precisely because guns are more deadly than knives or bats, this generates an overall increase in death….Do note, though, that essentially all of this action is being driven by handguns….The big long guns, including those with features that would get them tagged as “assault weapons” and also long guns without those features, are collected by hobbyists for use in tacky family photos. They’re stockpiled for use in a hypothetical civil war. They’re used for fun. And occasionally (though still far too often), they are used in a rare-but-spectacular spree killing that electrifies the nation because it affects middle-class suburbanites who are unaccustomed to having their lives impacted by violence. These guns are too big and too expensive, though, to be the weapons of choice for “ordinary” crime — the type responsible for the overwhelming majority of gun deaths in the U.S.”

Yglesias continues, “That they are so frequently at the center of our national gun debate strikes me as an understandable reaction to horrific events. I’m a dad with a kid in school and I feel this anguish in my gut and I see it in the eyes of my fellow parents all the time. I get it. But the focus on the very most spectacular events to the exclusion of “normal” shootings generates bad policy analysis. We have policy solutions at our disposal that would address the proliferation of illegal handguns that drives the bulk of gun deaths in this country….Public opposition to banning handguns is overwhelming. It’s also unchallenged by any remotely mainstream Democratic Party politician, which seems like a reasonable response to the reality of public opinion….But that means thought-leaders on the left need to exert some discipline and mindfulness when they post about newsworthy shootings. I fully endorse the implication of this chart Steven Rattner posted, which is that the large aggregate number of guns in the United States is why the United States has so many gun deaths. But a majority of these gun deaths are suicides, and a very large majority of gun homicides are committed with handguns. So as an intervention in the debate about assault weapons, it loses some of its persuasiveness….A federal assault weapons ban, if passed, would have a minimal impact on that “gun deaths” number. A federal assault weapons ban also isn’t going to pass. Sometimes it’s politically constructive to discuss things your opponents in Congress are going to block. But a high-profile national debate about assault weapons doesn’t help Jon Tester and Joe Manchin and Sherrod Brown get re-elected. It’s probably bad for Bob Casey and Tammy Baldwin and Elissa Slotkin, too. We also know that media coverage of mass shootings and post-shooting gun control debates leads to an increase in gun sales….Everyone is entitled to push for small-bore change with modest upsides, and banning assault rifles would absolutely be a good idea. But it’s not a good idea to fool yourself about what’s at stake in your own policy proposal. Meanwhile, if we want to reduce the number of handguns floating around, we have options.” Read Yglesias’s article for a deeper dive into policy options.

Here’s a bit of a demographic shocker from “Latino Catholics eclipse white evangelicals in Southwest” by Russell Contreras at Axios: “Hispanic Catholics last year accounted for the largest percentage of people who identify with a religion in the American Southwest….They surpassed the share of white evangelicals in some of the country’s most populous states — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, Axios’ Russell Contreras reports from a new survey….Zoom out: Hispanic Catholics’ rise comes despite an overall drop in religious affiliation among all Americans, and a growing number of Latinos who convert to evangelical faiths, according to earlier research….Hispanic Catholics have eclipsed white mainline Protestants in California, New Mexico and Texas. The share of mainline Protestants in Arizona is about the same as Hispanic Catholics — 13% vs. 12%….State of play: Despite their growth, Hispanics — especially Catholics — are underrepresented in positions of power….Few Hispanic Catholics have been elected to the U.S. Senate. Five now serve there — the most in U.S. history….The nation has just one Hispanic Catholic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico. Arizona and California have had only one Hispanic Catholic governor each. Texas has had none.” The chart:

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. shares some of the salient ideas of Cecilia Rouse, President Biden’s Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, who is retiring on Friday: “Part of her job was to advance and defend President Biden’s policies. But in her lectures, testimony and writing, Rouse also sought to advance a public argument about government’s proper role in a well-functioning market economy. Views on that question influence all sorts of policy judgments (and a lot of hollow rhetoric, too). Only rarely do we drill down to its fundamentals….In an interview in her office the day before she left, Rouse spoke as a good economist in insisting that she does not see the government displacing the market. In a $25 trillion economy, she observed, “the idea that one central planner can actually efficiently allocate all of those resources is just too much, right?”….But all by itself, the market is insufficient, she said, and not just because, as we learned again recently, government regulation is essential to keeping banks and other private institutions from flying off the rails. Which government roles really matter?….“The first is for macroeconomic stabilization,” she said. In a recession, “we don’t have a lot of economic activity from the private sector, but people still need to pay bills. They still need to eat.” The “automatic stabilizers” such as unemployment insurance (which she sees as in need of reform) and food stamps not only help people directly, but they also speed revival in an economy where nearly 70 percent of gross domestic product is based on consumption…..“The second is the more classic — where there’s market failure,” Rouse continued. On many questions, market actors worry “about their own benefits and costs” and are not “taking into consideration the benefits and costs for the rest of society.” Pollution in general and the climate crisis in particular are classic cases of this…..The third area is public investment when there is no immediate incentive for market actors to take risks. “Government makes investments … in basic science. Some of them work out, some of them don’t work out. Private companies may not be willing to bear the cost of this research.” Government investment, she noted, sped the production of vaccines by private companies. The basics also include infrastructure, education and public health — along with child care and elder care that make it possible for more people (especially women) to participate in the economy….Finally, government can reduce the inequalities created by the natural workings of the market and by discrimination, including socially and politically divisive regional economic disparities….Rouse’s overall view of government and her particular interest in labor markets undergird her insistence that Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue plan was the right pandemic bet, despite inflation that, she notes, hit other advanced economies, too….She grabbed a small, milky globe she keeps on her conference table. “It’s my cloudy crystal ball,” she said with a smile. In the face of “a lot of uncertainty,” the question before the administration was “where did you want to put your weight?” Her choice, she said, was on the side of “individual well-being and worker well-being.”….Rouse’s colleagues, back at Princeton and elsewhere, will spend years debating the decisions made over the past 26 months. But in a crisis, I’ll take an economist who knows that crystal balls are usually cloudy, is transparent about her values, and does her best to make democracy educational again.”

You wouldn’t know it from the social media gloatfest, but smarter Democrats are carefully measuring their verbal responses to Trump’s indictment. For example,

From “Democrats hail, Republicans blast Trump indictment” by Michael Schnell and Emily Brooks at The Hill:

“The indictment of a former president is unprecedented. But so too is the unlawful conduct in which Trump has been engaged,” tweeted Rep.Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who served as lead impeachment manager during Trump’s first impeachment trial. “A nation of laws must hold the rich and powerful accountable, even when they hold high office. Especially when they do. To do otherwise is not democracy.”

….“There should be no outside political influence, intimidation or interference in the case,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “I encourage both Mr. Trump’s critics and supporters to let the process proceed peacefully and according to the law.”

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tweeted that “No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence. Hopefully, the former President will peacefully respect the system, which grants him that right.”

“We must allow the judicial process to continue unimpeded and free from any form of political interference or intimidation,” said Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.).

….Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), who served as an impeachment manager during Trump’s first impeachment, said Thursday was “a somber day for our nation.”….“Former President Trump’s indictment reminds us that no one is above the law and that we are all afforded due process and equal protection under the law,” he added on Twitter.

….“Just a reminder that there is no rule that you have to express your opinion before reading the indictment,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote on Twitter.

In “Democrats React to Trump’s Indictment,” Virginia Allen reports at The Daily Signal:

“The news of Trump’s indictment is a testament to one of the most fundamental ideals of our country: no one is above the law – not even presidents,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., tweeted.

Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., reacted to Trump’s indictment writing, “Our democracy rests on the rule of law. When someone—no matter how powerful they are—is suspected of a criminal act, our justice system investigates, charges, and convicts them in accordance with due process.”….Omar went on to say she hopes her fellow congressional members join her in “supporting justice and accountability—regardless of party—for the sake of our democracy.”

“I have faith in our legal system to handle former President Trump’s case without interference and with the seriousness it deserves,” Rep. Rob Menendez, D-N.J., wrote on Twitter. “As the legal process plays out, we must continue to focus on doing the work of the American people. And that is exactly what Democrats will do.”

….Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., tweeted, “Our independent, impartial judicial system is the cornerstone of our democracy. Nothing Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy do can change that.”

“Our justice system has an obligation to pursue the facts & law wherever they lead,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., tweeted. “Former President Trump will have the same rights as any criminal defendant & the justice system will presume him innocent until proven guilty.”

“While there are many unknowns, we know a few things to be true,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in a Twitter thread, adding the “Manhattan District Attorney must be allowed to continue his investigation without interference. Any attempt to undermine this process is contrary to the rule of law; and [p]olitical violence or threats of violence cannot be tolerated.”

Alejandro A. Alonso Galva, Megan Verlee, and The Associated Press report at Colorado Public Radio news that “The Colorado Democratic Party put out a statement saying they “welcome the news of Trump’s indictment and believe it’s important that he’s treated the same as every American. In his very privileged life, he learned he can ignore the law and often get away with it. If regular people did what Trump did they would already be serving time in jail.”

All wise comments, since we don’t even know the specific charges against Trump, and even the most obnoxious of political adversaries is entitled to the presumption of innocence until convicted.