Wisconsin

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Progressives tout string of wins across US as template for Democrats

      by

      Progressives in the midwest had three reasons to celebrate on Tuesday. In Wisconsin, the liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz delivered a resounding victory in the state supreme court race, flipping control of the court for the first time in 15 years. In Chicago, the progressive mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson prevailed over Paul Vallas, a more conservative Democrat who ran on a tough-on-crime message. And in St Louis, progressives won a majority of seats on the board of aldermen, the lawmaking body for the city.As they took their victory lap, progressives made clear that they viewed the wins as merely the beginning of a broader trend in America’s elections.“It’s a multicultural, multi-generational movement that has literally captured the imagination of not just the city of Chicago but the rest of the world,” Johnson said in his victory speech. “Let’s take this bold progressive movement around these United States of America.”Several lessons can be learned from Tuesday’s results, progressive leaders say. They hope their victories send a message to Democratic party leaders about the enduring resonance of abortion access, the popularity of progressives’ message and the importance of long-term grassroots organizing. The wins also come at a vital moment for progressives, who have criticized Joe Biden’s recent move toward the political center on issues such as energy and crime.“We’re building a project all across this country, and that project is ascendant,” said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families party. “It’s both a culmination of years of organizing, and it’s a validation of the popular appeal of that project.”Abortion as ‘a winning issue for Democrats’Reproductive rights appeared to weigh heavily on the minds of Wisconsin voters as they went to the polls on Tuesday. Wisconsin has an abortion ban dating back to 1849 on the books, and anti-abortion advocates have argued that the policy should be enforced following the US supreme court’s reversal of Roe v Wade last summer.The question of enforcing the 1849 ban is expected to soon come before the state supreme court, and the policy seems likely to be thrown out following Protasiewicz’s win.“We think that there’s a very great chance now that we’ll be able to get this ban off the books and restore access to folks in Wisconsin,” said Ryan Stitzlein, senior national political director of the reproductive rights group Naral. “This is life-changing for folks.”Protasiewicz made the end of Roe a central focus of her campaign, emphasizing her personal support for legal abortion access and attacking her opponent, conservative Dan Kelly, over his past work for the anti-abortion group Wisconsin Right to Life.“I don’t think you can overstate the importance of abortion in this race. Judge Janet led with her support for reproductive freedom,” Stitzlein said.Protasiewicz defeated Kelly by 11 points. The result was extraordinary for the battleground state of Wisconsin, which Biden won by less than one point in 2020. Four years earlier, Donald Trump carried the state with 47.2% of the vote compared with Hillary Clinton’s 46.5%.To Stitzlein, Protasiewicz’s decisive win should dispel any lingering questions over whether abortion access continues to resonate with voters nearly a year after Roe was overturned. Before the 2022 elections, some Democratic strategists suggested abortion would not sufficiently move the needle with midterm voters, but progressive activists firmly rejected that reasoning.“I actually feel strongly that the longer these bans are in place, the more energy and more anger that’s going to be out there because there’s going to be more people that are affected by it,” Stitzlein said. “This is a winning issue for Democrats, for folks that support abortion access because support for abortion access is not partisan, as was demonstrated on Tuesday.”‘Not an overnight coalition’For progressive organizers in Chicago and St Louis, the victories on Tuesday were years in the making.When Johnson turned his attention to the mayoral race in Chicago, he drew crucial support from his longtime progressive allies. He received hefty assistance from the Chicago Teachers Union, where he has worked for the past 10 years as the organization pushed for progressive reform. And when Johnson ran for the Cook county board of commissioners in 2018, he received an endorsement from the United Working Families, an affiliate of the Working Families party.“Brandon is not an overnight sensation; the coalition that he built is not an overnight coalition,” Mitchell said. “This was a coalition that had been measured and patient and consistent over years, slowly aggregating the power to be able to seize the victory on Tuesday.”A similar story unfolded in St Louis on Tuesday. The progressive mayor, Tishaura Jones, and the board of aldermen president, Megan Green, endorsed a slate of candidates who were able to flip three seats on the board. Green, who became board president last year, served as a convention delegate for Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign.“It’s something that’s seven, eight years in the making,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive group Our Revolution. “We’re seeing the fruit of organizing over multiple election cycles.”Our Revolution made 100,000 phone calls and sent 130,000 texts to supporters in St Louis as part of its organizing efforts there, and the group contacted each of its 90,000 Chicago members an average of three times in connection to the mayoral race. The victory in Chicago was particularly meaningful for progressive groups like Our Revolution given that Johnson was outspent nearly two to one on television advertising.“The fact that we were able to out-organize big money with people power, I think, is significant because that usually does not happen,” Geevarghese said. “I think it really speaks to the growing sophistication of the progressive movement as a political force.”‘Another existential election’ on the horizonAs Democrats look ahead to 2024, when they will attempt to maintain control of the White House and the Senate while flipping control of the House, progressives say there are some important takeaways to learn from Tuesday’s results.“There’s something poetic about the victories in Chicago and Wisconsin taking place because there is a through line there,” he said, “both around what people want – which is responsive government, which is an expansion of their freedoms – and also what the opposition was saying.”Mitchell saw “fearmongering” being deployed as a weapon in both Wisconsin and Chicago, particularly around the issue of crime. Vallas, Johnson’s opponent in the mayoral race, received the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police and pledged to “make Chicago the safest city in America”, as he attacked Johnson over his past support for the defund the police movement. In the end, Johnson won the race thanks in part to the support of voters living on the city’s South and West sides, which report some of the highest levels of violent crime.Geevarghese argued that Johnson’s win should prompt some reflection for prominent Democrats, including Biden, who seem fearful of attacks over being “soft on crime”. Progressives expressed dismay last month after Biden signed a Republican bill overturning recent changes to the criminal code of Washington DC.“We were able to talk about a broader vision of community safety, which is having good schools, which is having investment in mental health, which is making sure there’s good jobs,” Geevarghese said of Johnson’s win.Even before the 2024 elections, progressives will have additional opportunities to demonstrate the effectiveness of their message. Philadelphia will hold its mayoral race in November, and every state legislative seat in Virginia will also be up for grabs this fall. Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, has called for a 15-week abortion ban.“I think 2024 is an opportunity for us to learn from this coalition that we built and hopefully replicate it in other places, in other states,” Mitchell said. “We’re going to be faced with another existential election on the federal level in not too much time.” More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats won a vital Wisconsin judgeship. But voting rights aren’t safe | David Daley

      by

      It’s been a long time since Wisconsin could feel anything close to hope.More than a dozen years ago – when the first Harry Potter movie still played in theaters, and Katy Perry’s Firework and Bruno Mars’s Grenade topped the pop charts – Republican operatives and lawmakers locked themselves in a Madison, Wisconsin, law office and then locked themselves into power.They haven’t lost since. That painstakingly designed gerrymander gutted majority rule in a closely contested purple state. Sure, they still hold elections for state senate and assembly every two years. The Republican party simply can’t be defeated – indeed, they approach veto-proof supermajorities – even when voters award Democrats hundreds of thousands more votes.The entrenched Republican legislature, immune to voters and proven protected from public opinion, has run roughshod over labor unions, public employees and the state university system. When Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, has called the legislature into special session to enact overwhelmingly popular provisions on gun violence and reproductive rights, among other issues, Republican leadership gavels in and out in mere seconds. The rigged maps explain why an 1849 law that criminalized abortion in almost every circumstance reverted into effect after the Dobbs decision – even though more than 70% of Wisconsinites want it changed.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.There’s no reason not to take them at their word. When voters elected Evers, a Democrat, governor along with an entire slate of Democratic statewide officeholders in 2018, the legislature immediately passed wide-ranging legislation reining in the Democrat officeholders’ power, or claiming what had been executive powers for themselves. They refused to consider Evers’s appointments to crucial committees and allowed Republican officials to stay in those offices even after their terms expired.And even if the liberal justices are allowed to serve, and then a new state supreme court overturns the gerrymandered legislative maps, there’s the problem of the US supreme court and the dangerous independent state legislature theory. When North Carolina citizens looked to free themselves of a toxic Republican gerrymander by similarly flipping the state supreme court and successfully suing to overturn the maps, Republicans took it to high court, arguing that the power to draw lines has been handed to the legislature and only the legislature, free from the review of state courts.After oral arguments in Moore v Harper last fall, North Carolina Republicans won back the state supreme court and decided to revisit the previous court’s decision, potentially rendering that case moot. But at least five conservatives on the court have expressed some interest in this theory. It is not going away for good – and it’s easy to foresee Wisconsin Republicans making the same challenge. And by the time the court rules, another seat on the Wisconsin court will be up in 2025, forcing Democrats to win yet again.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.
      David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. He is a senior fellow at FairVote More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      The Abortion Ban Backlash Is Starting to Freak Out Republicans

      by

      After the Republican Party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterms, fueled in large part by a backlash to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Republican National Committee recommitted itself to anti-abortion maximalism.A resolution adopted at the R.N.C.’s winter meeting in January urges Republican lawmakers “to pass the strongest pro-life legislation possible.” Addressing their party’s poor showing in November, it said that Republicans hadn’t been aggressive enough in defending anti-abortion values, urging them to “go on offense in the 2024 election cycle.”The 11-point loss of the Republican-aligned candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election on Tuesday has influential conservatives rethinking this strategy. “Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are, or they will face another disappointment in 2024,” said a Wall Street Journal editorial.Ann Coulter tweeted, “The demand for anti-abortion legislation just cost Republicans another crucial race,” and added, “Please stop pushing strict limits on abortion, or there will be no Republicans left.” Jon Schweppe, policy director of the socially conservative American Principles Project, lamented, “We are getting killed by indie voters who think we support full bans with no exceptions.”But having made the criminalization of abortion a central axis of their political project for decades, Republicans have no obvious way out of their electoral predicament. A decisive majority of Americans — 64 percent, according to a recent Public Religion Research Institute survey — believe that abortion should be legal in most cases. A decisive majority of Republicans — 63 percent, according to the same survey — believe that it should not. When abortion bans were merely theoretical, anti-abortion passion was often a boon to Republicans, powering the grass-roots organizing of the religious right. Now that the end of Roe has awakened a previously complacent pro-choice majority, anti-abortion passion has become a liability, but the Republican Party can’t jettison it without tearing itself apart.The reason voters think Republicans support full abortion bans, as Schweppe wrote, is that many of them do.In the last Congress, 167 House Republicans co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, conferring full personhood rights on fertilized eggs. In state after state, lawmakers are doing just what the R.N.C. suggested and using every means at their disposal to force people to continue unwanted or unviable pregnancies. Idaho, where almost all abortions are illegal, just passed an “abortion trafficking” law that would make helping a minor leave the state to get an abortion without parental consent punishable by five years in prison. The Texas Senate just passed a bill that, among other things, is intended to force prosecutors in left-leaning cities to pursue abortion law violations. South Carolina Republicans have proposed a law defining abortion as murder, making it punishable by the death penalty.In Florida, which already has a 15-week abortion ban, Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to soon sign a law banning almost all abortions at six weeks. This isn’t something Florida voters want — polls show a majority of them support abortion rights — but it’s a virtual prerequisite for his likely presidential campaign.Republican attempts to moderate abortion prohibitions even slightly have, for the most part, gone nowhere. Last year, the Idaho’s Republican Party defeated an amendment to the party’s platform allowing for an exception to the state’s abortion ban to save a woman’s life. In the weeks before the Wisconsin election on Tuesday, Republican lawmakers introduced a bill providing some narrow exceptions to the state’s abortion prohibition for cases of rape, incest and grave threats to a pregnant person’s health, but they lacked the votes in their own party to pass it.It’s true that this week Tennessee’s Legislature passed a bill permitting abortion to save a patient’s life or prevent “serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” But the legislation is meaningless to the point of perversity, since it places the burden of proof on doctors rather than on the state, so that they must still fear prosecution for treating pregnant people in severe medical distress. Language that would allow women to end “medically futile pregnancies” was stripped out.It’s not surprising that voters have reacted with revulsion to being stripped of rights they’d long taken for granted, and to seeing the health of pregnant women treated so cavalierly. But the backlash seems to have caught Republicans off guard. Last May, when the Supreme Court’s draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked, Coulter assured her readers that the end of Roe wouldn’t help Democrats. “Outside of the media, no one seems especially bothered by the decision,” she wrote.Part of what happened here is that conservatives fell for their own propaganda about representing “normal” Americans. (This, incidentally, is the same reason many on the right can’t admit to themselves that Donald Trump lost in 2020.) Coulter was sure Americans would be turned off by those outraged by the end of Roe, writing, “Everybody hates the feminists.” When a poll last year showed that 55 percent of Americans identified as pro-choice, a piece in National Review told readers not to worry: “Many of our policy goals enjoy strong public support.”Untethered to actual Republican voters, Coulter was able to pivot, but the Republican Party cannot. Instead, its leaders are adopting a self-soothing tactic sometimes seen on the left, insisting they’re being defeated because they’ve failed to make their values clear, not because their values are unpopular. “When you’re losing by 10 points, there is a messaging issue,” the Republican Party chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, said on Fox News, explaining the loss in Wisconsin.But you can’t message away forced birth. Republicans’ political problem is twofold. Their supporters take the party’s position on abortion seriously, and now, post-Roe, so does everyone else.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Protasiewicz’s Wisconsin Victory Shows Power of Abortion Rights for Democrats

      by

      A resounding victory by a liberal judge who ran on abortion rights showed that a largely unified political left is keeping up its momentum, and served as a new warning sign to Republicans.MILWAUKEE — The commanding victory on Tuesday by a liberal candidate in a pivotal race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court showed the enduring power of abortion rights and issues of democracy as motivators for Democratic voters, as well as a continuing struggle among conservatives to put forward candidates who can unite Republicans and win general elections.The liberal candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, swept onto the bench by 11 percentage points, a staggering margin in an evenly divided battleground state that signaled just how much last summer’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade has transformed American politics.The Wisconsin race centered squarely on abortion rights and political representation: Judge Protasiewicz all but promised voters that if they elected her, the court’s new 4-to-3 liberal majority would reverse Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban and overturn the state’s famously gerrymandered, Republican-friendly legislative maps.Wisconsinites responded to that pitch, rejecting a conservative candidate backed by anti-abortion groups who took 2020 election deniers as a client and struggled to rally Republican donors behind him.The outcome, combined with a surprise victory in Chicago’s mayoral race by Brandon Johnson, an outspoken progressive, demonstrated that the country’s largely unified political left is sustaining momentum since its unexpectedly strong showing in the midterm elections, even as conservatives fight among themselves and struggle to counter Democratic messaging on abortion rights.Republicans are now heading into a series of coming races — for Kentucky governor this year and for president and an array of Senate seats in 2024 — with ample warning signs about the pitfalls of nominating candidates who hold positions on issues like abortion and elections that are unpopular with voters in the nation’s most competitive states.Judge Protasiewicz will join the court in August. Liberal lawyers in the state are already preparing to pursue lawsuits to roll back conservative policies. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe triumph by Judge Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, will also allow Wisconsin Democrats to pursue their own agenda through the courts after spending a dozen years ducking and running at most levels of state politics, worrying about what the dominant Republicans would lob at them next.“For a long time, Democrats in the Assembly have understood that our role is primarily being on defense,” Greta Neubauer, who leads the chamber’s Democratic minority, said at Judge Protasiewicz’s victory party in Milwaukee. Now, Ms. Neubauer said, “we have an opportunity to go on offense.”Judge Protasiewicz will be seated on the court on Aug. 1. A legal challenge to the state’s abortion ban is scheduled to begin in circuit court in Dane County next month, and while it is unclear when the ban could come before the State Supreme Court, the justices are widely expected to hear the case within a year or two and strike down the ban. Liberal lawyers are also eyeing the best way to frame a lawsuit that could prompt the court to throw out the Republican-drawn maps.During her victory speech, the liberal candidate said she would treat the role with “integrity,” then was joined on stage by current members of the court.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesIt will be many months, at least, before there is a final State Supreme Court resolution on those and other hot-button issues likely to come before the court’s new liberal majority, which will consist of four women for the first time in the state’s history.To emphasize that point, when Judge Protasiewicz arrived to deliver her victory remarks on Tuesday night, she was trailed by the three sitting liberal justices as the sound system played Lizzo’s “About Damn Time.”“Today’s results mean two very important and special things,” Judge Protasiewicz told supporters. “First, it means that Wisconsin voters have made their voices heard. They have chosen to reject partisan extremism in this state. And second, it means our democracy will always prevail.”Judge Protasiewicz defeated Daniel Kelly, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice who also lost an April 2020 election by 11 points and went on to represent the Republican National Committee in its efforts to overturn President Donald J. Trump’s defeat that year.Justice Kelly, who has long been an opponent of abortion rights, did little to parry Judge Protasiewicz on the issue. He never mentioned abortion in his television advertising and, during his final rally on Monday night in Waukesha, a parade of Republican officials spoke for more than an hour without mentioning abortion.Instead, Justice Kelly and his allies focused almost entirely on crime, an issue that also fell flat in Chicago, where Mr. Johnson, a liberal candidate, defeated Paul Vallas, who had tethered his campaign to a tough-on-crime message.Asked about his relative silence on abortion, Justice Kelly said that “the court does not do political decisions,” adding, “The question of abortion, that belongs in the Legislature to decide.”That approach turned Justice Kelly into a denier of the current political reality.Supportive right-wing radio hosts complained that he had not defended the state’s abortion ban, and conservative donors, whom Justice Kelly was reluctant to call to ask for money, steered clear of his campaign. And not enough of Wisconsin’s legions of conservative grass-roots voters were energized by his campaign speeches, which delved into legal theory and lamented his severe financial disadvantage.“Doing a statewide campaign, as it turns out, is kind of hard,” Justice Kelly said at the Waukesha rally.On Wednesday, Mr. Trump blamed Justice Kelly, whom he endorsed in 2020, for neglecting to seek his endorsement this year, arguing on his social media site that this “guaranteed his loss.”Democrats in Wisconsin and beyond gave the Protasiewicz campaign a decided financial edge. Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois organized a March 6 videoconference that raised $5 million for the Protasiewicz campaign, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and allied groups. The party transferred $8.3 million to the Protasiewicz campaign.The Republican Party of Wisconsin gave no money directly to Justice Kelly. Instead, Republican donors poured $12 million into third-party groups, whose rates for television advertising are three times what candidates pay.Brian Schimming, the Wisconsin G.O.P. chairman, lamented the disparity and donors’ decision to keep an arm’s-length distance from Justice Kelly’s campaign.“There’s a fair bit of chatter about that right now,” he said. “We could have done a more efficient job of spending it.”Daniel Kelly, who has long been an opponent of abortion rights, did little to parry Judge Protasiewicz on the issue in their race.Marla Bergh for The New York TimesAfter abortion, the biggest issue facing the new liberal court will be the state’s legislative maps.Jeffrey A. Mandell, the board president and founder of Law Forward, a progressive law firm in Madison, said he aimed to have new maps in place in time for the 2024 election, which would most likely require the case to be decided and new maps to be drawn by next April, when candidates begin circulating petitions to qualify for the primary ballot.“There’s no time to waste,” Mr. Mandell said.The three sitting liberal justices declined to say whether they believed it was possible to have new maps ready for 2024, but Judge Protasiewicz said it was “unlikely” the court could decide a case and put new maps into effect by next year’s elections.Liberals will hold a 4-to-3 majority on the court through at least 2025, when Ann Walsh Bradley, a 72-year-old liberal justice poised to become the new chief justice under the new majority, faces re-election. Justice Bradley said Tuesday night that she would run for a fourth 10-year term.Democrats are hopeful about her chances: Since the Wisconsin Supreme Court began electing justices statewide in 1853, no justice who has won a competitive election, as Justice Bradley has done twice, subsequently lost one.Beyond abortion and redistricting, the new liberal majority will decide a host of other issues, including labor rights that were diminished by Republicans.Stephanie Bloomingdale, the president of the Wisconsin A.F.L.-C.I.O., said she had watched with jealousy this year as Michigan Democrats enacted a wide range of liberal policies after redistricting helped them take full control of their state government for the first time in 40 years.“We see them, we’re very proud of them, but we’re wishing it could be us,” Ms. Bloomingdale said. “You know, in Wisconsin, we can have nice things, too.”Even before Election Day, Wisconsin Republicans who saw that a liberal victory was likely began to disparage their State Supreme Court as an illegitimate body.“I don’t think people have any idea of what’s coming,” said Rebecca Bradley, a conservative Supreme Court justice who in a decision banning drop boxes last year compared the state’s 2020 presidential contest to elections in Syria, North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. “We will have four people in Wisconsin robbing the people of the right to govern themselves.”But the scale of Judge Protasiewicz’s victory suggests that Wisconsin voters are inclined to dismiss the Republican arguments. She carried 27 of the state’s 72 counties — 11 more than Mr. Evers did when he was re-elected in November by three points — and nearly equaled the margin by which Jill Karofsky, a fellow liberal, defeated Justice Kelly in the 2020 election, when Democrats held their presidential primary on the same ballot.“I’m not concerned about the legitimacy of the court, because so many people voted for this court,” Justice Karofsky said as she nursed a Miller Lite at the Protasiewicz victory party. “So many people wanted this majority.” More

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      After His Arraignment, Trump Lashes Out

      by

      More from our inbox:‘A Great Day for Liberals’ in Wisconsin and ChicagoA Renewed Interest in Freudian PsychoanalysisLos cargos contra Trump representan la culminación de una investigación de casi cinco años de duración.Dave Sanders para The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Charged With 34 Felonies” (front page, April 5):After Judge Juan M. Merchan warned at Donald Trump’s arraignment that all parties must refrain from making statements about the case with the potential to incite violence and civil unrest, what does the former president who can’t keep his mouth shut do during his speech a few hours later?He says hateful things about Judge Merchan and his family, and vilifies District Attorney Alvin Bragg, District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia and the special counsel Jack Smith.And one of the former president’s sons put a photograph of Judge Merchan’s daughter on social media — a clear invitation to violence.It’s time for the former president to be gagged. And when he speaks out with hateful words again, a contempt order and jail time may put a sock in his mouth. About time.Gail ShorrWilmette, Ill.To the Editor:Crowd size has always been important to Donald Trump. It is the metric he uses, along with TV ratings, to measure his impact, to gauge his popularity, to feed his ego.The crowd that showed up Tuesday at his arraignment was hardly composed overwhelmingly of Trump supporters. It looked as if the media and anti-Trump people more than countered his base.No matter how Mr. Trump spins it, no matter how many times at his future rallies he proclaims an overwhelming showing of support in New York City, the camera doesn’t lie.It was good to see him cut down to size Tuesday. For the first time in his adult life he could not control the narrative. He called for a massive protest, he predicted “death and destruction” if he was charged, and he got neither.Len DiSesaDresher, Pa.To the Editor:The April 5 front-page headline “Even as Biden Has Oval Office, Predecessor Has the Spotlight” is a statement that is true only because your newspaper and other media outlets allow Donald Trump to occupy center stage.This behavior of the media has been mentioned many times before, and many believe that the tens of millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity provided to Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign contributed to his winning the election.It is now 2023 and we are facing an election that could well decide the future of America. I am therefore requesting that The Times stop paying so much attention to Mr. Trump (we’ve heard everything he has to say many times before) effective immediately.David SommersKensington, Md.To the Editor:I felt a real jolt seeing the photo of former President Donald Trump seated at the table in a Manhattan courtroom. It was the jolt of the norms of American justice falling back into alignment.Christopher HermanWashington‘A Great Day for Liberals’ in Wisconsin and ChicagoJanet Protasiewicz, the liberal candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, during her election night party in Milwaukee on Tuesday. She ran on her open support of abortion rights.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Liberal Wins Wisconsin Court Race, in Victory for Abortion Rights Backers” (news article, April 5):While New York and the nation were fixated on the circus that was Donald Trump’s arraignment, a special election was held in Wisconsin that decided whether conservatives or liberals would control that state’s Supreme Court. Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County judge, won the race and gave liberals control of the highest court in Wisconsin.Wisconsin is an important swing state, and this new balance of power in the court will have dramatic effects on abortion rights, potential election interference and how election districts are drawn. Conservatives, who have had control of the Supreme Court, will no longer be able to gerrymander voting districts to favor Republicans, nor will they be able to successfully challenge the results of a free and fair election.While this is only one state, we may see similar results in other swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and, yes, even Texas. Donald Trump is to Democrats the gift that just keeps on giving.Henry A. LowensteinNew YorkTo the Editor:Three news stories from your newspaper indicate that Tuesday was a great day for liberals and progressives: “Trump Charged With 34 Felonies,” “Liberal Wins Wisconsin Court Race, in Victory for Abortion Rights Backers” and “Rejecting a ‘Republican in Disguise,’ Chicago Voters Elect Johnson as Next Mayor.”While conservative Republicans are obsessed with culture wars and MAGA, progressives are making political headway. Let’s hope that we continue on this march to liberalism till our nation is free from prejudices, curbs on reproductive and gender freedoms, relentless gun-related violence, etc.Michael HadjiargyrouCenterport, N.Y.A Renewed Interest in Freudian Psychoanalysis Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Renstrom for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Back to the Couch With Freud” (Sunday Styles, March 26):It is true that people “see what they want in Freud.” Thus, a younger generation might think Freud “gay friendly” because a 1935 letter declared, “Homosexuality is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation.”However, the article omits that Freud went on to describe homosexuality in that same letter as an “arrest of sexual development.”Freud’s theory that gay people suffered from psychological stunted growth rationalized many decades of discrimination in which openly gay men and women were refused psychoanalytic training because they were “developmentally arrested.” Only in 1991 did the American Psychoanalytic Association change its policies refusing admission to gay candidates.I am glad that Freud is having a renaissance. However, any reading or interpretation of his work should not ignore the historical context in which he lived and the ways, for better or worse, in which some of his theories have been used to discriminate.Jack DrescherNew YorkThe writer, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, is the author of “Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man.”To the Editor:I was pleased to see New York Times coverage of the “Freudaissance,” which I have been a joyful participant in for more than a decade now, both personally and professionally.One of the understandings I have come to, having spent countless hours on both sides of the proverbial couch, in both psychoanalytic and cognitive behavioral contexts, is that these two approaches do not really diverge from each other as much as many tend to assume that they do.I see the C.B.T. founder Aaron Beck’s three levels of cognition (automatic thoughts, core beliefs and cognitive schemas) mapping neatly onto Freud’s topographical model of the mind (the conscious, preconscious and unconscious, respectively).And I see the dialectic behavioral therapy founder Marsha Linehan’s construct of the “wise mind” as an integration of the rational and emotional minds matching Freud’s structural model of the ego as a synthesis of superego and id.Different terms resonate differently in different generations and with different individuals, but rather than disproving or undermining Freud’s theories, I see today’s evidence-based approaches as indications that the father of modern psychology was apparently onto something more than a century ago.Rachel N. WynerWest Hempstead, N.Y.The writer is a clinical psychologist. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Wisconsin Supreme Court Election: Protasiewicz Wins With Abortion Message

      by

      Janet Protasiewicz prevailed in the state’s highly consequential contest for the Supreme Court, which will now be likely to reverse the state’s abortion ban and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps.MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin voters on Tuesday chose to upend the political direction of their state by electing a liberal candidate to the State Supreme Court, flipping majority control from conservatives, according to The Associated Press. The result means that in the next year, the court is likely to reverse the state’s abortion ban and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps drawn by Republicans.Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, defeated Daniel Kelly, a conservative former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who sought a return to the bench. With more than 75 percent of votes counted, Judge Protasiewicz led by more than 10 percentage points, though the margin was expected to narrow as rural counties tallied ballots.“Our state is taking a step forward to a better and brighter future where our rights and freedoms will be protected,” Judge Protasiewicz told jubilant supporters at her victory party in Milwaukee.The contest, which featured over $40 million in spending, was the most expensive judicial election in American history. Early on, Democrats recognized the importance of the race for a swing seat on the top court in one of the country’s perennial political battlegrounds. Millions of dollars from out of state poured into Wisconsin to back Judge Protasiewicz, and a host of national Democratic groups rallied behind her campaign.Judge Protasiewicz, 60, shattered long-held notions of how judicial candidates should conduct themselves by making her political priorities central to her campaign. She made explicit her support for abortion rights and called the maps, which gave Republicans near-supermajority control of the Legislature, “rigged” and “unfair.”Her election to a 10-year term for an officially nonpartisan seat gives Wisconsin’s liberals a 4-to-3 majority on the court, which has been controlled by conservatives since 2008. Liberals will hold a court majority until at least 2025, when a liberal justice’s term expires. A conservative justice’s term ends in 2026.As the race was called Tuesday night, the court’s three sitting liberal justices embraced at Judge Protasiewicz’s election night party in Milwaukee, as onlookers cried tears of joy. During her speech, the judge and the other three liberal justices clasped their hands together in the air in celebration.“Today’s results mean two very important and special things,” Judge Protasiewicz said. “First, it means that Wisconsin voters have made their voices heard. They have chosen to reject partisan extremism in this state. And second, it means our democracy will always prevail.”Justice Kelly, 59, evinced the bitterness of the campaign with a testy concession speech that acknowledged his defeat and portended doom for the state. He called his rival’s campaign “truly beneath contempt” and decried “the rancid slanders that were launched against me.”“I wish that I’d be able to concede to a worthy opponent, but I do not have a worthy opponent,” Justice Kelly told supporters in Green Lake, Wis. He had not called Judge Protasiewicz by the time she delivered her victory remarks.He concluded the final speech of his campaign by saying, “I wish Wisconsin the best of luck, because I think it’s going to need it.”Judge Protasiewicz made a calculation from the start of the race that Wisconsin voters would reward her for making clear her positions on abortion rights and the state’s maps — issues most likely to animate and energize the base of the Democratic Party.In an interview at her home on Tuesday before the results were known, Judge Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz) attributed her success on the campaign trail to the decision to inform voters of what she called “my values,” as opposed to Justice Kelly, who used fewer specifics about his positions.“Rather than reading between the lines and having to do your sleuthing around like I think people have to do with him, I think I would rather just let people know what my values are,” she said. “We’ll see tonight if the electorate appreciates that candor or not.”Over the last dozen years, the court has served as an important backstop for Wisconsin Republicans. It certified as constitutional Gov. Scott Walker’s early overhauls to state government, including the Act 10 law that gutted public employee unions, as well as voting restrictions like a requirement for a state-issued identification and a ban on ballot drop boxes.In 2020, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was the only one in the country to agree to hear President Donald J. Trump’s challenge to the presidential election. Mr. Trump sought to invalidate 200,000 ballots from the state’s two largest Democratic counties. The Wisconsin court rejected his claim on a 4-to-3 vote, with one of the conservative justices siding with the court’s three liberals on procedural grounds.That key vote gave this year’s court race extra importance, because the justices will weigh in on voting and election issues surrounding the 2024 election. Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump’s triumph in 2016 interrupted a string of Democratic presidential victories going back to 1988, is set to again be ferociously contested.The court has acted in Republicans’ interest on issues that have received little attention outside the state.In 2020, a year after Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, succeeded Mr. Walker, conservative justices agreed to limit his line-item veto authority, which generations of Wisconsin governors from both parties had used. Last year, the court’s conservatives allowed a Walker appointee whose term had expired to remain in office over Mr. Evers’s objection.Once Judge Protasiewicz assumes her place on the court on Aug. 1, the first priority for Wisconsin Democrats will be to bring a case to challenge the current legislative maps, which have given Republicans all but unbreakable control of the state government in Madison.Jeffrey A. Mandell, the president of Law Forward, a progressive law firm that has represented Mr. Evers, said he would file a legal request for the Supreme Court to hear a redistricting case the day after Judge Protasiewicz is seated.“Pretty much everything problematic in Wisconsin flows from the gerrymandering,” Mr. Mandell said in an interview on Tuesday. “Trying to address the gerrymander and reverse the extreme partisan gerrymandering we have is the highest priority.”The state’s abortion ban, which was enacted in 1849, seven decades before women could vote, is already being challenged by Josh Kaul, Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general. This week, a circuit court in Dane County scheduled the first oral arguments on Mr. Kaul’s case for May 4, but whichever way a county judge rules, the case is all but certain to advance on appeal to the State Supreme Court later this year.Dan Simmons More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Liberal judge wins Wisconsin supreme court election, flipping ideological balance

      by

      In a historic election, the liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz is projected to win her race for a seat on Wisconsin’s supreme court. Her win will flip the ideological balance of the state’s highest court, which has been controlled by a conservative majority for 15 years.Elections and democracy observers have called this election the most consequential one of the year, with abortion rights, redistricting and election rules at stake. The race pitted Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee circuit court judge and former prosecutor, against Dan Kelly, a former Wisconsin supreme court justice with ties to election deniers and the far right.Protasiewicz will replace the conservative justice Patience Roggensack on 1 August; the court will be controlled by a narrow liberal majority.The race smashed campaign finance records for state judicial elections, drawing more than $45m, according to a WisPolitics analysis. By comparison, in Wisconsin’s last supreme court race in 2020, donors brought in about $10m. Political groups and wealthy individuals across the country have opened their coffers on both sides of the race, with Protasiewicz raising nearly $9m from the Democratic party and outside groups pledging more than $6m on pro-Kelly advertisements.The massive contributions underscore the stakes of the race – from abortion rights to the state’s electoral maps, which experts have identified as one of the most gerrymandered in the country.In 2020 the Wisconsin supreme court narrowly rejected an attempt by former president Donald Trump to overturn the results of the presidential election; the court could see a similar challenge in 2024. Following the 2020 elections, Kelly was hired by the Wisconsin GOP to advise on a plan to have a group of Republicans falsely claim to be electors. The plan failed and Wisconsin’s 10 Democratic electors voted for Joe Biden, reflecting the popular vote in the state.In a March interview with The Guardian, Protasiewicz said the future of democracy in Wisconsin and at the national level motivated her to run. “I thought about our democracy, and our democracy being at stake. And that’s why I decided to do it,” she said. “All the issues that we care about are going to come in front of this court. But primarily, primarily, our democracy is on the line.”When the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June, an 1849 law banning abortion went back into effect in Wisconsin. Abortion quickly emerged as a top issue in this race, with voters across the state mobilizing around the question of abortion access. A challenge to the ban is currently making its way through state courts and will likely end up in front of the state supreme court this year.During the race, Protasiewicz was open about her personal support for legal abortion access, and although Kelly refrained from sharing his views on the campaign trail, his campaign benefited from more than $1m from the anti-abortion group Women Speak Out Pac and earned endorsements from three anti-abortion groups in the state.With a liberal majority on the court, the 1849 ban could be overruled.Ahead of the announcement of Protasiewicz’s win Tuesday night, Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin’s former lieutenant governor who ran unsuccessfully for a US Senate seat in 2022, told the Guardian that her victory would be incredibly significant for the state.“If she pulls this off we can restore balance, we can restore fairness, we can restore actual justice,” he said. “That’s what’s exciting about it.”At Protasiewicz’s election night watch party in Milwaukee, supporters followed the election on their phones and broke out in excitement as favorable results were reported. The room erupted once the race was called for Protasiewicz.“She’s one of those people who’s Wisconsin to the bone,” Sonya Bice, 57, a lawyer in Madison, said about Protasiewicz. “She’s one of those people who’s willing to get out there and run in what everyone knew was going to be a very ugly race.”Progressive groups in the state are preparing to take advantage of the supreme court’s new liberal majority. Nicole Safar, the executive director of Law Forward, a progressive non-profit legal group, said organizers were considering how best to challenge the state’s rigged legislative maps.“Law Forward and our allies and our co-counsel are seriously looking at what a partisan gerrymander claim under the Wisconsin constitution looks like,” she said.In a special election that is still too close to call, voters will decide between Republican Dan Knodl and Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin to represent Milwaukee’s northern suburbs. If Knodl wins, the Republican party will have a supermajority in the state senate, paving the way for the party to impeach state officials – a process that Knodl says he would consider launching to pull Protasiewicz from the supreme court. More