US Politics

Voters in Wisconsin are casting ballots on Tuesday in one of the most important elections of 2023 – a contest that will determine the ideological balance of the state’s supreme court.The court will probably determine the future of abortion in Wisconsin, as a lawsuit challenging the state’s 1849 ban is already winding its way through the courts. It is also poised to play a hugely consequential role in setting election rules for the 2024 presidential election in Wisconsin, a key battleground state. It could also get rid of the state’s legislative maps, which are so distorted in favor of Republicans that it’s nearly impossible for Democrats to ever win a majority.Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee judge, is facing off against Dan Kelly, a conservative who lost his seat on the supreme court in 2020. Conservatives currently have a 4-3 majority on the state’s highest court, but one of its conservative justices is retiring, meaning that the outcome of the election will determine the ideological balance of the court.The race is the most expensive judicial race in American history. More than $45m has been spent, shattering the $10m record that was spent in Wisconsin in 2020 as well as the national record of $15m spent on an Illinois race in 2004. Protasiewicz’s campaign has received significant financial backing from the Wisconsin Democratic party, while Kelly has has been bolstered by spending from outside groups, most notably a Super Pac backed by GOP mega-donors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein. Kelly has also received donations from individuals who tried to overturn the 2020 election.Abortion has dominated the race, as have concerns about voting rights and crime.In Menomonee Falls, a Milwaukee suburb in conservative Waukesha county, a steady stream of voters poured into cast votes at the Good Shepherd church, a local polling station. Several voters pointed to abortion as their top issue in the race.“Abortion is top on my list. I’m definitely pro-choice, I don’t think anybody else should be telling me or any other woman what to do,” said Karen Bitzan, a 64-year-old self-described homemaker, outside the polling place, where it was cold and drizzling on Tuesday morning. “I don’t understand the Republicans who say you can’t have an abortion but then they have no plan of how to protect those children who are forced to be born to parents who don’t want them.”Lisa Ruiz, a 67-year-old retiree supporting Kelly, also pointed to abortion as the issue that drove her to the polls. “Abortion is my number one. I stand against abortion,” she said. “It’s bringing more Christians to come and vote.”Menomonee Falls is part of a state senate district where there is a closely watched election on Tuesday that could give Republicans a supermajority in the state legislature. Republicans could use that advantage to override vetoes from Tony Evers, the state’s Democratic governor, as well as to potentially impeach state officials. Dan Knodl, the Republican state senate candidate, has said he would consider impeaching Protasiewicz if he wins.But several voters said on Tuesday they were hoping that a reconstituted supreme court would reconsider the state legislative districts, upending the Republican advantage in the state legislature.“If Kelly wins, it means they basically still have a stranglehold on the state, except when they have a statewide election. And that’s not good news,” Terese Dineen, 70, said after she voted in Brookfield, another Milwaukee suburb.“I just think it’s ridiculous that a state that’s so evenly divided is just not represented,” said Bill Anderson, 57, a project manager in Brookfield.Also on the ballot on Tuesday were two GOP-backed referendum questions dealing with cash bail and welfare benefits. Democrats say those questions are a blatant effort to juice Republican turnout and some voters expressed frustration at how hard they were to understand. “I would like a referendum question to make referendum questions more understandable,” said Debra Tomkins, a voter in Madison, the state capital.In Milwaukee, as a heavy rain began falling around noon, canvassers dressed in neon vests gathered at the office of Black Leaders Organizing Communities (Bloc), a civic engagement group focused on Black communities. An organizer reminded the canvassers to tell voters that voters could still return their mail-in ballots in person and that those who voted a provisional ballot without identification would need to return with an accepted form of ID to have their vote counted.The majority of Wisconsin’s Black population is in Milwaukee. Earlier this year, Robert Spindell, a Republican on the six-member body that oversees voting in the state, celebrated low turnout in the city in 2022.“It’s really angering all of us. It makes us work harder. We know we have to knock 10 extra doors to make up for however many people are trying to misinform, spread misinformation,” said Kyle Johnson, 27, Bloc’s political director.The Covid-19 pandemic elevated the public’s understanding of the role of the court, said Angela Lang, the group’s executive director. “I think pre-Covid, nine times out of 10, the court maybe didn’t impact you personally, but now people are like ‘hey do you know there are 10 year terms? Have you ever voted absentee? Or used a drop box – they’re the ones that got rid of drop boxes. Or those statewide mask mandates.’ There are very real tangible things that affected people’s daily lives.”New maps in Wisconsin could also make a huge difference in Milwaukee, where Black voters have been packed into as few districts as possible to dilute their overall influence. “There’s so many other issues that we’re not able to move forward on unfortunately because of redistricting and specifically because of gerrymandering,” Lang said.Polls opened at 7am and close at 8pm. Voters and election officials reported high turnout at polling places on college campuses.“Young voters normally don’t vote in judicial elections, but this year is different,” said Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic party of Wisconsin, during a get-out-the-vote event on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison. “There’s this real sense that with reproductive freedom on the line and democracy on the line, this is a can’t-miss election.”Wisconsin is expecting severe weather Tuesday afternoon, including high winds, hail and a potential tornado. The Dane county clerk, Scott McDonell, told the Guardian he was concerned about how the weather might affect turnout and was telling people to vote early.Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin’s chief election official, told reporters in a call that she was working with Wisconsin emergency management to monitor the weather.“Severe weather is a very common contingency that Wisconsin election officials are prepared for,” she said. More

Donald Trump on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records and conspiracy related to his role in hush money payments to cover up an alleged extramarital affair in the final days of the 2016 presidential election, an unprecedented development that marks the first time in American history a former president has been charged with a crime.Trump, the 45th commander in chief and the leading contender for the Republican nomination in 2024, was stone-faced as he entered the courtroom in lower Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, after surrendering to authorities in the city where he was born, built his career and launched his bid for the presidency.Trump described the moment as “SURREAL,” as his 11-vehicle motorcade made the journey from his penthouse on Fifth Ave to the district attorney’s office downtown. Upon his arrival, Trump, escorted by a phalanx of US Secret Service agents, waved to the crush of supporters, reporters and onlookers gathered near the criminal courts building.While he was in custody, Trump, like any other criminal defendant, was fingerprinted. But given the extraordinary nature of the proceedings, he was also afforded special accommodations: he was not handcuffed and was not subject to a mug shot.In his appearance before New York supreme court justice Juan Merchan, Trump himself entered the plea of not guilty, part of an effort to project an air of defiance, people close to him said. But seated between his lawyers at the defense table, Trump appeared affected by the gravity of the moment, which amounted to a legal reckoning for the reality TV star-turned-president after nearly half a century of avoiding criminal charges.According to the charging document, unsealed on Tuesday, prosecutors accused the former president of paying $130,000 to buy the silence of adult film star Stormy Daniels, who said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. The payment was made by his then lawyer Michael Cohen, who said he was acting at the direction of Trump. Trump later reimbursed Cohen while serving as president of the United States.New York prosecutors allege that Trump violated state records law because it was falsely recorded as legal expenses, which also meant Trump avoided paying tax on the money.The prosecutors doubled down on the timing of Trump’s actions, which they said could have undermined his campaign during the 2016 election. And they asked for protective orders for discovery materials, including Trump’s escalatory posts on his platform Truth Social, such as when he vowed “death and destruction” in the event he was indicted.The arraignment marks a politically and legally perilous moment for Trump, and also for the country, which has never before been confronted with the extraordinary situation of a twice-impeached, criminally charged former president now running for re-election to the White House.The intense public interest in the case was underscored on Tuesday by dueling but peaceful demonstrations swelled on separate sides of a park near the courthouse. Metal barricades divided Trump’s supporters from his opponents, a stark visual of a nation still deeply divided over his presidency and his political future. While a conviction is far from certain, it would not preclude Trump from running or winning the presidency in 2024.The New York case is just one of an array of legal threats confronting the former president, who faces criminal investigations over the January 6 Capitol attack, his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, as well as civil inquiries into his business and a defamation suit arising from allegations of rape.Trump and his campaign sees political opportunity in his legal jeopardy, as his supporters rallied to his defense, with signs and Maga-wear, in a show of fealty to a man many believe is the victim of a political witch hunt. It is a narrative Trump and his campaign have advanced in the days since he was indicted, using claims of a “witch hunt” to drive fundraising and pressure his likely Republican rivals to defend him. Prosecutors have said politics played no role in the decision to pursue this case.President Joe Biden, who has yet to formally announce that he’s seeking re-election next year, has declined to comment on the case. “This is not his focus for today,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday. More

Republican legislators in Tennessee have begun the process of expelling three Democratic colleagues from the conservative-controlled house over their support for a gun control protest at the state capitol days after a deadly school shooting in Nashville.On Thursday, hundreds gathered at the capitol to protest against the absence of gun control measures after three nine-year-old students and three staff members were killed at the Covenant school last week, according to a report in the Tennessean.Using a bullhorn, state representatives Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson approached the house podium without being recognized and cheered the protesters on.Jones and Pearson are each in their first year as representatives, while Johnson has been in office since 2019.House Republicans introduced three resolutions to expel the Democratic trio at the end of Monday’s session, four days after the protest. The chamber’s leadership also compared the gun control protest to an “insurrection”.Expelling a house member is an extremely rare occurrence, with only two of the chamber’s members removed since the civil war.The three have already been stripped of their committee assignments as more sanctions are expected, according to the Tennessee house speaker, Cameron Sexton.Several representatives also referred to Jones as a “former representative” during Monday’s session, the Associated Press reported.The trio is being accused of “knowingly and intentionally [bringing] disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives through their individual and collective actions”, according to the filed resolutions.Tensions flared during Monday’s session as supporters in the gallery booed and jeered at the introduced resolutions.At one point, Sexton ordered state troopers to remove supporters.House members also got into a confrontation on the chamber floor. Jones accused representative Justin Lafferty of pushing him and grabbing his phone.Republicans who filed the resolution successfully argued to expedite the expulsion process, with a vote scheduled for Thursday, the AP reported.House Democrats will probably be unable to block the expulsion resolutions given the house’s Republican majority, made up of lawmakers who are in favor of keeping guns as accessible as possible to the public.The rally followed the killings of Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, William McKinney, Katherine Koonce, Cindy Peak and Mike Hill at the Covenant school. Dieckhaus, Scruggs and McKinney were all students. Koonce, 60, was the school’s leader. Peak and Hill, both 61, respectively worked as a substitute teacher and a custodian.Authorities have said that the victims were all slain after an intruder fired 152 times in the school. A motive is unknown, but officials have said they believe that the shooter contemplated the actions of other mass murderers, according to the Daily Beast.Since the shooting, thousands have gathered at the Tennessee capitol calling for meaningful gun control measures, including young children and their parents, who packed the building ahead of Monday’s session.At the White House press briefing in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said: “By doing what they’re doing with these three Democratic legislators, they’re shrugging in the face of yet another tragic school shooting while our kids continue to pay the price.” More

On election night 2016, Van Jones, the criminal justice advocate and former Obama administration official turned CNN anchor, processed his shock on live television. “This was a whitelash against a changing country,” he said. “It was a whitelash against a Black president, in part. And that’s the part where the pain comes.” The clip, in which Jones appeared near tears and essentially called Donald Trump a “bully” and a “bigot”, went viral. For many, it was shorthand for shock and dismay, an articulation of unspeakable anger, and a rare example of a pundit calling it like it was.So it was confusing that over the next few years, Jones, a Black man from western Tennessee, was seen at the Trump White House, conducted the first (and uncomfortably chummy) TV interview with Trump’s son-in-law/adviser Jared Kushner, and touted his communication with the administration and congressional Republicans in the name of bipartisan criminal justice reform. In spring 2019, Jones appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference – the Maga hat-filled, far-right convention known as CPAC – as an avowed Democrat willing, for better and for worse and with a considerable amount of controversy, to engage with the opposition. He appeared on stage with the chairman of the American Conservative Union, prompting the question, from myself, from the panel’s moderator and surely from audience members: “Why are you here?”The answer – the distance between 2016 and 2019, and the messy, at times contradictory journey in between – forms the backbone of the The First Step, a new, wide-ranging and thoughtful documentary on his fraught activism and the bipartisan criminal justice legislation he championed. Created by the brothers team of director Brandon Kramer and producer Lance Kramer, The First Step opens with that CPAC appearance and takes it name from the First Step Act, the bill heralded by Jones and his criminal justice organization, #cut50, that was signed into law by President Trump in 2018. The measure barred punitive practices such as shackling pregnant prisoners, placed inmates in facilities closer to their families, cut down some federal sentences by anywhere from weeks to years and allowed those convicted of pre-2010 crack cocaine offenses to apply for resentencing to a shorter term.During the initial Trump years, Jones “felt like somebody needed to be engaging and reaching across the aisle and trying to see if there was any sliver of room to get something accomplished on some of the issues where there is some bipartisan support”, said Brandon Kramer. The First Step Act was thus a hodgepodge of reforms and concessions, with a wide range of supporters (people as ideologically opposed as Kamala Harris and Ted Cruz) and skeptics. Some Republicans interested in decreasing mass incarceration backed it; other hardliners, such as the then attorney general, Jeff Sessions, opposed it. Many progressives viewed the measure as too little, too patchwork, one whose passage would allow Republicans to claim criminal justice reform without meaningfully addressing mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Jones’s bipartisan approach – as in, courting Republicans, Jared Kushner and Democrats – drew plenty of critics; the bill was initially opposed by liberal groups including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU.It also makes for a fascinating, thorny watch, one which, Jones’s occasional foot-in-mouth moments or glad-handing aside, tangles with evergreen questions of political work: incremental change versus radical reform, resoluteness versus compromise, how and when to build a coalition. The Kramers, who worked with Jones on a 2016 web series called The Messy Truth, in which Jones spoke to people across the political spectrum, were interested in someone “going against the grain and doing something really tough and controversial and being able to tell those stories in a really complex way,” said Brandon. “It felt like no matter what would come out of that, it would be a really important document and story for the American public to have.” The First Step began production during the Women’s March in January 2017 and filmed into 2020, as the bill was worked and nearly killed, reworked and nearly killed and then passed, and beyond. “People talk about bridge-building, but it’s very rare that you get to see bridge-building in action,” said Brandon.The film proceeds along three intertwined tracks: first, the work to pass the bill itself, trying to nail down support from Democrats and attract Republicans with a Trump endorsement, as well as Trump’s Oval Office, on the day of signing. (Jones addresses Trump personally and gratefully.) Second, on Jones’s personal journey to activism, from shy, bookish kid to Yale Law School to fighting to shut down prisons in San Francisco in the 1990s, which convinced him that “you cannot help people en masse with one party or with one race. The only way you’re gonna help is you get everybody together.”Jones, whose style encompasses hard-won insights (“you can’t fight an opponent you don’t understand,” he says of researching the right), whiffs and bromides in one impassioned mix, is often a besieged island of one; “He who walks in the middle of the road gets hit on both sides,” says the bishop TD Jakes in a phone call with a fatigued Jones. We meet his small #cut50 team as well as some of his prominent liberal critics, from his friend Senator Cory Booker to progressive criminal justice advocates. The First Step Act is “not the law that we need right now”, says the Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors in the film. “This bill is going to jeopardize the work that we’ve done for the last couple decades.”And third, the film sits in on meetings facilitated by Jones between two grassroots groups grappling with addiction and incarceration: an organization of Black and Hispanic residents from South Central LA besieged by the crack epidemic and the “war on drugs”, and some predominantly white, Trump-voting citizens of McDowell county, West Virginia, reeling from the opioid crisis and cyclical arrests. Each group visits the other; most find common ground in shared trauma and frustration over a system that punishes rather than rehabilitates, if not in justifying the others’ vote in 2016. In one of the film’s most riveting scenes, Jones tries to convince the LA group members to visit Trump’s White House to tell their stories, because the people who shouldn’t be in power will make the trip, and “the right people won’t go” to make an impact. Some do make an uncomfortable visit, greeted by Kellyanne Conway; others view engagement as a bridge too far, certain that Trump and Conway “will find a way to misuse it”.The tension between engagement and non-engagement, incremental work versus comprehensive reform, course throughout the film with, of course, no definitive resolution. “There are very legitimate and important reasons why to engage, and there’s legitimate and important reasons why some people don’t engage or why they’re fighting for a more comprehensive reform,” said Brandon. “The hope is that you see people who represent your view, but you’re also given a window into a different strategy or opinion or view.”“It’s valuable for the human experience but also the political process to be able to engage with these kind of narratives but also just paradoxes in this space,” said Lance Kramer of the multitude of experiences and approaches professed in the film. “I think it’s a healing space, when you have that opportunity.”If anything, the US political environment has only grown more polarized, and the Republican party more untethered from reality, in the years since The First Step was filmed; it can feel weird to watch the film, and its depiction of bipartisan efforts, in a post-January 6 context. But, as Jones and the film-makers point out, there is still a point to political bridge-building. The First Step Act did get passed, allowing thousands of federal prisoners to go home early. The film ends with immediately eye-watering clips of former inmates reunited with their families, months or years ahead of time. “There’s virtues in still trying to get things done and not just throwing up our hands and giving up,” said Lance. “At the end of the day, it’s people’s lives that depend on it.”
The First Step is now available digitally in the US More

An ex-Maryland governor’s former political aide – who was wanted on corruption charges – died on Monday after he was wounded while being confronted by law enforcement agents, his lawyer said, following a manhunt that was launched when the man failed to appear for trial.Roy McGrath’s death was confirmed by the FBI to attorney Joseph Murtha. Murtha added that it was not immediately clear if McGrath’s wound was self-inflicted or came during an exchange of gunfire with agents.The FBI had said earlier that McGrath, once a top aide to ex-Maryland governor Larry Hogan, had been hospitalized after an agent-involved shooting. The FBI typically uses the term “agent-involved shooting” to describe cases where agents shoot someone in the line of duty, but the bureau declined to elaborate.An attorney for McGrath’s wife, William Brennan, also confirmed the death. Brennan said his client, Laura Bruner, was “absolutely distraught” about her husband’s death.According to an email earlier from Shayne Buchwald of the FBI in Maryland, McGrath was wounded during “an agent-involved shooting” at about 6.30pm in a commercial area on the south-western outskirts of Knoxville, Tennessee. Buchwald said McGrath was taken to a hospital.Additional details, including how McGrath was wounded and what led up to it, were not immediately released. The shooting was under investigation late on Monday.“The FBI takes all shooting incidents involving our agents or taskforce members seriously,” said Buchwald, who declined to confirm that McGrath had died.McGrath, 53, served as chief of staff to Hogan. He was declared a wanted fugitive after failing to show up at a scheduled fraud trial last month, and the FBI has said he was considered an international flight risk.In a statement, Hogan said he and his wife, Yumi, “are deeply saddened by this tragic situation. We are praying for Mr McGrath’s family and loved ones.”Murtha called the death “a tragic ending to the past three weeks of uncertainty” and said his client always maintained his innocence.After McGrath failed to appear at Baltimore’s federal courthouse on 13 March, Murtha said he believed McGrath, who had moved to Naples, Florida, was planning to fly to Maryland the night before. Instead of beginning jury selection, a judge issued an arrest warrant and dismissed prospective jurors.McGrath was indicted in 2021 on accusations he fraudulently secured a $233,648 severance payment, equal to one year of salary as the head of Maryland’s environmental service, by falsely telling the agency’s board the governor had approved it. He was also accused of fraud and embezzlement connected to roughly $170,000 in expenses. McGrath pleaded not guilty.McGrath resigned just 11 weeks into the job as Hogan’s chief of staff in 2020 after the payments became public.If convicted of the federal charges, he would have faced a maximum sentence of 20 years for each of four counts of wire fraud, plus a maximum of 10 years for each of two counts of embezzling funds from an organization receiving more than $10,000 in federal benefits. More

One of the biggest challenges to the future of American democracy is unfolding this Tuesday, but not in Manhattan. It’s occurring in Wisconsin.Beyond the fact that no former president has ever faced a criminal indictment, Donald Trump’s arraignment in Manhattan on criminal charges offers little by way of news. An arraignment leading to a criminal trial that takes place months (if not years) from now is a dull technical legal proceeding.To satisfy the public’s seemingly insatiable craving for Trump entertainment notwithstanding, the media are filling the void with Trump swag: wall-to-wall “special coverage”, on-the-spot correspondents, panels of pundits, interviews with current and past Trump lawyers and former prosecutors, opinion polls, interviews with “average” Trump supporters, and mindless chatter about Trump’s moods (“troubled”, “angry”, “defiant”, “exhilarated”).Tonight, Trump is expected to deliver a prime-time address from Mar-a-Lago. No news there, either. Predictably, it will be little more than lies and smears – more free media coverage for Trump’s venomous bluster.A larger challenge to American democracy is occurring in Wisconsin, where voters will choose a new judge for the state’s supreme court and a senator for its legislature, but that’s getting far less attention than what’s occurring in New York.Wisconsin is a key swing state in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Its supreme court and legislature could be critical to the outcome.And it is the most gerrymandered state in the nation. Although voters in the state divide almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans, Republicans hold 63 out of 99 seats in the state assembly and 21 of 33 seats in the state senate.Four years ago, the US supreme court decided to leave partisan gerrymandering cases to state courts. This means that if the justice who’s elected today alters the Wisconsin supreme court’s seven-person majority, it could strike down the state’s wildly gerrymandered voting maps – a major advance for democracy.But even this might not be enough to restore democracy in Wisconsin. Tuesday’s special election to fill an open state senate seat will decide whether Republicans gain a supermajority that could allow them to impeach the new justice.The Republican candidate for that seat, Dan Knodl, has suggested he might try to do so if he doesn’t like who’s elected to the court.Not incidentally, Knodl was one of 15 Wisconsin Republican lawmakers who in January 2022 sent a letter to then vice-president Mike Pence asking him to delay certifying presidential results that showed Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump.The underlying issue in Wisconsin is the same as it’s been since Trump lied and smeared his way into the national consciousness seven years ago: whether an authoritarian demagogue can take over a national political party so that the party can then control enough state legislatures to elect that authoritarian – even though a large majority of voters reject him.Trump lost his 2020 presidential bid by 7m votes. But he could have won the electoral college, and therefore been elected president, had he won just 42,919 more votes spread across just three swing states – Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.So the rules about who gets to vote are crucial, especially in these swing states. And who sets those rules? State legislatures, along with state courts that decide whether the legislatures are acting constitutionally. Hence, the importance of Tuesday’s two races in Wisconsin.Wisconsin Republicans have already changed state law to make voting more onerous by enacting a strict voter ID law. And last year, the state’s conservative supreme court banned drop boxes for absentee ballots. Wisconsin now ranks 47th out of 50 states on how easy it is to vote.Not incidentally, Wisconsin’s supreme court was the only state supreme court in the nation that agreed to hear Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election, eventually rejecting – by a single vote – his attempt to throw out 200,000 ballots in the state’s two large Democratic counties.Another way Trump could have won in 2020 is if the outcome of the election had been determined by Republican-controlled state legislatures in Wisconsin and other swing states – as Trump and many Republican members of Congress sought. Yet another reason why the Wisconsin races are so important.Friends, this is how authoritarian minorities steal democracies: they do it step by step. They design voting districts to freeze out a majority of voters. They then gain legislative supermajorities that allow them to control the state executive and state courts. Then they capture electoral college majorities despite the popular vote.Or they sow so much doubt about the popular vote that they decide the outcome.This was Trump’s playbook in 2020. He didn’t succeed then, but he might in 2024.What’s happening in Manhattan’s criminal court is obviously important. Holding a former president accountable to the rule of law is essential.But what’s happening today in Wisconsin may prove as, if not more, important to the future of American democracy. It will either strengthen or weaken the levers of self-government in a state where those levers could make all the difference.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

The indictment of Donald J Trump has not driven a wooden stake through his heart. He has risen, omnipresent and ominous again, overwhelming his rivals, their voices joined into his choir, like the singing January 6 prisoners, proclaiming the wickedness of his prosecution. As he enters the criminal courthouse to pose for his mugshot and to give his fingerprints, evangelicals venerate him as the adulterous King David or the martyred Christ.Trump does not have to raise his hand to signal to the House Republicans to echo his cry of “WITCH-HUNT”. He owns the House like he owns a hotel.“I keep him up on everything that we’re doing,” says Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who serves as one of his agents over the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Nine of the 25 Republicans on the House judiciary committee and 11 of the 26 on oversight have endorsed him. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, has pledged her allegiance. Jim Jordan, who refused to honor a subpoena from the January 6 committee, now issues flurries of subpoenas as chair of the Orwellian-named subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, to obstruct investigations of Trump, and not incidentally into Jordan’s and other House Republicans’ roles in the insurrection. But not even a subpoena to the New York district attorney, Alvin Bragg, or any other prosecutor, could command the tide of indictments.Between the motion of Trump’s first indictment and the act of the last Republican primary, more than a year from now, on 4 June 2024, the shadow will fall on the only party with an actual nomination contest. Trump’s pandemonium will only have an electoral valence for the foreseeable future in its precincts. His damage to the constitution, the national security of the United States and the rule of law will be extensive, but his most intense and focused political destruction will be circumscribed within the Republican party.From the report of every new indictment to its reality, Republican radicalization will accelerate. Every concrete count will confirm every conspiracy theory. Every prosecution and trial, staggered over months and into the election year, from New York to Georgia to Washington, will be a shock driving Republicans further to Trump. Every Republican candidate running for every office will be compelled to declare as a matter of faith that Trump is being unjustly persecuted or be themselves branded traitors.Profession of the holy creed of election denial has already been broadened to demand profession of the doctrine of Trump’s impunity. Every Republican attempting to run on law and order will be required to disavow law and order in every case in which Trump is the defendant. Trump’s incitement to violence will not have an exception of immunity for the Republican party. Beginning in the Iowa caucuses, the confrontations may not resemble New England town meetings. If Trump were to lose in the first tumultuous caucuses, can anyone doubt he will claim it was rigged? Was January 6 a preliminary for the Republican primaries of 2024?The death watch of Trump is a cyclical phenomenon. After each of his storms, the pundits, talking heads and party strategists on all sides emerge from their cellars, survey the latest wreckage and check the scientific measurements of the polls to give the “all clear” sign that the cyclone had passed. When Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, thoughtful analysts assured that Trump’s time was gone, he would fade away and his comeback in 2024 was an impossibility, just “not going to happen”. Everyone should “relax”. Then came January 6. When Trump’s endorsed candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, a gaggle of election deniers and conspiracy mongers, were ignominiously rejected, last rites were pronounced. Trump was dead again.“We want to make Trump a non-person,” Rupert Murdoch said after the January 6 insurrection. Trump’s image was virtually banished from his bandbox of Fox News. He would be airbrushed out of the next episode of history.“The best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter,” wrote Emily Seidel, chief executive of the Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity, in a memo.On 5 February, the Koch dark money syndicate held a conference of its billionaire donors and key activists at Palm Springs, California, to lay the groundwork for the dawning of the post-Trump age. There it was decided to swing its enormous resources behind the candidacy of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who they had originally cultivated as one of their Tea Party hothouse congressmen.The wishful thinking that Trump would magically disappear, however, ignored the omens of Liz Cheney’s purging, the victories of his candidates in the midterm Republican primaries over blanched “normies”, and the corrupt bargain that McCarthy was forced to make to secure his speakership. The implacability of Trump’s political base’s attachment was discounted.Murdoch, Koch et al should have grasped the dangerous fluidity of the extremism they stoked, financed and organized for decades, which metastasized into Trump. Their approach to Trump was not dissimilar to that of Vladimir Putin, treating him as their useful idiot. Putin’s purpose was and is to use Trump to destroy Nato and the western alliance, and as an agent of chaos within the US of a magnitude that no KGB agent could have recruited during the cold war.The Koch network contentedly used Trump to pack the courts with Federalist Society stamped judges, deregulate business and thwart policy on climate change. But despite delivering those goods, Trump was ultimately uncontrollable. The problem with Trump was not his wildness and lawlessness. They were willing to tolerate him so long as his administration produced for them. Trump’s foibles were the cost of business. His liability was that he was not their kind of Republican, at heart a laissez-faire free market libertarian. Trump hated international trade and opposed slashing entitlements, particularly social security and Medicare, which they have long tried to hobble and privatize. In 2018, he tweeted his contempt for the “Globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles … I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas. They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more. I made them rich.” But his worst debit for them was that he lost. With DeSantis, they thought they could finally move on. Without Trump, they could wipe the slate clean, restore the past and return to the glory days when the Tea Party militants besieged town hall meetings to shriek against Obamacare. The undercurrent of the oligarchs’ romance with DeSantis is a strange nostalgia.Trump’s announcement on 18 March that he would be arrested and charged in New York three days later, born of a combination of panic and seizing an opportunity for grift, was not a deliberate strategic masterstroke, though it had that effect. In February, DeSantis led Trump by 45% to 41% in the Yahoo/YouGov poll. In the poll taken just after Trump said he would be arrested, Trump shot into the lead 47% to 39%. After he was indicted, he left DeSantis in the dust, 57% to 31%.Trump had already sent Murdoch’s and Koch’s presumptive candidate reeling. DeSantis has positioned himself as a cultural warrior but Trump smashed into his vulnerable flank. Before he adopted his gay bashing and race- and Jew-baiting persona, DeSantis was a cookie-cutter Tea Party congressman who voted several times to cut social security and Medicare. When Trump slammed him for his votes in early March as “a wheelchair over the cliff kind of guy”, DeSantis renounced his position, saying he would not “mess” with social security. Even before the indictment, Trump had Il Duce of the Sunshine State dancing like Ginger Rogers backwards in the Cuban heels of his cowboy boots. Trump has not relented. The day after he was indicted, his Make America Great Again political action committee broadcast an ad ripping DeSantis: “President Trump is on the side of the American people when it comes to social security and Medicare. Ron DeSantis sides with DC establishment insiders … The more you see about DeSantis, the more you see he doesn’t share our values. He’s not ready to be president.” On the right that Trump has made, national socialism beats laissez-faire.DeSantis reacted to Trump’s indictment by stating that he would not extradite him from Florida to New York, which nobody had asked him to do. His empty gesture as a two-bit secessionist would be in defiance of the constitution’s article IV extradition clause. Between the emotion and the response falls the hollow man. His rhetorical lawlessness in tribute to Trump only enhanced Trump’s pre-eminence over him.If anyone should have known better, it was Murdoch. His media properties now veer from slavishly outraged defense of the accused Trump on Fox News (“Witch-hunt!”) to trashing him in the New York Post (“Bat Hit Crazy!”) to puffing DeSantis in the Times of London, not widely read in Iowa or New Hampshire. The ruthless operator has been outplayed. Murdoch, who takes no prisoners, is Trump’s prisoner.Murdoch profitably buckled in for the Trump ride all the way to January 6. His decision not to jump off for the crash has now landed him in his biggest scandal, thrusting him in the middle of the Trump debacle with a January 6 trial of his own. After the 2020 election, following the lead of Trump and his attorneys, Fox News broadcast that Dominion Voting Systems had changed or deleted votes to help steal the election. The Fox chief executive, Suzanne Scott, wrote in an email shutting down the fact-checking of Trump falsehoods: “This has to stop now … this is bad business … the audience is furious and we are just feeding them material.” On 5 January, the eve of the attack on the Capitol, Murdoch discussed with Scott whether the network should report the truth: “The election is over and Joe Biden won.” He said those words “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen”. Scott told him that “privately they are all there” but “we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers”. On 12 January, Murdoch emailed the Fox board member Paul Ryan that he had heard that the Fox host Sean Hannity “has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers”.Fox was terrified of its own audience, the Trump base it had whipped up day after day, fearful it would defect to a more pro-Trump site, Newsmax or One America News Network. Instead of broadcasting the facts, its executives ordered conspiracy theories and lies be aired to satisfy voracious demand. Murdoch admitted in an email that Trump’s claims of voter fraud were “really crazy stuff”. But the show must go on. Dominion is now suing Fox News for $1.6bn for defamation.Much of the material in the discovery documents reads like dialogue from a bad French farce.“I hate him passionately,” wrote a histrionic Tucker Carlson about Trump. Murdoch told Scott about Giuliani’s and the others’ lies: “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.” On 21 January 2021, Murdoch called Trump “increasingly mad”. Murdoch wondered, after serving as Trump’s chief enabler, “The real danger is what he might do as president.” Quel surprise!Of course, the specific falsehoods Fox recklessly and maliciously broadcast about Dominion were of a piece with those the network has been pumping out for years. That Murdoch is shocked, shocked is worthy of Capt Renault discovering there is gambling in the backroom of Rick’s Café in Casablanca. “Your winnings, sir.”The day after Trump was indicted, Judge Eric Davis ruled that the Dominion case would go to trial.“The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that [it is] CRYSTAL clear that none of the [Fox News] statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” he wrote. That trial will begin in mid-April and will probably last for weeks with major Fox personalities and Murdoch called to the stand. The very bad news is that in Delaware, where the trial will take place, unlike in New York, where the Trump trial will be held, television cameras are allowed in the courtroom. Undoubtedly, Fox will not be airing the humiliation of its stars and executives, but it is certain that CNN, desperate for ratings, and MSNBC will happily fill schedules with a Fox cavalcade.Fox’s propaganda was intimately linked to the January 6 coup, but could not be investigated by the January 6 committee. Murdoch’s desperate desire to separate himself from Trump will be impossible when Fox’s lies for Trump in the subversion of constitutional democracy are on full display. The Dominion trial will provide a necessary complement to the trials of Trump, more than an atmospheric touch of political theater, but bearing on politics moving forward. Murdoch, chained to his service to Trump, will not escape a judgment any more than Trump.The response of Fox’s audience to Fox in the dock will inevitably be to rally around Trump. Murdoch may be finished with Trump but Trump is not finished with him. Murdoch’s trial will contribute to the tightening of support for his object of contempt.“I am your retribution,” Trump promises. He rages against DeSantis and Fox as “Rinos” – Republicans In Name Only, which is to say Republicans. In the courtroom drama ahead, Trump will flail against his host of prosecutors, but his retribution during his battle for the nomination will be levied against the Republican party.
Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

Donald Trump will make history this week as the first US president to be charged with a criminal offence. Later today he will present himself at a court in Manhattan to hear the charges against him which relate to campaign finance irregularities over the hush money paid to the adult film star Stormy Daniels in the final days of his successful 2016 run for office. As Hugo Lowell tells Michael Safi, once again with Trump we are in uncharted territory. Trump denies breaking the law and has targeted the prosecutor of the case with claims of a “witch-hunt”. He’s also using the court appearance as a focal point for recent fundraising efforts. The case is unlikely to be resolved before the 2024 election in which Trump is still the leading candidate in the Republican nomination race. But in all likelihood he will be campaigning for the White House while facing felony charges next year. More