Donald Trump will finally be forced to sit in a courtroom to answer criminal charges against him in a trial before a jury of his peers. This trial will begin on March 25th, the judge overseeing the case ruled today. This was the originally-scheduled date for the courtroom drama to begin, which Trump's lawyers tried unsuccessfully to push back as far as they possibly could. The judge just flat-out rejected their pleas for delay, so jury selection will begin late next month.

Just to be clear, this is the New York state-level trial over charges that Trump illegally tried to hide hush-money payments to a porn star and broke campaign finance laws by doing so. Trump is facing 34 felony counts in this trial, which carry a total maximum penalty of 136 years in prison. While that certainly sounds serious, it is in fact the least serious of the four criminal trials Trump is currently facing. It also may be the hardest case to make, at least in the court of public opinion, as it involves legal niceties that aren't immediately apparent to the layman. And even if Trump is convicted in this trial, it is doubtful whether he would even be sentenced to any prison time at all (since he will be a first-time offender in a very white-collar crime).

The other three criminal cases against Trump are all much more serious and much easier for the public to understand, so it is kind of a shame that the porn-star case will be the first one heard in court. These other three trials are all slogging through various roadblocks, which has made even coming up with a firm scheduling date for them impossible so far.

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The House seat once held by George Santos is back in Democratic hands once again, after an impressive 8-point victory in a special election last night. Once Tom Suozzi is sworn in, this will leave Republicans with a smaller majority, meaning Speaker Mike Johnson will only be able to lose two votes from his own party when passing purely partisan bills. This may not have that big an effect, since Johnson already struggles to pass partisan bills with the majority he's currently got (a bill on spying powers had to be pulled today, for instance, since Republicans can't agree among themselves over what to put in it). If Johnson had been wildly successful up to this point and his new smaller margin put that at risk then that'd be one thing, but the reality is the only bills he's been able to move with any chance of becoming law are ones with wide bipartisan support. Not much about that dynamic is actually going to change, even with one more Democrat in the chamber.

Still, last night was good news for Democrats. In 2022 Santos initially won the district -- which flipped the seat to the Republicans -- by eight points too. His odiousness had to have been a factor in the race to replace him, but it wasn't like Democrats won in a solidly red district or anything. They (obviously) won some voters back to their side, which is indeed good news for them heading into this year's regular elections. Democrats could retake control of the chamber by picking up only four seats in November, and New York may be the place where this happens. House Republicans had a very good cycle in New York in 2022, so if four or five more Democrats can win seats back (as Suozzi just did), that could be the whole ballgame.

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As I write this, there may or may not be a second impeachment vote happening later today in the House of Representatives. Republicans tried to impeach the secretary of the Department of Homeland Defense last week and suffered a rather embarrassing loss, so one would assume that this time around the speaker will do a better job of counting noses before the vote takes place -- and also that this time the vote won't happen if Republicans don't have enough. As we saw last week, the difference of one vote can indeed be critical in such a closely-divided House.

So I thought today was a good day to do some nose-counting math in general over in the House, since the political world is also awaiting the results of a special election in New York to fill the seat of George Santos (or whatever he's calling himself today). The seat could easily flip back to the Democrats, but the polling shows a very close race (and Long Island has been hit with a snowstorm on Election Day, which could dramatically affect the turnout for in-person voting).

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Family dynasties have been part of the American political scene since the very beginning. Our second president was the father of our sixth president, the two differentiated only by the middle name "Quincy." The Bush family almost had three presidents, a father and two sons, but while two of them made it to the White House (differentiated only by the extra middle name "Herbert"), the third fell short. Al Gore, who ran against George W. Bush, was also the son of a national politician (of the same name, they were "Senior" and "Junior"). It happens a lot, in other words -- American politics and nepotism have gone hand-in-hand for centuries. But I have never seen such a blatant attempt by what is now known (disparagingly) as a "nepo baby" to benefit solely from his last name as the ad for Robert F. Kennedy Junior that ran during yesterday's Super Bowl.

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This was a very bad week for Republicans in Congress, pretty much all around. The Speaker of the House proved incapable of counting votes and thus saw two big defeats on the floor, and over in the Senate the Republicans cut off their noses (elephant trunks?) to spite their faces in a spectacular turnaround from their own basic bargaining position. GOP incompetence was on display on both sides of the Capitol, to put it bluntly.

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Donald Trump is, without doubt, the leader of the Republican Party right now. He is cruising to the Republican presidential nomination and the party's base has rallied around him almost to the exclusion of all others. But below the level of Trump, there is a growing leadership vacuum in the party, as everyone scrambles to bend whichever way the Trump winds happen to be blowing at that particular moment, while still attempting to hold the party together. This lack of secondary leadership came to the fore this week in three notable ways.

Both houses of Congress have Republican leaders who proved to be either ineffective or downright incompetent this week. Neither one could hold his caucus together to get what they wanted done actually accomplished. In the House of Representatives, what they failed to accomplish was a red-meat MAGA move, while over in the Senate they failed to accomplish a centrist compromise with Democrats. So Republicans proved their incompetence in two different ideological directions at once, within the same week. Meanwhile, the chair of the Republican National Committee -- who is about as pro-Trump as can be imagined -- is about to be eased out of her position, because now Trump isn't supporting her anymore. That's a whole lot of disarray for a party heading into an election year, you've got to admit.

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Last night, Nikki Haley suffered an embarrassing loss in Nevada's Republican primary. But it wasn't the same embarrassing loss as she suffered in New Hampshire -- or will soon be suffering in her home state of South Carolina, for that matter -- since she didn't actually lose to Donald Trump. Instead, in what can only be called a truly meaningless primary, she lost (by a 2-to-1 margin!) not to a competing candidate but rather to: "None Of These Candidates." This is an option on Nevada ballots for voters to register their vote as a protest against the choices provided. Last night, Haley got 31 percent of the vote while "None Of These Candidates" got a whopping 63 percent. That is truly embarrassing, you've got to admit.

But as I noted, the whole thing was meaningless in the first place, since Nevada is also holding a Republican caucus, tomorrow night. The caucus (not the primary) will determine all of the state's delegates to the Republican National Convention. Trump wasn't on the primary ballot and Haley won't be on the caucus ballot (due to party rules prohibiting a candidate from being on both), so Trump is obviously going to sweep up all of Nevada's delegates.

But rather than dwelling on Nikki's woes, the amusing result out of the Silver State caused me instead to indulge in a rainy winter day's deluded daydream. Because what would happen if the entire country had this option -- not just for primaries but for the general election? And what if it were binding in a way Nevada's isn't?

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Donald Trump is still not king. That's the upshot of today's ruling from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, when stripped of all the legalese. He did not enjoy some divine right to do whatever he pleased while he was president, and he does not have some "Get Out Of Jail Free" card to use now that he is not president anymore. We are a country of laws, and everyone -- up to and including current and former presidents -- must obey them or ultimately have to face the consequences in a courtroom.

The ruling, from a three-judge panel, was both unanimous and brutal. Two of the judges had been appointed by Democrats while one had been appointed by a Republican, but they all agreed that Trump's claim of absolute immunity was complete bunkum. They shot down each and every claim that Trump's lawyers had made, and eviscerated the legal reasoning as being seriously flawed. It was a sweeping refutation of Trump's outlandish claims that everything he did as president is immune from any prosecution now and forever.

This is all as it should be, since Trump's lawyers really had to bend over backwards to even come up with their harebrained arguments. The appellate judges shredded this faulty reasoning fully and completely. So completely, in fact, that this may wind up being the final word on the matter.

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The key aspect of this, again, is: Are we as Republicans going to have press conferences and complain the border is bad and then intentionally leave it open?

-- Senator James Lankford
(chief GOP negotiator on the border bill)

As of now, things are looking like that's going to wind up being a "Yes," Senator Lankford. Now that Donald Trump is heavily weighing in against it, it may be completely impossible to pass any sort of border or immigration bill for the rest of this year no matter what it contains. Which would be a huge missed opportunity for Republicans, but they're perfectly content to just endlessly play politics with the issue without ever doing anything to solve the basic problems.

This is nothing new, by the way. The closest (up until this point) that Congress ever recently got to passing any sort of immigration reform (comprehensive or not) came under the presidency of George W. Bush, in 2007. Hammered out by a bipartisan group in the Senate, the bill then never passed, to Bush's great disappointment. As is the case now, Republicans revolted over the deal and decided to play politics instead. End result: no changes in the laws.

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New monthly employment numbers were released today showing a surprisingly-high 353,000 new jobs were created in January. The stock market is currently setting new all-time highs. The American economy has recovered from COVID far faster and far better than all other major countries, in fact. Inflation has come back down, gasoline prices are down, and wages are up (growing faster than inflation). Signups for Obamacare hit another record this year (outpacing last year's record by five million!) and America has the lowest uninsured rate in history. Domestic oil production is also setting records. So what are conservatives obsessed with in reaction to all this good news? Taylor Swift. No, really....

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