It has already been both a pioneering and superlative week at the crossover between the political and legal worlds (and it's only Wednesday!). Pioneering because this week saw both the opening of the first criminal trial of an American ex-president as well as the first Senate trial of a sitting cabinet member (after impeachment by the House of Representatives). The superlative part just happened today as well, as the "trial" of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was undoubtedly the fastest impeachment proceedings ever to occur in the Senate. The senators were sworn in as jurors, and then (after a few hours of Republicans blathering in a failed attempt to delay the inevitable) the whole body voted on motions to dismiss the two charges contained in the impeachment. Both were strict party-line votes, so the Mayorkas impeachment trial is now over before it even began.

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The first criminal trial of Donald Trump leapt forward today in New York City, making more progress than some had predicted after yesterday's rather slow start. Seven jurors have now been seated, which is more than one-third of the total needed (there will be a dozen jurors and six alternates in total). Nothing will happen tomorrow (the judge has ruled that the trial will take a break on every Wednesday), but it's not out of the question that a full panel of jurors could be seated by the end of the week.

Trump's legal team has been busy digging into all the prospective jurors' online presences, and several were challenged today "for cause." Lawyers from both sides -- the prosecution and the defense -- can challenge jurors for a valid reason (showing bias, mostly) and they also have a limited number (10 each) of "peremptory challenges," where they can dismiss jurors for essentially no reason at all (other than: "I don't want that person on the jury"). As of this writing, Trump's lawyers have used up six of theirs and the prosecution has used up four. Of the jurors challenged by Trump's team, some were dismissed for cause, but not all of them (the judge has to agree that there is a valid cause, and he didn't for at least one juror).

Whether it happens by the end of the week or not, at some point the full jury will be seated and the trial itself will actually get underway. Trump has tried delaying this inevitability in pretty much every way he and his lawyers could think up, but finally the delays will be over and opening arguments will begin.

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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.

I know I'm not alone in thinking that the entire planet slipped into some sort of alternate universe in 2016 -- the "Bizarro World" of the Trump era. If this cosmic shift hadn't happened, America (and the rest of the world) would be in a very different place indeed right now, and that's putting it mildly.

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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."

Trump is admittedly a master of the legal delay. He has seemingly-bottomless funds to foot the bills of teams of lawyers who will file every motion under the sun in an effort to delay, delay, delay. Each and every motion can then be appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which currently has three members appointed by Trump himself. A court case which in normal circumstances would be over within a few months or perhaps half a year at most can be dragged out for years and years in this fashion, and Trump has been a master at doing so for decades now. He has participated in one way or another in thousands of court cases, although this will be his first as a criminal defendant.

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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"):

[E]very person who shall administer or cause to be administered or taken, any medicinal substances, or shall use or cause to be used any instruments whatever, with the intention to procure the miscarriage of any woman then being with child, and shall be thereof duly convicted, shall be punished by imprisonment in the Territorial prison for a term not less than two years nor more than five years: Provided, that no physician shall be affected by the last clause of this section, who in the discharge of his professional duties deems it necessary to produce the miscarriage of any woman in order to save her life.

Note that: "Territorial prison" -- Arizona had just become a U.S. territory and wouldn't be admitted to the Union for almost another half-century (in 1912, the last of the contiguous 48 states to join). This law was quite literally "frontier justice," to put it a different way.

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That title (and double-L spelling) comes, of course, from T. S. Eliot's masterpiece poem "The Waste Land," which begins: "April is the cruellest month...." Will this prove to be the case this year for House Speaker Mike Johnson? Will he still be speaker when the May flowers start a-blooming? The answer to those questions might hinge on whether he actually gets anything done this month or not. He's certainly got plenty of things on his plate, and he has actually indicated he's going to move a few of the more critical ones forward -- which (naturally) has absolutely incensed certain members of his caucus. And if he does get them passed, it will further enrage them -- possibly to the point of throwing him overboard.

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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.

Trump also promised his stance on abortion would "make both sides happy," but his announcement fell far short of that (which was to be expected). In fact, Trump's statement leaves major questions unanswered, since all he came out in favor of is basically the status quo we have now. Trump came down on the "states' rights" side, which leaves it up to each state's government to set their own abortion rules. He did not call for a national abortion law, although he also didn't directly address whether he'd sign one as president (if a Republican Senate and House of Representatives were to pass one and put it on his desk). He also was mum on what (if any) executive actions he would take as president on abortion.

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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:

Earthquakes are uncommon but not unheard of along the Atlantic Coast, a zone one study called a "passive-aggressive margin" b/c there's no active plate boundary between the Atlantic & N. American plates, but there are stresses. Did you feel the NJ quake?

"Passive-aggressive"? We are going to exhibit a mighty amount of restraint here, and leave it to everyone else to suggest their own jokes in response to that. No, really... we're just going to sit here and not type... in the dark... all by ourselves... while you go out and have your fun, don't worry about us....

Heh. Seems we couldn't resist, after all!

Geological/psychological kidding aside, there was at least one political announcement this week which we suppose qualifies as "earth-shaking." The group No Labels, one week after the death of co-founder Joe Lieberman, announced that they will not be running a third-party presidential ticket in 2024, after spending tens of millions of dollars (of other people's money) preparing to do just that. This is incredibly good news for the effort to re-elect President Joe Biden, since it would have been a wild card in what is shaping up to be a very close race.

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President Joe Biden's re-election campaign just got some good news today, as No Labels announced it is throwing in the towel and will not be running a third-party presidential ticket this year. This brings an end to one of those political science experiments that might have sounded good in the abstract, but which doesn't really live up to its promise in the end.

The basic idea was to run a so-called "Unity ticket," consisting of one Republican and one Democrat, for president and vice president. No Labels was initially coy about which one would lead the ticket, but in recent months let it be known that they were looking to run a moderate Republican for president, with a centrist Democrat as his or her running mate. All those voters out there yearning for a different choice than the two men who ran last time would thus be given a new option to vote for. No Labels deluded themselves into thinking they could draw enough of this protest vote to actually win enough states to win the presidency.

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