Once again, the political week was dominated by news of Donald Trump. And we can all now properly identify Trump as a "twice-impeached, four-times-indicted ex-president." Sadly, the English language stops after "once... twice... thrice..." so there is no (legitimate) snappier way to say that (although we would suggest "quad-indicted," since it does seem to have a ring to it... but we digress...).

Linguistic kidding aside, Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis finally completed Trump's quartet of indictments, adding 13 more felony charges for Trump (who has now been charged with a whopping 91 felony counts in total) as well as plenty of other felonies to go around among his 18 co-defendants. Rather than take a targeted approach by just charging Trump with the easiest-to-prove-in-court charges, Willis swung for the fences and corralled all the wrongdoing within one RICO charge covering everyone. Trump and his campaign and all his legal team and even his thugs on the ground in Georgia are all now accused of being a "racketeering-influenced and corrupt organization." Sounds about right... especially after the news broke that the grand jurors who voted for the indictment have been doxxed online and are now getting threats -- just like you'd expect to see in any mob case. Trump even attempted to tamper with a witness before he even showed up to testify for the grand jury on Monday. The witness was not cowed and did testify, and very late in the evening the indictment was made public.

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Donald Trump has normalized all kinds of bizarre behavior in American politics, but the one that needs a whole lot more attention is his acceptance of the idea that violence can be used to achieve political outcomes in this country. More and more, this is becoming a mainstream idea among his MAGA followers, while his fellow Republicans either say nothing or actively join in the incitements to violence. The media has completely fallen down on the job of pressing politicians to denounce such language and pointedly ask every politician they interview whether they support such a disgraceful concept. This is a dangerous place for our country to be, and it seems like it's only going to get more dangerous over time.

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We know it is not at all alliterative, but it seems the time has come for a three-dot Wednesday. We speak, of course, in honor of the undisputed king of all three-dot journalism, the late, great Herb Caen of San Francisco. It's the format Caen was the master of... where you just string together a whole bunch of little news or commentary snippets... without a whole lot of connection... into some sort of narrative column... using ellipses (three dots) to tie the whole thing loosely together. OK, that last sentence was a bit much, even we admit, so we'll try to only use the format in traditional Caen fashion from now on. Everybody ready? Then here we go...

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The Georgia indictment handed down last night (which charges Donald Trump and 18 co-conspirators with 41 felony counts) is, in a word, breathtaking. It is 98 pages long, and it covers a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud the voters of Georgia and overturn a free and fair election, with the ultimate goal of handing the state to the candidate who had lost. Unlike the federal election case against Trump, this one is all-encompassing, due to the nature of the Racketeering Influenced and Criminal Organization (RICO) charges (where a "big picture" of criminal activity is required). Also unlike the federal case, the biggest co-conspirators were charged with Trump, which includes (just to name a few prominent ones): Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Jeff Clark, and Sidney Powell. Or, to put it another way, this is the case we've all been waiting for. And by "everyone," I mean of course those of us who were and still are horrified that a sitting president would try to steal an American presidential election that he had clearly lost.

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It's another one of those days where what I write may be wildly out of date by the time I post it, I should begin by stating. Everyone in the political world is watching Atlanta right now (the hashtag "#IndictmentWatch" is trending on what used to be called Twitter), to see whether Donald Trump will be indicted at some point today or whether we'll all have to wait until tomorrow for it to be unveiled. The biggest development (outside of rampant speculation) came when the judge who will be handling any such indictment did not clear his courtroom (of journalists) at 5:00 P.M. today, indicating that the grand jury may work late and produce an indictment at some point this evening.

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The biggest political news of the past week came from Ohio, where the voters resoundingly rejected a stealth plan by the Republicans to kill an abortion ballot measure that will appear on November's ballot. By a 57-43 margin, the voters sent a loud "No!" to the GOP, who were trying to change the rules in the middle of the game. This will have national reverberations, especially after Buckeye voters return in a few months to enshrine abortion rights in their state's constitution.

This was merely the latest in an unbroken series of victories for those fighting for women's rights at the state level. These have included ballot measures that either directly addressed abortion or stealthily sidled up to it as well as a state supreme court race in Wisconsin -- and in all of them the forced-birth side lost. Badly.

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Sooner or later, America is going to have to have a rational debate over abortion. When the Supreme Court tossed out Roe v. Wade, it opened the door to any state setting pretty much any restrictions on abortion they chose to. Some of these are Draconian in nature, while others are slightly more reasonable. On the other side of the divide, blue states are enshrining the right to an abortion in their state's laws or constitution. These generally mirror the protections in Roe, with some alterations in some cases. But the real end goal for both sides is going to be a national abortion law, to finally legally codify what rights all American women actually have over their own bodies. Nothing short is going to work, since much like in the Civil Rights era some states are always going to go to the extremes -- on what is essentially a very basic human right. If the states refuse to uphold basic human rights, the federal government is going to have to step in and do so.

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Donald Trump's legal team has reacted to the election-interference indictment of the former president with a rather novel legal strategy. They're essentially claiming that Trump never believed he lost the 2020 election -- and if you listen to what he has to say about it even now, he still believes he somehow won. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, delusional.

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You'll have to excuse us for thinking that this week's momentous events were all the direct result of a lost opportunity. For all the people who are grumbling that Donald Trump should have been criminally charged with trying to subvert American democracy and the will of the people a lot earlier than now -- which, by the way, now includes Trump himself complaining that it should have happened earlier -- let's place the real blame where it belongs: on Mitch McConnell and all the other cowardly Republican senators who voted with Trump in his second impeachment trial. If McConnell and nine more GOP senators had stood firm and done the right thing back then -- mere days after the January 6th insurrection attempt -- then we simply would not be where we are now.

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Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, was arraigned today in a federal courtroom on some very serious felony charges. The most striking thing about today's events, however, was how routine they have now become. This is (depending on how you count them) either the third such indictment of Trump or the fourth (I would say third, as the previous court filing was merely a superseded indictment that beefed up his second indictment, so the two should really be seen as only one). And Trump could have one more serious indictment and arraignment in his very near future, in Fulton County, Georgia. As with just about everything to do with Trump's presidency, this is all unprecedented. But it's also becoming routine.

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