Pretty good fucking night!
 

• The phrase of the moment is “Democratic overperformance” and we love to see it! As has become a recurring theme across the country, abortion was a determining factor in propelling liberal Janet Protasiewicz to victory over right-wing Scott Walker-appointee and Trump-loyalist Dan Kelly in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, handing liberals a desperately needed 4-3 majority. But not before Kelly threw a fit in his weird concession speech. After the Dobbs decision, a 19th century abortion ban went into effect in the state and challenges to that law have been making their way through the court system ever since. Now, when it reaches the state Supreme Court Protasiewicz will be a justice, and while she hasn’t explicitly stated how she will rule on the case, her pro-choice bona fides are abundantly clear. 

• But this was far from a single-issue race, and Protasiewicz’s decisive 11-point victory showed it. Voting rights have been heavily curtailed by Republican lawmakers in the Badger State since the early 2000s, and the gerrymandered electoral map has meant that time and again Republicans have won huge majorities in the state legislature despite losing the popular vote. Republicans are all but admitting that they don’t believe they can keep winning the state without the continued blank check to cheat. MAGA insurrectionists also seem to think her victory means they’ll be unable to steal the 2024 presidential election.
   

• Unless of course, they start the stealing now. Wisconsin state-Rep. Dan Knodl (R-WI) defeated his Democratic opponent to win an open state-Senate seat, which creates a GOP supermajority in the state legislature that Republicans could exploit to impeach Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) or even Protasiewicz. It’s also enough to override any legislative veto from Evers. So, you know, roses and thorns! But Wisconsin has been one of the nation’s most gerrymandered states for well over a decade, and those effects will not be undone overnight.

Now let’s move on to Chicago. 
 

• The margins in the Chicago mayoral race were razor-thin, but progressive former public-school teacher and current Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson ultimately defeated his centrist opponent Paul Vallas. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Johnson led Vallas by over 15,000 votes. It’s a shocking come-from-behind victory for Johnson, who was largely unknown just six months ago. 

• In a large, racially-segregated city, often attacked by Republicans at the national level (Donald Trump once famously and baselessly claimed that crime in the Second City was “worse than Afghanistan,”) it should be instructive to the Democratic Party that tacking hard to the right on “crime” (i.e. increased policing), as Paul Vallas did, is not a winning strategy. President Biden saw this exact scenario play out in real-time as his approval numbers took a nosedive after he returned to his “tough on crime” roots. Vallas ran a cynical, anti-teachers union campaign in a state with deep union roots and a city that had seen up-close what privatization in the hands of people like Vallas had done to their public schools. 

These decisive victories for the left in a heavily-gerrymandered swing state and the nation’s third-largest city should embolden Democrats (and the labor movement!) as we head into 2024. With good campaigns and boots on the ground, there’s no region of the country they should write-off.

In a pretty hilarious, but not unexpected, turn of events, disgraced former president Donald Trump called on congressional Republicans to slash DOJ and FBI funding on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after pleading not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a Manhattan courtroom. Yes, Mr. “Tough-on-crime” said, “Defund the police!” because…the police are after him. Trump taking aim at federal law enforcement is par for the course for him—he will unload a firehose of crazy on anyone who dares to hold him accountable. He is the first former or sitting president to face criminal charges. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the judge overseeing his case, Juan Merchan, are squarely in Trump’s crosshairs for obvious reasons, but his comments about both men as well as New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fulton County, GA, district attorney Fani Willis, all have an undeniable racial component as well. Trump referred to Bragg, who is black, as “an animal” less than two weeks ago.

The GOP-controlled Kansas state legislature overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s (D-KS) veto of a bill banning transgender girls and women in the state from women’s sports at public schools and universities. Nineteen other states have enacted similar laws in recent years.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen in California today despite threats of retaliation from China. No such meeting between a senior American official and a Taiwanese leader has occurred on U.S. soil since 1979. 

Maryland State Attorney General Anthony Brown accused Baltimore Catholic Church officials of engaging in decades-long coverup of the sexual abuse of over 600 children, some of whom were “preyed upon by multiple abusers over decades.” 

Elon Musk’s war on the free press continues as Twitter labeled NPR’s account “State-Affiliated Media” on Tuesday night, the same designation it attaches to propaganda outlets like the Kremlin-controlled RT and the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily. 

A deadly tornado ripped through southeastern Missouri before dawn on Wednesday morning, killing at least five people and causing massive destruction. 

The Justice Department reached a settlement in the amount of $144.5 million with survivors and families of victims of the 2017 mass shooting in a church outside of San Antonio, TX, that killed 26 people. A judge found the Air Force primarily responsible. 

The S&P and the Nasdaq fell on Wednesday amid fears that the Fed’s aggressive interest-rate hikes are finally pushing the United States into a recession.

Violence continued for a second consecutive night in Israel’s holy city of Jerusalem when Israeli police clashed with Palestinian worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City. The tension also prompted rocket fire from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday night. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that at least six people were injured during the incident, and other reports indicated that police fired stun grenades and rubber bullets into the crowd in an effort to disperse them. Israeli police laid the blame at the feet of “dozens of law-breaking juveniles” but the optics of storming into a mosque and unleashing stun grenades are…not great! Al-Aqsa is the third-holiest site in Islam and resides in a place known to Jewish people as the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. There were no reports of casualties, but the escalating confrontations occurring during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and on the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday have tensions in the city at full boil.

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Former Vice President Mike Pence will not appeal the order compelling him to testify to the federal grand jury investigating the January 6 insurrection. 

France’s labor unions remain undeterred and plan to keep protesting a planned increase in the legal retirement age. Representatives met today with Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne in the first high-stakes meeting between unions and a member of the Macron government, but so far the government remains undeterred. 

Johnson & Johnson is proposing to pay $8.9 billion in settlements over a carcinogenic chemical in their talcum powder, in what could be one of the largest product-liability settlements in American history. Imagine if gun manufacturers had to do that!!

Howard University appointed Stacy Abrams as the school’s first Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics in the school’s Public Policy Center. 

President Biden will visit Ireland and Northern Ireland this weekend along with other world leaders to mark the 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Accords.