Death Throes

"This toxic patriarchal energy we're experiencing right now - this is an age coming to an end. And what we're seeing is that energy clinging and clawing for survival, cuz it knows it's dying. We're headed towards something very beautiful, and we just have to go through some dark shit for us to get there. So love everybody around you, don't accept anything other than that - and fuck shit up."

                                        --Strugill Simpson 11-24-2024

On, Wisconsin

File this one under "Dodging Bullets".

Liberals win control of Wisconsin Supreme Court ahead of abortion case

MILWAUKEE — Liberals claimed control of Wisconsin’s high court in an election Tuesday, giving them a one-vote majority on a body that in the coming years will likely consider the state’s abortion ban, its gerrymandered legislative districts and its voting rules for the 2024 presidential election.

Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s victory over former state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly will end 15 years of conservative control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She could face ethical questions when the court takes up politically charged cases because she campaigned heavily on abortion rights and repeatedly called the state’s election maps “rigged.”

The candidates, political parties and independent groups spent more than $40 million on the race, making it the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history. It more than quadrupled the amount spent in Wisconsin’s 2020 state Supreme Court race.

Judicial candidates in Wisconsin do not run with party labels, but the race was steeped in partisanship. The state Democratic Party gave nearly $9 million to Protasiewicz, while arms of the Republican Party gave more than $500,000 to Kelly and GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein spent nearly $6 million to help him, according to campaign finance records.

At Protasiewicz’s victory party in downtown Milwaukee, the three liberals who sit on the court marched into the hotel ballroom arm in arm to Lizzo’s “About Damn Time.” They later joined Protasiewicz onstage, and the four of them — the court’s incoming majority — held their hands aloft as the crowd chanted “Janet!”

“Today’s results show that Wisconsinites believe in democracy and the democratic process,” Protasiewicz said. “Today I’m proud to stand by the promise I made to every Wisconsinite that I will always deliver justice and bring common sense to our Supreme Court.”

On Tuesday night, Kelly accused Protasiewicz of spreading “rancid slanders” and said he did not have a “worthy opponent to which I can concede.” He said he respected the voters’ decision but feared for the future of the court.

“I wish Wisconsin the best of luck because I think it’s going to need it,” he said, speaking from a rural, lakeside hotel 70 miles north of Madison.

Relatively large numbers of voters were expected to go to the polls in an off-cycle election that typically sees a turnout of less than 30 percent of eligible voters. Before the polls opened Tuesday, about 435,000 voters had cast early ballots. That is the equivalent of more than a third of the 1.2 million votes cast in the 2019 state Supreme Court race, the last time such a position led a ballot. Nearly 1 million voters cast ballots in the February primary, almost twice as many who voted in the February 2018 primary for a seat on the state Supreme Court.

Protasiewicz will start her 10-year term in August. She will replace Justice Patience Roggensack, a conservative who decided not to seek a third term after 20 years on the court. The next race for a seat on the court is in 2025, when liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley’s term ends.

As Wisconsin voters cast their ballots, former president Donald Trump appeared in a Manhattan courtroom and pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts related to payments intended to silence an adult-film actress during his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump endorsed Kelly in 2020 but stayed out of this year’s race.

Protasiewicz and her allies had a fundraising edge and structured their campaign spending to run about three times as many ads as conservatives in the final weeks of the campaign, according to the media-tracking firm AdImpact. That’s because Democrats took advantage of a campaign finance law written by Republican lawmakers in 2015 that let them funnel huge sums to Protasiewicz, who qualified for the cheapest ad rates because she was a candidate for office. Conservatives ran most of their ads through independent groups that pay far more for ads.

Conservatives won a majority on the court in 2008 and over the next decade and a half issued rulings that upheld limits on unions, approved a voter ID law, ended a campaign finance investigation of Republicans, outlawed absentee-ballot drop boxes and adopted election maps that assured Republicans have commanding majorities in the state legislature.

Kelly joined the court in 2016, when the Republican governor at the time, Scott Walker, appointed him to fill a vacancy. He lost the seat by 10 points in 2020 but hoped to rejoin it this year.

Protasiewicz, 60, was raised in Milwaukee’s working-class south side, graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and got her law degree from Marquette University in Milwaukee. She served as a prosecutor for more than 25 years before becoming a judge nearly 10 years ago. On the campaign trail, she often noted that the only client she ever had as a lawyer was the state.

Protasiewicz had the advantage in the race from the start. She got in early, raised $14 million over the next year and a half, and got Democrats to coalesce around her even though another liberal was also running. She came in first in the February primary with 47 percent. Kelly was second with 24 percent, edging out conservative Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Dorow by two points. (The other liberal in the race, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Everett Mitchell, received about 8 percent.)

Some conservatives feared all along that Kelly would have a tough time this year, citing his loss in 2020 and a string of writings that expressed opposition to abortion and called affirmative action and slavery morally the same.

Protasiewicz made abortion rights the centerpiece of her campaign. Democrats have found the issue resonates with voters since the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that guaranteed access to abortion across the nation.

When the ruling came down, abortion providers in Wisconsin stopped offering the procedure because of an 1849 law that bans abortion unless one is required to save the life of the mother. A trial judge is slated to hear a challenge to the law next month, and the case is expected to eventually reach the state Supreme Court.

“I can tell you with certainty that if I’m elected on April 4th, I’m sure that we will be looking — I am sure we will be looking — at that 1849 law,” Protasiewicz said at a campaign stop in March in eastern Wisconsin.

She added: “I believe in a woman’s right to choose.”

Over the next two years, the state high court could be called on to decide a host of voting rules for the 2024 presidential election. And the justices could be dragged into challenges over the results of that election, as they were in 2020. Last time, conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn joined the court’s liberals to issue a string of 4-3 rulings that rejected challenges from Trump and his allies over Joe Biden’s win in the state.

Liberal groups are now preparing to file a lawsuit challenging the legislative and congressional districts that conservatives on the Wisconsin Supreme Court approved last year. Those maps so heavily favor Republicans that they have been able to gain nearly two-thirds of the seats in the state legislature even though Wisconsin is nearly evenly split between Democratic and Republican voters.

Even if the court acts quickly, it may not be able to draw new maps in time for the 2024 election. New maps would need to be set by next spring, just six months after Protasiewicz is sworn in. Ordinarily, redistricting challenges take years.

Protasiewicz will face tough questions when the court addresses the abortion and redistricting challenges. Critics have argued she cannot ethically participate in those cases after so clearly spelling out her views.

During the campaign, Republicans filed a complaint against her with the state’s judicial ethics commission. The commission moves slowly and has not said whether it believes she has broken any rules. Republicans have made clear they’re ready to file more complaints.

The commission’s powers are limited, however, and only the state Supreme Court can impose discipline on a justice for violating the judicial ethics code. The conservatives on the court would need to get at least one vote from the liberals to discipline Protasiewicz.

Protasiewicz has said she would not participate in cases brought by the state Democratic Party since it donated so much money directly to her campaign. But she has said she is inclined to remain on the abortion case and would likely participate in a redistricting case if someone other than the state Democratic Party brought it.

Protasiewicz was able to speak so freely about her views on abortion and redistricting during the campaign because of a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Acting on a lawsuit brought by the Republican Party of Minnesota, the conservative majority in a 5-4 ruling determined judicial candidates have a First Amendment right to express their views on political issues so long as they don’t promise to rule in a particular way.

But having now spelled out her views, Protasiewicz could face challenges over whether she can be impartial, said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor who has written extensively on judicial ethics.

“If she is then called upon to resolve the redistricting matter, where she is on record saying it’s rigged, I have a hard time saying that she shouldn’t disqualify herself from that,” he said.

In Wisconsin, justices decide on their own whether they can participate in cases. That’s in part because conservatives on the court in 2009 ruled the justices could not force one of their colleagues off a case.

Eric H. Holder Jr., who served as attorney general under President Barack Obama, spent Saturday campaigning for Protasiewicz as the head of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. In an interview, he contended Protasiewicz could remain fair on a redistricting challenge despite her comments in recent months.

“She has said the maps are not necessarily good, but she hasn’t said she would vote in a particular way with regard to a case that was brought before her,” he said. “And you have to look at what the case is, what’s the basis for the complaint that might be filed, and I’m confident that she can do so in an impartial way.”

Today's Tweet

Some days it's really hard to see how we're going to get thru this Cult45 nightmare. 

Then this comes along and the road back looks a little shorter.

This white guy just pulled up in front of my local Mexican restaurant in his big truck, blaring music and saw a group of young Latino men drinking on the sidewalk. He rolled down the window, everyone paused warily. Then he shouts: “I love you, brothers! Fuck Trump! Let’s dance.” pic.twitter.com/ze1SlP74lZ

— Shannon 🙅🏻‍♀️ (@TheStagmania) August 17, 2018

On Hoping It's Not The End

I make a conscious effort not to get too starry-eyed about anybody, but I'm afraid I'll be missing that Obama guy somethin' awful.

A Letter

Aaron Sorkin addresses a few problems in a letter to his daughters.

Sorkin Girls,

Well the world changed late last night in a way I couldn’t protect us from. That’s a terrible feeling for a father. I won’t sugarcoat it—this is truly horrible. It’s hardly the first time my candidate didn’t win (in fact it’s the sixth time) but it is the first time that a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn has.

And it wasn’t just Donald Trump who won last night—it was his supporters too. The Klan won last night. White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons. Angry young white men who think rap music and Cinco de Mayo are a threat to their way of life (or are the reason for their way of life) have been given cause to celebrate. Men who have no right to call themselves that and who think that women who aspire to more than looking hot are shrill, ugly, and otherwise worthy of our scorn rather than our admiration struck a blow for misogynistic shitheads everywhere. Hate was given hope. Abject dumbness was glamorized as being “the fresh voice of an outsider” who’s going to “shake things up.” (Did anyone bother to ask how? Is he going to re-arrange the chairs in the Roosevelt Room?) For the next four years, the President of the United States, the same office held by Washington and Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, F.D.R., J.F.K. and Barack Obama, will be held by a man-boy who’ll spend his hours exacting Twitter vengeance against all who criticize him (and those numbers will be legion). We’ve embarrassed ourselves in front of our children and the world.

And the world took no time to react. The Dow futures dropped 700 points overnight. Economists are predicting a deep and prolonged recession. Our NATO allies are in a state of legitimate fear. And speaking of fear, Muslim-Americans, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans are shaking in their shoes. And we’d be right to note that many of Donald Trump’s fans are not fans of Jews. On the other hand, there is a party going on at ISIS headquarters. What wouldn’t we give to trade this small fraction of a man for Richard Nixon right now?

So what do we do?

First of all, we remember that we’re not alone. A hundred million people in America and a billion more around the world feel exactly the same way we do.

Second, we get out of bed. The Trumpsters want to see people like us (Jewish, “coastal elites,” educated, socially progressive, Hollywood…) sobbing and wailing and talking about moving to Canada. I won’t give them that and neither will you. Here’s what we’ll do…

…we’ll fucking fight. (Roxy, there’s a time for this kind of language and it’s now.) We’re not powerless and we’re not voiceless. We don’t have majorities in the House or Senate but we do have representatives there. It’s also good to remember that most members of Trump’s own party feel exactly the same way about him that we do. We make sure that the people we sent to Washington—including Kamala Harris—take our strength with them and never take a day off.

We get involved. We do what we can to fight injustice anywhere we see it—whether it’s writing a check or rolling up our sleeves. Our family is fairly insulated from the effects of a Trump presidency so we fight for the families that aren’t. We fight for a woman to keep her right to choose. We fight for the First Amendment and we fight mostly for equality—not for a guarantee of equal outcomes but for equal opportunities. We stand up.

America didn’t stop being America last night and we didn’t stop being Americans and here’s the thing about Americans: Our darkest days have always—always—been followed by our finest hours.

Roxy, I know my predictions have let you down in the past, but personally, I don’t think this guy can make it a year without committing an impeachable crime. If he does manage to be a douche nozzle without breaking the law for four years, we’ll make it through those four years. And three years from now we’ll fight like hell for our candidate and we’ll win and they’ll lose and this time they’ll lose for good. Honey, it’ll be your first vote.

The battle isn’t over, it’s just begun. Grandpa fought in World War II and when he came home this country handed him an opportunity to make a great life for his family. I will not hand his granddaughter a country shaped by hateful and stupid men. Your tears last night woke me up, and I’ll never go to sleep on you again.

Love,

Dad