I was reminded recently (by a reader who tweeted it to me) that the "People v. Donald Trump" trial which began today is not so much: "the porn-star hush-money case," but rather more properly: "the 2016 election-interference case." Because when all the tawdry details are stripped away (so to speak... ahem...) this is indeed what remains: Trump gamed the system to suppress bad news about him which could have influenced how people voted. And since a relative handful of votes in a few key swing states provided him with his victory, if he hadn't done so things could easily have gone the other way. To put it differently, we might now be in a frenzy of horserace speculation about which Democratic candidate would be the nominee to succeed President Hillary Clinton, at the end of her second term.

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If Democrats have their way, the 2024 election will be a one-issue election for many voters (enough to win, hopefully). And conservative Republicans just keep making it easier and easier for that to actually happen.

In the half-century that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, Republicans made a lot of political hay out of being what they called "pro-life," but what is now more accurately referred to as "forced-birth." They want to force every woman who ever gets pregnant -- no matter the circumstances, no matter the consequences -- to give birth, no matter what. American women (and men, it should be noted) do not support these radical restrictions of their rights. And they're now going to get to vote on it, in the clearest way since Roe was overturned. The 2024 election may well go down in history as being "the abortion election," to put this another way.

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Barring any last-minute surprises, we are now all on the brink of seeing a spectacle that has never happened before: an ex-president of the United States defending himself in criminal court against felony charges. Donald Trump's lawyers filed a flurry of motions this week to try to stave off this inevitability, but to no avail. Each one was summarily dismissed or postponed and in none of them did Trump achieve what he had been seeking, which was to delay the start of his first criminal trial. I should mention that I say "his first" with optimism, since he is facing three other possible felony court cases -- but nobody knows when (if ever) any of them will begin. Hope springs eternal, but for now what we've got is: "The People of the State of New York versus Donald Trump."

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We are still over half a year away from the 2024 election, so it would be premature to say: "This is the issue is that the election will all be about" (since anything could happen in the meantime which could eclipse all the biggest current issues). But it is looking like abortion rights are going to be a major part of it, at the very least. The fallout from the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision continues -- in statehouses, in ballot measures, and in court decisions. Republicans continue to learn that the most Draconian abortion laws are incredibly unpopular, and they scramble to figure out some way to deal with it all. Democrats are out there championing "freedom" and "protecting your rights" and "get the government out of your private business," which are all very potent arguments in general and which all seem to be resonating with the voters on abortion.

Yesterday, the Arizona supreme court dropped a bombshell into the political fray. It ruled that an abortion law first written in 1864 was still valid and constitutional and would soon go back into effect. This law, written during the Civil War era, completely bans abortion with only one exception. Here is the relevant text of the original, from the section criminalizing poisoning (and "just after the section banning duels"):

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Last week, Donald Trump promised he'd be making a statement "next week" which would lay out his position on abortion laws. Astoundingly, he actually followed through today by releasing a video on his pet social media network. I say "astoundingly" because Trump has promised to unveil new policies "next week" throughout his entire political career, but he seldom (if ever) actually does so. As Little Orphan Annie might say, "next week" is always conveniently a week away, for Trump.

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Living in California means not being generally surprised by earthquakes, but we realize that this is simply not so in New York City and the Northeast in general. So when a 4.8 temblor hit New Jersey, we certainly could sympathize. However, it seems East Coast tectonic zones have a certain personality trait that goes (we can't resist) right down to the bedrock? Here was the tweet that the "USGS Earthquakes" account put out this morning:

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Up until the advent of Donald Trump in American politics, there had been a pervasive attitude among many politicians that there were certain norms and traditions that had been established and long-followed, so there was no need to codify any of them into actual laws. One of these was the belief among Democrats that Roe v. Wade was settled law and that as time went on it had become increasingly impossible to even consider that it would ever be overturned. The judiciary had staked out certain rights, so there was no need for Congress to enact the same rights -- doing so would actually be redundant.

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The Florida supreme court just sent a very mixed message on abortion rights. In two decisions released today, the high court will allow a very strict abortion ban to take effect, but they also decided to allow an abortion-rights ballot initiative (which would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state's constitution) to appear on this November's ballot. Conservatives in the state government had been hoping that the ballot measure would just get tossed out, but the court allowed it to go forward. As I said, this was a very mixed message from the court.

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From the "stop me if you've heard this one" file, we suppose: An old man is running for president who is saying increasingly bizarre things... except that you might not know about it because the mainstream media only goes into a frenzy of breathless reporting when his opponent misspeaks.

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The pricetag of spreading Donald Trump's "Big Lie" -- that there were various forms of massive fraud committed in the 2020 presidential election -- is about to grow, once again. At this point it is impossible to predict exactly what the next legal cost will be, but it could easily send the total amount the Big Lie perpetrators have paid (or have been ordered to pay) north of one billion dollars. And this could still be just the beginning -- by the time the counting is fully done, this could jump to multiple billions in legal damages assessed against various bad actors.

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