Monday was a historic day: your federal income taxes were due, Orange Julius's NY election interference trial began, AND candidates for partisan offices in Wisconsin began circulating their nomination papers — in many cases in newly drawn districts! I have collected a number of them so that you can download them to sign as a nominator and to circulate as a circulator. To sign a candidate's nomination papers, you must reside in the candidate's district. Because of the new legislative district maps, you may not be sure which district includes your residence for the Assembly — all Assembly districts are up for election in the fall — or the state Senate — all even-numbered state Senate districts are up for election this year. To find out whether you have been moved to a new district, use the legislature's tool. When you type your address into the search box, the result will show you who represented you under the old (2022) maps and under the new (2024) maps.

Once you have downloaded a form, be sure to follow the instructions on our website or that accompany the nomination form. You can be a nominator on the form and also its circulator. When you have collected all the signatures you can, even if it's only ONE (yours), sign the Certification of Circulator at the bottom of the form. Then mail the nomination papers to the candidate no later than May 13. The physical papers must be delivered to the Wisconsin Elections Committee by 5pm on June 3. So we want to make sure candidates receive signed forms in good time.

Alternatively, you can attend a signature gathering event, like the one for Jodi Habush Sinykin and Tammy Baldwin being held at Three Lions Pub (4515 N Oakland Ave, Shorewood) on Friday, April 19, at 7:00pm. As Andy Berger, the host of the occasion, says, "It’s about more than just putting names on a petition; it’s about coming together as a community to support progress. Special Feature: We're thrilled to announce that Jodi Habush Sinykin herself will be joining us! Don’t miss this chance to meet one of the candidates in person. Kindly let us know if you can make it by clicking on this link."

And while we're on the subject of the new state legislative maps, Grassroots North Shore will feature a discussion of their impact at an event on Sunday, May 19th, at Plymouth Church (2017 E Hampshire St, Milwaukee) from 4:30 - 6:00pm. Featured speakers will be Representative Deb Andraca and our own Debbie Patel, who, in addition to co-chairing Grassroots North Shore, leads the North Shore for Fair Maps organization. It's a month away, but you can RSVP now.

We're still in need of a Treasurer. And frankly we cannot sustain the organization without one. So if you or someone you know enjoys bookkeeping, is comfortable with Excel, and is willing to learn how to navigate various software platforms and ecommerce sites (ActBlue, NationBuilder, PayPal), please contact Cheryl Maranto via email or by calling (414) 429-1583.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin is still in need of people to become delegates to the 2024 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Here's the ask: DEADLINE APPROACHING: we need more Wisconsin Democrats to apply for a delegate position at the Democratic National Convention this August. This is your opportunity to join fellow Democrats and make history in the 2024 election! Apply by this Friday at 5 PM to be a delegate for Wisconsin at the Democratic National Convention?" If you live in Milwaukee County, you could probably team up with Linda Frank, a long-time supporter of Grassroots North Shore. She needs us to be present at BOTH caucuses to be elected. I have committed to supporting her and hope to see some of you there too.

To be elected as a delegate, you need to attend two caucuses.The first one is the Milwaukee County Caucus on April 28 at South Division High School, 1515 W Lapham Blvd in Milwaukee. Registration begins at 1:00 and the meeting begins at 2:00. The second one is the 4th Congressional District Caucus on May 19 at McGovern Senior Center, 4500 W Custer Ave, Milwaukee. Registration begins at 1:00 and the caucus begins at 2:00 pm. Your presence, even if you don't apply to be a delegate, and your vote for Linda will be appreciated!

By the way, I was a delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. It's a wonderful experience. You get to meet with other delegations and hear from outstanding speakers like Senator Cory Booker (one of the most memorable speakers who met with the Wisconsin caucus for breakfast one morning). Senator Tammy Baldwin will be there too. And you'll never be in another arena with so many Democrats. It's a great way to gear up for the November 5 elections. End of my soapbox speech!

Moving on to news in the broader world, one of my favorite New York Times writers, Jamelle Bouie, lays bare the "leave it to the states" scam the Dobbs decision brought us two years ago. The op-ed "The Smothering of Abortion Rights Reveals Something Else About Republicans" comes down to this:

Fortunately, in Wisconsin we have finally succeeded in breaking out of the gerrymandering straightjacket. To keep it that way, though, we're going to have another fraught election year in 2025 now that Justice Ann Walsh Bradley has announced her retirement from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The election next April will determine whether the court remains dominated by center-left jurists or reverts to control by conservatives who would no doubt look favorably on strict abortion bans and even a new attempt at gerrymandering our state maps. According to a piece in Daily Kos from April 12, four or five liberal judges may be vying for a place on the April 1, 2025, ballot. Meanwhile former Attorney General Brad Schimel is already running. He might be joined by one or more conservatives, but right now he has the field to himself. "Both sides, however, will need to be on guard against getting locked out of the general election. That's because Wisconsin will hold an officially nonpartisan primary on Feb. 18, when all candidates will run together on a single ballot. The top two vote-getters will then advance to an April 1 general election, which means it's possible that two liberals or two conservatives could face off in the second round of voting."

Yeah, I know. Not exactly the news we need right now as we head into what has to be the scariest election of our lifetimes. So here's a little Hopium to buoy us up: Simon Rosenberg — whose motto is "Let’s Do More, Worry Less" — writes, "The NYT poll which came out Sunday showed the race changing from Trump +5 to Trump +1 (great news). The Morning Consult/Politico poll released Monday had Biden up 45-43. Biden was down 4 in Morning Consult’s polling a few weeks ago. Yesterday, Echelon, a respected Republican pollster, released a poll showing Biden up 3, 49-46, and the Congressional Generic was also +3 Dem. Trump led in this poll by 4 points in February. This poll is a “big yikes” for Rs, and is going to create a bit of a panic in DC Republican circles" And it's not just national polls. In fundraising, Democrats are out stripping Republicans nationally and in key Senate races. In Tammy Baldwin's case, her first quarter haul was $5.4 million. Her opponent, Eric Hovde, raised only $1.1 million.

I'm not a big fan of kicking anyone when they're down, BUT...   Speaker Mike Johnson started the week with a proposal to try to pass four bills — one to fund aid for Ukraine, one for Israel, one for Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific allies, plus a fourth bill full of MAGA foreign policy desires. Now apparently he's added a fifth: to address MAGA demands to strengthen the southern border. The whole thing might come a-cropper, though, and apparently cannot work without shifting coalitions of Democrats and Republicans supporting each of the bills. Meanwhile in the mean kids' playpen, a motion to vacate the speaker's chair is dangling over Speaker Mike's head. Right now, there's a two vote margin in the House. After Friday, when our own Mike Gallagher resigns, the margin drops to one. (Apparently, according to the Washington Post, though, Gallagher has agreed to stick around long enough to pass the foreign aid pieces. So Saturday?)

Also I've just learned that the MAGAites in the Arizona legislature have provided excellent supporting evidence for Jamelle Bouie's piece. To wit, "House Republicans in Arizona on Wednesday scuttled another effort to repeal the state’s 1864 law banning abortion, defying pressure from prominent Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, who had urged them to toss the ban that many voters viewed as extreme and archaic." There will no doubt be more in-depth reporting on the Arizona mess, but for a reasonable explanation of the current state of affairs, you can read this (free) New York Times article.

The "Worry Less" part is up to you, but here's your "Let’s Do More" list for the week.

Before we get to a host of newsy items, an appeal for a vital volunteer position at Grassroots North Shore:

The state of electoral play with the new Wisconsin legislative maps in place deserves our early attention. And there's news.

• In a star-studded announcement yesterday, Jodi Habush Sinykin jumped into the race for Senate District 8. It's unlikely that she will have a challenger for the Democratic nomination — though of course it's still possible. Her likely opponent will be MAGA Republican Duey Stroebel, an incumbent state Senator representing Senate District 20 under the former maps but drawn into SD8 under the new maps. Grassroots North Shore will be going all out to elect her, not only because she is an outstanding candidate but also because SD8 is pivotal to our ability to win majority control of the state senate in 2026.
  
  
• Senate District 4, formerly held by Lena Taylor, has been vacant since late January when Governor Tony Evers appointed her to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court. It's unclear whether there will be a special election to fill this seat before the November 5 election. It's also unclear whether there will be a need for a primary ahead of that special election. If a special election is called, a primary would be necessary only if more than one candidate from the same political party filed nomination papers. It's a pretty safe Democratic seat and largely unchanged from the former maps. One potential candidate got in touch with me this week and I heard a rumor that a second Democrat may also be vying for this seat. SD4 includes Assembly Districts 10, 11, and 12. So Grassroots North Shore supporters in Glendale, Shorewood, and parts of Milwaukee, stay tuned.
  
  
• Dr. Kristin Lyerly, an OB/GYN in Green Bay, has launched her bid to for the Democratic nomination for the 8th Congressional District. (Visit her Facebook page.) Michael Gallagher, the incumbent, will be resigning his seat on April 19, making it impossible to hold a special election to fill the seat before the November 5 Election Day and leaving the GOP with a one-vote majority in the House of Representatives until the end of the congressional session in December or perhaps even earlier! In her announcement email, she wrote: "I have seen firsthand the effects of Wisconsin’s abortion ban – which stems from a law passed in 1849 that went into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Most doctors didn’t even know that germs caused diseases back then. It was nearly 70 years before women would even be allowed to cast their first votes. As a result of this draconian ban, I can no longer treat my patients and pregnant women in Wisconsin under threat of criminal prosecution. Republicans have targeted my medical licenses and personally singled me out in their lawsuits for my work with Planned Parenthood to make me an example of what would happen to others who do the same."

And in other political news, let's support Linda Frank, chair of the newly formed Jewish Caucus of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. She's seeking to be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and needs people to vote for her, TWICE. As President Biden would say, so here's the deal: you have to attend TWO events. The first one is the Milwaukee County Caucus on April 28 at South Division High School, 1515 W Lapham Blvd in Milwaukee. The meeting begins at noon. The second one is the 4th Congressional District Caucus on May 19 at McGovern Senior Center, 4500 W Custer Ave, Milwaukee. Registration begins at noon and the caucus begins at 1:00pm. Although voting for her seems like a pretty heavy commitment, Linda has been a stalwart supporter of Grassroots North Shore for many years. She deserves whatever support we can give her in return.

Last week's newsletter was too soon after Election Day to provide you with much information about what happened and this week is still a bit early. Because Wisconsin elections are all run by municipal clerks and because the spring elections are all local and nonpartisan, it's really difficult to get an early picture of statewide election results. The deadline for the Wisconsin Elections Commission to certify the results of the April 2 elections is May 15. At that point we should be able to assess voter turnout and other data from those elections. In the meantime, John Johnson, a research fellow with Marquette University Law School, has published an extensive analysis of voting in Milwaukee County.

Especially notable is the chart showing the presidential preference vote by municipality. The split between votes for The Former Guy and Nikki Haley in our North Shore communities shows deep dissatisfaction with Benedict Donald. In Shorewood, for example, only 13% of voters participated in the Republican presidential preference primary. Of that sliver, only 47% voted for him while 37% of the Republicans voted for Hayley. In Whitefish Bay, 29% of the votes cast were Republican. Of that bunch, Adolf Twittler garnered 56% of the vote and Nikki Haley received 32%. These numbers are pretty astonishing since Hayley suspended her campaign weeks before the Wisconsin primary. You can look at the chart to get a picture of the Republican strength in the North Shore and to see what share of that vote went to Hayley. The big takeaway, though, is that the numerous Hayley voters in our midst should be our "persuasion targets" as we gear up for the crucial fall elections.

Make sure you look at the new legislative maps in Wisconsin. You can find WisPolitics' maps and an assessment of the partisan lean of the new Assembly Districts 10, 22, 23, & 24 (as of March 11) and the new Senate Districts. You should take a look at Senate Districts 4 and 8 with their partisan lean to get a sense of what the Democratic candidate in each of those districts will have to contend with. On May 19th, Grassroots North Shore will be hosting a presentation about the new maps, featuring Representative Deb Andraca and GRNS Co-Chair Deborah Patel. You can get more information and sign up now.

Finally, some good news for WisDems. According to WisPolitics' Battleground Wisconsin (March 29), "the state Dem Party has outraised its GOP counterpart 15-to-1 over the first three months of 2024 — a huge resource advantage ahead of what’s expected to be a fierce battle for legislative seats this fall.

"It also shows the fundraising disparity between the two parties hasn’t improved since Republicans brought on Brian Schimming as a full-time, paid chair in late 2022. Last year, with both parties heavily involved in a state Supreme Court race that flipped control to liberals for the first time in 15 years, the fundraising disparity was more than 4-to-1 in Dems’ favor."

Meanwhile, in the MAGA movement, things are also looking a little dicey. A blogger on Daily Kos points to a Raw Story article that suggests the Cowardly Lyin' and his campaign are a little green around the gills: "Two Republican operatives privately told NBC News Trump and the Republican National Committee have fewer than five staff members between them in Pennsylvania and Michigan. And Trump reportedly can't afford to expand the campaign's staff to full capacity in some places, like Pennsylvania, until the summer." Yay for our side, I say.

Spring has surely sprung, weeks early this year it seems. One of my dogwood trees is already blooming! So herewith a bit of coming attractions. The next election cycle is nearly upon us. So not much rest for the weary. Hopeful candidates for the November 5 election will begin circulating nominating papers as of April 15 — that's this coming Monday (also the start of Don the Con's first criminal trial). As usual, Grassroots North Shore will make as many of them as we can available on our web server for you to download. I also hear that the WisDems are going to host some signing parties in the next few weeks. Keep an eye out for them. The nomination papers will be due in Madison by 5:00pm on June 3. Shortly thereafter we will know which races will have primaries. Regardless of how competitive the primaries are likely to be, we have to show up in force. There are likely to be two new ballot questions in the primary. If they turn out to be what Ballotpedia says they are, we need to pull out all the stops to defeat them.

Worthy Actions

"Kneel for 9," a nine-minute silent vigil at a busy rush hour intersection in the Washington Heights neighborhood, occurs M-F at 5:30 at the corner of Vliet Street and Hawley Road (Central West Side about one mile N. of Miller Park). It has been going continuously for 4 years since the murder of George Floyd. It is . Plenty of free side-street parking for anyone in the area able to spend 15 minutes. For more information, contact Shep Crumrine, MICAH leadership council.

Vote Forward is launching new letter-writing campaigns to California and New York voters in highly competitive U.S. House districts. Election outcomes in these key races are likely to determine the House majority this fall. As you finish writing a batch of letters this year, address and stamp your envelopes—but if you'd like to continue enhancing them throughout the year, don’t seal them quite yet. We’ll be in touch with details on how you can do this soon! Sign up.

Well, the Spring 2024 election is now behind us. You can find the significant results yourself, but a clear take-away is that the Democratic Party is showing its basic unity. The "uninstructed" vote, a protest vote designed to register opposition to the Biden administration's Israel policy — calling for a ceasefire and a two state solution to end the Israel-Gaza war while continuing its supply of US materiél to Israel — has some strength behind it but it's unclear whether people who recorded an uninstructed vote will stay home or vote for someone other than Biden in the general election in November. Biden won 88.6% of the votes in the Democratic presidential preference primary while uninstructed votes accounted for 8.8% with Dean Phillips at 3.1%.

Meanwhile, on the red team's side, Butternut Berlusconi managed to acquire 79.2% of the Republican vote, with Nikki Haley earning 12.8%, Ron DeSantis 3.3%, uninstructed 2.2%, Chris Christie 1.6%, and Vivek Ramaswamy trailing everyone with 0.9%. That adds up to ~20% of the primary vote going somewhere other than to Boss Tweet.

The press can make any news into bad news for someone. And the Journal Sentinel made sure to to tell us that "voters who chose 'uninstructed delegation' in Wisconsin's presidential primary Tuesday more than doubled the 20,682 votes President Joe Biden won the state by in 2020, sending a warning sign for his reelection chances in the battleground state." But the same Journal Sentinel article failed to notice that Biden won 506,969 votes, while Orange Julius garnered 472,227 votes, a difference of 79,742. That nearly 80,000 vote margin almost quadrupled Biden's 2020 winning margin. I say, it's better to be on our side in Wisconsin than on theirs. Today's Hopium Chronicles offers a bit more wind in my sails. 14 Polls Now With Biden Leads, Trump Is The Ugliest Thing Any Of Us Has Ever Seen.

For a reasonable look at what the new Assembly maps may mean, WisPolitics presents color-coded maps and an early peek at who is running for each seat. Grassroots North Shore is mostly focused on Assembly Districts 10, 22, 23, and 24. The posting is as of March 11, 2024, so things are likely to change as candidates begin collecting nomination signatures on April 15.</p

The WisPolitics maps for the state senate districts are also available. The maps and the discussion of each district are dated March 5, so again we will know more when candidates start collecting signatures. Right now, SD 8 has one declared candidate, incumbent Senator Duey Stroebel and the WisPolitics assessment of the district's partisan performance is that it leans Republican at 53%. On the Democratic side, Jodi Habush Sinykin, who Dan Knodl beat (under the old maps) in the spring 2023 special election, has been weighing a bid.

More complicated and confusing is the situation in Senate District 4, which includes Assembly District 10 representing Glendale, Shorewood and part of north Milwaukee. Here's how WisPolitics explains the dynamic in this district: "Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, resigned from the seat earlier this year to accept an appointment to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court. The guv hasn’t yet called a special election, though both Drake and Myers have indicated they would run in one." We still do not have a date for the special election or the primary that would precede it if both Dora Drake and LaKeisha Myers declare their candidacy. Both currently sit in the Assembly but they would have to resign their seats to run in the special election. And that would mean two vacant seats, which also means that GOP Assembly Representatives could then override any Governor Evers's veto. A special election for SD 4 would also trigger elections to fill Drake's and Myers's seats! Any way you slice it, Grassroots North Shore supporters in Assembly District 10 will have two additional elections in 2024.

While having more elections to worry about may not be the most welcome news, on the fundraising front Wisconsin Democrats seem to be doing just fine. Again, as WisPolitics reported on March 29, "The state Dem Party has outraised its GOP counterpart 15-to-1 over the first three months of 2024 — a huge resource advantage ahead of what’s expected to be a fierce battle for legislative seats this fall. It also shows the fundraising disparity between the two parties hasn’t improved since Republicans brought on Brian Schimming as a full-time, paid chair in late 2022. Last year, with both parties heavily involved in a state Supreme Court race that flipped control to liberals for the first time in 15 years, the fundraising disparity was more than 4-to-1 in Dems’ favor."

It's very early days for the US Senate race in Wisconsin but Urban Milwaukee has already published an analysis of Tammy Baldwin and Eric Hovde's campaigns. Using Drastically Different Strategies To Win Votes. The piece looks at the candidates' strategies and also outlines their positions on key issues.

And now for some quick hits on stories that made the news. The woman who requested absentee ballots in the names of Wisconsin service people and had them sent to Representative Janel Brandtjen has been found guilty of election fraud. Urban Milwaukee explains that the "case comes as scrutiny around election integrity is on the forefront of many voters’ minds going into the 2024 elections, as the presidential race is shaping up to be a rematch of the 2020 election." And Jared Kushner sees valuable waterfront property when he eyeballs the Gaza strip and dreams of a "solution" to the war. Just move the Palestinians into the Negev desert, clean up Gaza, and build condos or something with lovely views of the Mediterranean!

But I'll leave you to consider the Milwaukee area's future as you scan the Events Listings. America’s Climate Boomtowns Are Waiting. "In a world running short on fresh water in its lakes and rivers, more than 20 percent of that water was right here [in the upper midwest]. From a climate standpoint, there couldn’t be a safer place in the country—no hurricanes, no sea-level rise, not much risk of wildfires. That explains why models suggest many more people will soon arrive here." So let's look on the bright side of life!

Rich or poor, it's nice to have money. Right? Two days ago, a New York appellate court reduced the bond Dolt 45 would need to produce while his fraud case was under appeal from ~$450 million to $175 million. And the court awarded him ten more days to post it. As MSNBC columnist Glenn Kirschner opined: "Many of our institutions of government seem to have decided that the rules, the laws and the Constitution apply differently to Trump than they apply to the rest of us." He calls Trump "the poster boy for special treatment." So Dirty Don and his fluffers may be correct when they talk about a two-tiered justice system. Only not in the way they mean that phrase. They should better appreciate the kid glove treatment TFG has been receiving from legal decisions both civil and criminal. Kirschner's reasoning is worth a read.

But not everything is going his way. On Monday Judge Juan Merchan set a trial date for the New York criminal case — often referred to as a "hush money case" or an "election interference case." It involves paying hush money to keep a scandal out of the public eye, but that in itself is not a crime. It involves falsifying business records to cover up the hush money payments and that IS as crime, though usually a misdemeanor rather than a felony. However, the crime becomes a felony once the actions the accused took served the purpose of deluding voters in the election for the presidency. Jury selection is set to begin on April 15. At the same time Merchan issued a gag order, citing Don the Con's penchant for "making 'threatening, inflammatory, denigrating' statements against people at all levels of the justice system, including jurors." However, if Orange Julius decides to appeal the gag order, as he has unsuccessfully done in other cases, he might be able to further delay the start of this trial too.

So it appears he's not rich enough to post a $450 million bond, but he is rich enough to squeeze every last delay he can out of every one of his criminal and civil indictments. With a little help from his friends (aka donors), he seems to keep his lawyers happy enough to stop each clock as much as they can. It takes resources — money — and what Kirschner senses as "a hesitation — a reluctance, even — to take on the wealthy, the influential, the powerful, the well-connected." Still the case New York DA Alvin Bragg has built, which was the first criminal indictment The Big Lie-bowski faced, may well be the first criminal trial he faces. While not holding our collective breaths, we continue watching.

Yesterday, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the mifepristone case. You can listen to the recording in full. And there are legions of news media takes on the hearing: here's ABC, CNN, and the (gifted article) New York Times. Whether the group and doctors who brought the suit have the requisite personal harm to be entitled to sue is featured in the oral arguments. The requested remedy also came in for scrutiny. But the most concerning line of questioning involves an 1873 law known as the Comstock Act. Justices Alito and Thomas, naturally, were very interested in resuscitating the long dormant law. Here's how their inquiries played in Jezebel:

Here in Wisconsin, some good news for labor in this state emerged from the legal system. "The Wisconsin Supreme Court let a lower court ruling stand that a group of Amazon workers in the so-called 'gig economy' in the state should be classified as employees in a case that was being watched closely for its impact on businesses statewide." The opinion was unanimous. The article in the Cap Times on March 26 lays out the complicated test for distinguishing independent contractors from employees and the complicated history of this particular case. "It is difficult to tell whether this ruling will transfer to other 'gig economy' companies, because Wisconsin law so heavily relies on the facts of a specific case," according to Samantha Prince, assistant professor of law at Penn State Dickinson Law.

And now for a last take on things to do for the April 2 election: a reminder about early in-person voting. in Ozaukee County and in the seven North Shore communities, early in-person voting ends on Friday, March 29, generally at 5:00pm. You can look up the days and hours for your specific community on our website. For residents in the City of Milwaukee, you'll find the information about early voting sites with days and times here. Early in-person voting is safe, secure, and flexible. Banking your vote before election day means that you will not have to stand in line to vote (especially at some of the more crowded polling places). It also means that no matter what comes up on April 2 — wretched weather, illness, or any other emergency — your vote will already have been cast!

To find your polling location for the April 2 Election Day, visit MyVote.WI.gov.

Those of you who missed the March 17 presentation about the two ballot questions that Grassroots North Shore hosted, watch Doug Poland's presentation. He explains the process of amending the Wisconsin Constitution, how these ballot questions were included in the April 2 election, their meaning and impact should they pass, and three more ballot questions that will be put to the voters this year. Two of them will appear on the August 13 primary ballot and the third on the November ballot. All five of the ballot questions being put to voters this year should be defeated. For more in depth information about the two on the April 2 ballot, visit our web page explaining them and why we encourage you to vote NO.

Canvassing with WisDems

North Shore Communities

• North Shore Dems Get Out the Vote in Whitefish Bay, 4845 N Newhall St., WFB: March 30 & April 1
• North Shore Dems Get Out the Vote in Shorewood, 4516 N Newhall St, Shorewood: March 30 & April 2
• Fox Point Dems Get Out the Vote, 7632 N Beach Dr, Fox Point: March 30 & 31
• Grassroots Glendale Gets Out the Vote, 6563 N Crestwood Dr, Glendale: March 30 & April 1

Ozaukee County

• Knock on Doors in Grafton/Cedarburg, 1930 Wisconsin Ave, Grafton: March 28 & 30 and April 1 & 2

Other Worthy Actions

Volunteer to Provide Rides to the Polls

Providing Supporter Housing

Did you watch President Biden take on his predecessor in his State of the Union last Thursday? Of course the most important part of the speech outlined his vision for the future and the kinds of policies that would move the country toward that future. But it sure was fun to hear him take on Cult 45 directly, though without saying his name. If you didn't see it live, you can enjoy it in a video posted on the White House website. It's well worth your time.

Last week, I focused on events happening locally. But this week there's so much going on in the various civil suits and prosecutions of Adolph Twitler that I thought it was time for a little catching up. The following list of events has been excerpted from Just Security's Master Calendar of Trump Court Dates: Criminal and Civil Cases.

• In the past week, the civil suit brought by police injured on January 6, 2021 (aka Blassingame), made some progress. Judge Amit Mehta set a deadline of March 8 for a status report that summarizes the parties' discussions of potential stipulations, disputed facts, and the scope of discovery. On Tuesday, March 12, Judge Mehta held a hearing on the status of the case.
• In the NY State civil fraud case that resulted in a HUGE penalty of $450 million (more or less), Monday, March 11, was the last day for the government to file its opposition to 45's application for a stay pending appeal of the district court's verdict. By Sunday, March 17, the Independent Monitor overseeing the Trump Organization's transactions is to file (1) a proposed order “outlining the specific authority that she needs, and the obligations of defendants, in order to effectuate a productive and enhanced monitorship going forward,” and (2) a list of “persons who she recommended be appointed the Trump Organization’s “Independent Director of Compliance.” The perp has until March 25 to pay up or secure a bond for the penalty amount.
• In the Georgia RICO case, Judge McAfee dismissed six of the charges in the original indictment, three of which were against TFG. Although he dismissed charges having to do with soliciting Georgia officials — such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensburger — to violate their oaths of office, the charges can be reinstated in effect if "prosecutors seek a new indictment." Here's the AP story.
• The Mar-a-Lago case has a number of hearings and deadlines coming up.
  • On March 14, Judge Cannon will hold a hearing on the Big Lie-bowski's motion to dismiss the case — based on claims of unconstitutional vagueness — and on the Big Lie-bowski and Mr. Nauta's motion to dismiss — based on the Presidential Records Act.
  • Replies in support of the two motions are due by 8am; replies in support of other pretrial motions are due by the end of the day.
• And the US Supreme Court set April 25 as the date for oral arguments in Benedict Donald's claim of complete immunity from prosecution for any acts he committed during his presidency.

Under the heading "stuff I'd rather not have to deal with," the No Labels crowd is forging ahead. The "movement" as yet has no candidates and as far as I can tell no settled process for nominating said (non-existant) candidates. As the Washington Examiner put it: "So now No Labels is also No Candidate."

One allure of No Labels (NL) for the ambitious person who thinks he or she can win on the NL ballot line may be access to the ballot in all or most states. As of mid-March, "No Labels has access to the ballot in 14 states and will perhaps win access to another 14 in the months ahead." But of course even if the organization pulls this feat off, the candidates will be on the ballot in only 56% of the states. (A second big threat to the 2024 presidential election has seemed to come from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But Axios is reporting that although he has secured ballot access in only one state — Utah — he is "poised to soon qualify in six more states, including three key battlegrounds.")

In fact the NL and RFK Jr. gambits seem aimed primarily at the battleground states. But that strategy can ONLY act as a spoiler since it would not be possible to acquire the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the presidency. Doesn't that set of facts give away the whole game?

In head-scratchers closer to home, Wisconsin MAGA Republicans want to recall Speaker Robin Vos because he has been insufficiently devoted to the lie that the Commander in Cheese really did win Wisconsin and the whole presidential election in 2020. Wisconsin Public Radio reported the group's claim that they had collected 11,000 signatures. Although the article stipulates that a successful effort to put a recall on a ballot in Vos's district would require something like 7,000 valid signatures, the exact number depends on whether the signatures come from residents of Vos's district as it was defined by the 2022 maps or whether they need to come from the district now defined by the newly adopted maps.

On Tuesday, March 12, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that "Wisconsin Elections Commission staff determined the recall organizers did not obtain enough signatures from residents in the district Vos was elected in when the recall began, falling about 945 signatures short." To add to the confusion about district lines, "the state Supreme Court declined to weigh in on Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' request to clarify whether the state's new legislative districts apply to elections held before November, leaving potential questions about how election officials will address the proposed recall." Anyway, what's up with a recall election four or five months before Vos and all Assembly representatives are already facing the voters (in the new districts)?

In our own backyard, so to speak, Grassroots North Shore is hosting a program about the two ballot questions that, if approved, will amend the Wisconsin Constitution. Know What is on the April 2 Ballot will allow you to understand what the amendments say and what they actually mean. Like may progressive organizations, Grassroots North Shore has taken a firm stand. We urge everyone to vote NO on both questions. The shorthand reason is that both threaten to damage how we will be able to conduct future elections. But come to the program to hear attorney Doug Poland explain how these amendments pose a danger to our elections. State Senator Mark Spreitzer will also fill us in on the road these proposals took through the legislature and why they are now on the ballot. Also at the meeting, Anne O'Connor, who is running for a seat on the Milwaukee Board of County Supervisors, will have a chance to talk to some of the people she will be representing.

I've put two new sections into this week's newsletter and will continue that practice until after the April 2 election. One of the sections will provide you with quick links to sign up for canvasses in various communities. The second section will provide you with descriptions of other ways you can pitch in to help Democrats win. And after that rousing State of the Union speech, I hope everyone is now Ridin' with Biden and ready to plunge joyously into the work it takes to win elections. Remember that we are — always — within the margin of effort.

Canvassing with WisDems

North Shore Communities

• North Shore Dems Get Out the Vote in Whitefish Bay, 4845 N Newhall St., WFB: March 17, 24, 30, & April 1
• North Shore Dems Get Out the Vote in Shorewood, 4516 N Newhall St, Shorewood: March 16, 23, 30, & April 2
• Fox Point Dems Get Out the Vote, 7632 N Beach Dr, Fox Point: March 16, 17, 23, 24, 30, & 31
• Grassroots Glendale Gets Out the Early Vote, 6563 N Crestwood Dr: March 17 & March 24
• Grassroots Glendale Gets Out the Vote, 6563 N Crestwood Dr: March 30 & April 1
• Lakefront Dems Get Out the Early Vote, 7632 N Beach Dr, Fox Point: Sunday, March 17, and Sunday, March 24

Ozaukee County

• Knock on Doors in Mequon, March 16
• Knock on Doors in Grafton/Cedarburg, 1930 Wisconsin Ave, Grafton: March 16 & 17, at 9:00am and at 12:00pm
• Knock on Doors in Grafton/Cedarburg, 1930 Wisconsin Ave, Grafton: March 23 & 24
• Knock on Doors in Grafton/Cedarburg, 1930 Wisconsin Ave, Grafton: March 28 & 30 and April 1 & 2, various start times

Other Worthy Actions

Sign up to be a Poll Observer
Time is running out to sign up to be a poll observer on April 2nd! Poll observers are the eyes and ears of our team on Election day and are a great resource for voters who might need help. Poll observers are fully trained in Wisconsin election law and you will have full communication and support form our team on Election Day. Fill out the sign up form here to join our team for the April Election and you can reach out to [email protected] with any questions. Sign up here.

Go to the Wisconsin Grassroots Festival
The Wisconsin Grassroots Network (WGN) provides support to community-based grassroots organizations, helping them to grow. Our Grassroots Festival encourages networking among these organizations and is an ideal venue for connecting them to citizens who are looking for a way to get involved. We provide these services to promote democracy, justice, and equality throughout Wisconsin. The Fifteenth Annual meeting will be held on Saturday, May 4, at Lawrence University's Warch Campus Center, 711 E Boldt Way, Appleton, WI 54911. Visit the website and register online.

Write Postcards to Swing States
More than 2,900 people signed up or tuned in to the recent webinar about Swing States' 2024 postcard program. For those who missed it, you can still watch the webinar recording on YouTube. The webinar is NOT required or a training — we shared an overview of our program, how we know postcards work, and answered questions. Here are the key details: Sign-ups for free postcards start on May 1 at turnoutpac.org/postcards. They plan to send 25 million postcards for the Nov 5 general election to potential Democratic voters in swing states, states with key Senate races, and competitive US House and state legislative districts. You pick the state when you sign up, and they'll mail the cards to you with voter lists and instructions with message options within a couple weeks. Almost anyone can write postcards from anywhere as time allows between May and the mailing dates in October. They also have a 2024 Postcard Program flyer with all the useful information that you can download and share (may not open on all phones).

There will be a short business meeting followed by an explanation of the new maps in Wisconsin.

In today's newsletter, I'll have plenty to say about everything in the news from the past week, but the most urgent matters have to do with what WE need to do. Let's be upbeat for a change. With our new maps in hand, we have a chance to achieve a truly representative legislature for the first time in 13 years! So let's get to work.

1. Contact Norma Gilson to help with Campus Voter Engagement.
   MIAD, Monday - Thursday March 18 - 20: 11:00am - 1:00pm
   UWM Monday - Thursday March 25 - 28: 11:00am - 1:00pm
   
   
2. Contact Nancy Kaplan to make simple phone calls to strong Democratic women voters who received our postcard to make sure they have a plan to vote.
   
   
3. Call, Text or Email 10 friends, neighbors, and relatives to tell them to vote NO on Questions 1 and 2 on their ballots. Then ask them to contact 10 of their friends, neighbors, and relatives with the same message.

The Democratic Party is hosting two special events this week and next.

• North Shore Phone Bank Saturday, March 9th noon to 2:00 PM
  Virtual
  Join the North Shore Dems for a volunteer recruitment phonebank! We'll be meeting virtually to recruit other likeminded folks to knock on doors in the North Shore for Dem-aligned candidates running for office this April. We will train you on how to make effective phone calls before we start calling as a group. Bring yourself and your phone and call with us! Sign up.
  
  
• Fox Point Dems Blue Brunch, Sunday, March 17
  7632 N Beach Dr, Fox Point
  Join the Fox Point Dems for a Blue Brunch and get out the volunteer textbank! We'll be reaching out to our networks to get our friends and families involved in our get out the vote efforts for the Spring Election on April 2nd. Grab a coffee and a snack mobilize your network! Sign up.

In addition, the Dems have scheduled canvasses for North Shore neighborhood teams. Surely we cannot complain about the weather (after all crocuses are already blooming). So sign up for something. Click on the links to see the days and times.

• Whitefish Bay Dems Team Building Textbank, 4845 N Newhall St, WFB: Saturday, March 10
• North Shore Dems Get Out the Vote in Whitefish Bay, 4845 N Newhall St., WFB: March 16, 24, 30, & April 1
• North Shore Dems Get Out the Vote in Shorewood, 4516 N Newhall St, Shorewood: March 16, 23, 30, & April 2
• Fox Point Dems Get Out the Vote, 7632 N Beach Dr, Fox Point: March 16, 17. 23, 24, 30, & 31
• Grassroots Glendale Gets Out the Early Vote, 6563 N Crestwood Dr: March 17 & March 24
• Lakefront Dems Get Out the Early Vote, 7632 N Beach Dr, Fox Point: Sunday March 17 and Sunday March 24:

In Ozaukee County, there will also be several events between now and Election Day:

• Ozaukee County General Election Kick-Off, DPOC office at 1930 Wisconsin Ave, Grafton: Saturday, March 9, 12:00 - 2:00pm
• Knock on Doors in Grafton/Cedarburg, 1930 Wisconsin Ave, Grafton: March 16 & 17, at 9:00am and at 12:00pm
• Knock on Doors in Grafton/Cedarburg, 1930 Wisconsin Ave, Grafton: March 23 & 24, various start times
• Knock on Doors in Grafton/Cedarburg, 1930 Wisconsin Ave, Grafton: March 28 & 30 and April 1 & 2, various start times

Looking to the longer term, Grassroots North Shore — alas — needs a new Treasurer. Here's a job description. If you or someone you know might be interested in the position, contact Co-Chair Cheryl Maranto or (414) 429-1583.

And now for some news. As you will no doubt already know, Super Tuesday was yesterday. Depending on your point of view it was either a yawn or a Big F***ing Deal. The winners were of course President Joe Biden, for the Dems, and Dolt 45 for the MAGAites. Former Ambassador Nikki Haley dropped out but did not endorse you-know-who. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he would be stepping down from leadership in the Senate and then endorsed the Barbecued Brutus despite his obvious loathing. This afternoon, Dean Phillips also ended his quixotic bid for the Democratic nomination for president and endorsed President Biden. Senators Manchin and Sinema have both called it quits. Political junkies could have slept through all these events, so packed were they with what everyone expected.

A lot of the outcomes were so thoroughly predictable, neither The Washington Post nor the New York Times featured analyses of the various outcomes in a major article above the (digital) fold. (The NYT does have a page devoted to Super Tuesday outcomes: scroll down to the section labeled "Analysis from our reporters.")

While all the breathless coverage of the foregone conclusion was going on, you may have missed some important stories. First Lady Jill Biden promoted her Women for Biden-Harris tour in Waukesha on Sunday. I was fortunate enough to be able to go. Her speech to the assembled throng was strong and uplifting: "Women put Joe Biden in the White House and women are going to do it again."

Federal prosecutors added 12 new felony counts to the indictment of Senator Bob Menendez and his wife. The scheme is pretty convoluted but involves bribery, fraud, extortion, and obstruction of justice. Perhaps you remember that when the FBI searched his house, they found a small fortune in gold bars stashed away there. Not the sort of thing a US Senator normally keeps under his bed, I imagine. See the account in Talking Points Memo for a fuller explanation. The senator has not, yet, resigned. But assuming he's convicted, New Jersey will need a new senator.

Has this bizarre winter weather freaked you out? Well wait until you see what spring is bringing us. It seems that "for the first time since Thomas Jefferson was president, two rare broods of cicadas will emerge at the same time." This event has a 221 year cycle. The last time the two broods emerged at the same time was in 1803! You can read about it in Here Come the Cicadas in Urban Milwaukee. The article warns that the noise from these insects could be really loud. The last time I experienced a major cicada invasion, I was living in Baltimore. Not only were the critters noisy, they were really crunchy underfoot and on the roads. And that's my off-beat tidbit for the week.

As the Biden-Trump rematch ramps up, everyone needs to engage now and for the rest of the year. The long first part of this email gives you a lot of choices. So, let's not wring our hands over every new poll and every new pundit alleging that Biden's age is more worrisome than The Former Guy's lies and nefarious plans. Don't agonize. ORGANIZE.

Today's newsletter begins with local actions and needs, starting with the hunt for a new Grassroots North Shore treasurer. Brenda Stelzer has done outstanding work with the organization for many years, but she needs to step away now. The new volunteer is to begin in April 2024.

Grassroots North Shore is organizing efforts to encourage students at MIAD and UWM to vote in the upcoming election. Norma Gilson, who is putting the events together, will hold a zoom meeting to orient volunteers to this activity and provide some key talking points and guidelines. A lead volunteer will meet you at the beginning of your shift and provide you with flyers to give to the students. Please email Norma with the shifts you can do and include your mobile phone number. Shifts are the following:

• UWM Campus, 11:00 - 1:00: Monday 3/25, Tuesday 3/26, Wednesday 3/27, and Thursday 3/28.
• MIAD Campus, 11:00 - 1:00: Monday 3/18, Tuesday 3/19, Wednesday 3/20, and Thursday 3/21.

Supermarket Legends is also in need of some volunteers to help register students at MIAD and UWM.

• Sue Schneidler is organizing voter registration/information events at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) from 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. on Monday, March 4, and Tuesday, March 5. Email Sue Schneidler at if you are interested in volunteering and indicate the day(s) you are available.
• We need a few more volunteers at UWM on Monday, March 11, and Tuesday, March 12, from 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. to register students and to remind and encourage them to vote on April 2. If you are interested in volunteering, email Sue Schneidler and indicate what day(s) and time (morning, afternoon, either) you are available.

More than 4700 postcards are going out to strong Democratic women in the North Shore and Ozaukee County. Now we need people to make calls to the recipients of those cards, starting at the end of this week and continuing through Election Day. We are urging people to vote and especially to say NO to the two ballot questions that, if approved, would amend the constitution in ways that undermine the ability of municipal clerks to conduct elections. (More on this issue below.) The League of Women voters has posted a helpful toolkit explaining in detail what these proposed amendments actually mean. Making 4700 calls is a pretty heavy lift, so volunteer by sending an email to Nancy Kaplan. You'll be happy you did!

Keith Schmitz is organizing a Building Captain program in Shorewood to reach Democrats who live in largely inaccessible apartment buildings. Check out the nifty flyer he has put together and, for more detail, check out his description of the roles volunteers can play: Building Captains — Who Does What, Who Needs What. If you are interested in participating, email Keith.

Defeating the ballot questions, and educating voters about why it's so important to do so, makes the April 2 election even more important than usual. To see more detailed arguments against these proposals, visit our web page. But the gist of the matter is this. The ballot language of both proposed amendments leaves out crucial information, allowing them to seem benign. But they are not! Question 1 neglects to tell voters that election administration is an arduous and expensive undertaking. The vagueness of the prohibition, moreover, may make it necessary for municipal clerks to pay rent for the many privately owned buildings that are used as polling places. For many years, the state legislature has under-funded this vital foundation of democracy. As a result, many Wisconsin municipalities have needed outside funding to support elections. Question 2 seeks to prohibit municipal clerks from receiving assistance from other government agencies, such as police departments, IT offices and the like. And both fail to provide critical definitions of key terms, such as "used in connection with the conduct" of an election or what a "task in the conduct" of an election means.

In yet another move to stymy election processes just two days ago, the MAGA Republican senators decided not even to hold a vote on a bill that would have allowed election clerks to start processing absentee ballots the day before Election Day. Waiting until the day of the election means that in Milwaukee, where all the absentee ballots are processed at a central facility, may have to tabulate as many as 100,000 absentee ballots. The results are published all at once, leading to delays in the final count that Cheeto Benito then exploits, yelling that the "late" votes are "fraudulent dumps." Which of course is false. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a good piece about what happened to the bill.

We've been crowing about the newly passed election maps for at least a week now. And yet, the case pending at the Supreme Court of Wisconsin has not been closed. It's unclear, to me at least, what the Court is still deliberating about. The maps adopted by the legislature and signed into law pit a number of incumbents against each other. In our own area, the new Senate District 8 sets up a duel between Dan Knodl and Duey Strobel. Dan Shafer (posting on X) notes that "Republican state senators Duey Stroebel of Saukville and Dan Knodl of Germantown will be in the same Senate district under new maps. The seat is up this year. Knodl tells the Ozaukee County News Graphic that he now plans to retire after this term." Nevermind that SD8 is considerably more competitive than it has been since 2011! In fact, it is now "within the margin of effort," a phrase coined by that savvy political pundit and pollster, Michael Podhorzer.

Now, WISPOLITICS has just announced, Knodl may not be retiring after all. He's "considering run for Brandtjen’s Assembly seat." The new maps put Knodl geographically in that district and it might be easier pickings for him since the Ethics Commission has recommended that Brandtjen, along with The Cowardly Lyin’s campaign and others, face criminal charges for a scheme "to evade campaign finance limits."

On the national scene, we have competing narratives about what the vote totals in the primaries held so far actually mean. There's no uncertainty about who the two major party nominees will be of course, but there is a difference in how the split between the certain winner and his opposition matters. When Agent Orange bests Nikki Haley, the win is ofen seen as a brutal beating. Here's a kind of mild version from the New York Times (gifted): "Mr. Trump’s victory over Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, extends an unbroken streak in the nominating contests. Michigan is his sixth straight triumph, and it is his second, after Nevada, in a state expected to be a crucial battleground come November." The Washington Post (gifted), in constrast, goes full blast: "As Trump continues to trounce Haley, she presses on as MAGA antagonist."

A new and perhaps more nuanced narrative about the races has recently cropped up among progressive and Democratic pundits. These pundits are noticing that TFG is under-performing expectations. That is, he's not beating Haley by the enormous margins the polls have been predicting. Here's the Independent's headline: "Trump beats Haley in Michigan primary but underperforms expectations." The Bridge, a nonpartisan and nonprofit news outlet in Michigan, reports that "Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley won more than 30% of the GOP primary vote in each of those counties, showing Trump could again struggle with college-educated voters that cost him the 2020 election." MSNBC's headline, "Trump’s Michigan victory is not what the polls predicted — and he should be worried," states the problem succinctly. The story notes that the uncommitted votes — organized as a protest message calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war — "might as well be a Rorschach test." The uncommitted vote was more substantial than it had been in 2012 but only 1/3 of the uncommitted votes in 2008, when Barack Obama ran for the first time. But the story quickly segues. "There was no ambiguity on the Republican side: Former President Donald Trump underperformed his polls yet again.... Michigan marks the fourth consecutive contest in which Trump’s final margin has fallen short of pre-contest polling averages. In Iowa, polling averages projected a 34% margin over the second-place. The actual result? Under 30%. In New Hampshire, an 18-point margin became an 11-point win. In South Carolina, a 28-point margin became a 20-point win."

I'll end with the flip side: Biden, it seems, is over-performing expectations as reflected in the pre-primary polls. Countdown with Keith Olbermann provides an uplifting view, as does a short Daily Kos diary. But Simon Rosenburg's level-headed commentary in his Hopium Chronicles may be the best of the lot.

One of our fearless leaders, Debbie Patel, informs us that wringing our hands gets in the way of rolling up our sleeves! It's time, people, to start working HARD on that margin of effort. The WisDems will be organizing canvassing, friend-banking, and other work for the weekends of March 16 and 17, and March 23 and 24. The weather is spookily warm (except not today). So plan to get busy. I'll provide links to sign up for these events in the coming days. Meanwhile, peruse the Events listings below and find a way to engage.

Ding dong, the Gerrymander is dead! Or maybe in hospice care while we await the Wisconsin Supreme Court's final judgment. Then just like that representative democracy will have a real chance of emerging from years of subordination to the tyranny of the (often) minority. I'm sure you've been treated to lots of celebrations in Wisconsin and in the national media as well as on various online publications. I've collected a few for your celebratory delight:

• Ben Wikler, posting on Daily Kos: BREAKING: WI Gov Evers signs new state legislative maps. The nightmare of gerrymandering is over.;
  
  
• Wisconsin’s new legislative maps are a win for democracy on Vox;
  
  
• In Mother Jones, Ari Berman writes The Long Era of Republican Gerrymandering in Wisconsin May Finally Be Over;
  
  
• The offering of the New York Times (gifted), New Wisconsin Legislative Maps Diminish G.O.P. Advantage;
  
  
• The Washington Post (gifted): Wisconsin’s Democratic governor signs his new legislative maps into law after Republicans pass them;
  
  
• Wisconsin governor signs new maps, ending GOP gerrymanders for a graphic depiction of the new maps together with an analysis of what they mean.

But the work to ensure fair election maps forever more is not yet complete. The next step is electing a legislature that will pass a law to make sure the maps are drawn by nonpartisans with political neutrality an explicit measure. After that milestone, the stretch goal should be a constitutional amendment mandating fair maps and a nonpartisan process for achieving them. North Shore Fair Maps and the Fair Maps Coalition are on the case.

Meanwhile we have a low-key but VITAL ELECTION coming up on April 2. Your ballot may offer few if any competitive races; nevertheless the value of your vote is priceless. Not only does the April 2 election double as the presidential primary in Wisconsin, it presents two so-called "ballot questions" — really two proposed amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution. Grassroots North Shore is hosting a webinar on these proposals on Sunday, March 17, from 5:00 - 6:15pm. Doug Poland, a Madison-based lawyer with a long career fighting for democracy, and State Senator Mark Spreitzer, a Democrat from Beloit, will help us understand what the amendments really say and mean. They'll also explain why they are on the ballot in the first place. You can visit the Grassrooots North Shore web page devoted to the amendments. And of course you should sign up to attend the webinar.

The League of Women Voters is also holding a forum on the ballot questions on Tuesday, February 27, from 6:00 - 7:30pm. Their speakers are Joan Swartz, a retired civil law attorney, and Michael Haas, the Madison City Attorney with a background working for the Wisconsin Elections Commission. You can sign up for this forum here.

Now an earnest plea for help: The primary, such as it was this year, is in the rearview mirror. Now the serious work of electing great candidates begins. Please pitch in any way that you can. Grassroots North Shore has distributed 4700+ postcards to be written and mailed between now and the end of the month. So we'll start phoning card recipients to let them know how serious the proposed amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution is and urging them to vote. To make 4700 phone calls, though, we need lots and lots of volunteers. Please let me know that you will help: email me or text me at 443-465-1920.

For information on the races in your area, visit our Elections 2024 pages. On that index page, you will find links to the election by community, school board elections by community, and judicial races by community. You will also find information about your registration status, requesting absentee ballots for the April election as well as the partisan primary on August 13 and the general election on November 5. And if you are fortunate enough to be able to donate to one or more candidates, we have a page detailing contribution limits for every office — national, state, and local.

You probably know all there is to know about how to vote in Wisconsin. But it never hurts to refresh your memory or provide information that may be useful to a new voter you might know. So here it is.

The next several weeks are chock full of legal wrangling about various Adolf Twittler's trials and tribulations. We're still waiting for the US Supreme Court to issue a ruling in the challenge to Colorado disqualifying Trump from the ballot because of his role in the January 6, 2021 Insurrection. That opinion could come down any day now. In addition, in the New York DA's Election Interference case (often disparagingly termed a hush-money case), motions to prevent specific evidence or arguments from being introduced at trial — known in legalese as in limine motions, I've learned — are due on Thursday, February 22. On Friday, a case brought by officers on duty at the Capitol Building on January 6, known as Blassingame, will have a status hearing in the DC Courtroom where Judge Amit Mehta presides. Keep track of all the legal events as well as the primaries interspersed throughout at Just Security's Master Calendar of Trump Court Dates: Criminal and Civil Cases.

Finally, a note of levity: how the idiot-in-chief thinks the fines levied by Judge Engoron as well as the other "persecutions" he has to endure make him a sorta, kinda, almost the victim of an assassination. In short an American Alexey Navalny. I kid you not: the AP reports.

Sorry this newsletter was delayed. Still, I'm glad to be late this time. The news from yesterday's events, both national and here in Wisconsin, was nothing short of fantastic. Also beginning next week, I will be sending the newsletter on Wednesdays to accommodate a change in various meeting schedules. So maybe it's not so much late as it is an unannounced surprise?

Let's begin with the HUGE win for fair maps for the 2024 partisan election! The Republican-controlled legislature hurriedly passed a new set of maps for legislative districts both for Assembly seats and state Senate seats yesterday — presumably to foreclose the Supreme Court of Wisconsin (SCOWIS) decision about which set of maps the justices would choose. After the usual shenanigans, the legislature chose the ones Governor Evers had submitted. The two expert consultants — who reviewed all six sets of remedial maps the court received — judged four of the remedial maps compliant with the criteria the Court had set forth, including the stipulation that the maps could not favor one political party. The maps Governor Evers submitted was one of the four.

As the Co-Chair of the North Shore Fair Maps group put it, "MAKE NO MISTAKE, WE WON BIGLY YESTERDAY!" She goes on to say "maps drawn by a Democratic governor and accepted by a Republican legislature are a far better reflection of good government than maps imposed by a Court. Governor Evers’s maps represent government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Good government." And that's the main point.

Almost all Democrats in both the Senate and the Assembly, however, voted against the bill. Many people are wondering why they did that if the maps that passed and that Governor Evers has indicated he will sign are such a big win for those of us who had persistently and vigorously opposed the rigged maps we've had since 2012. Two possible reasons have emerged: first the strength of the Democratic vote in the Assembly suggests that the GOP legislators lack the votes to override a gubernatorial veto should Governor Evers decide to go that route; and second, many Democratic legislators objected to the rushed process that Speaker Vos used.

This matter is not quite definitively closed. Someone with the requisite means could still to try to take the case to the US Supreme Court. But Doug Poland, one of the lawyers who brought the suit to SCOWIS, all but called this possibility looney: "People really think that if the GOP controlled Legislature and Dem. Governor agree on legislation adopting new districts that a federal court challenge will undo that? On what theory?" See Dan Shafer's account and analysis on The Recombobulation Area publication: The Wisconsin State Legislature passed new maps. It's a bit discombobulating.

The Washington Post covered the story today (gifted link). And in another, more analytic piece by Phillip Bump, there's a particularly clear graphic showing the difference between the share of the total vote each party won in the last four elections and the share of the seats in the Assembly and Senate each party held. The accompanying analysis confidently states, "It was a [GOP] concession born not of enthusiasm about Evers’s proposal but, instead, out of fear about even less favorable maps that might be created by the court." Bottom Line: Let's allow ourselves to celebrate what Speaker Robin Vos said to reporters: Evers had "a huge win today" because now "the legislature will be up for grabs." Surely an admission that Republicans had in fact rigged the maps.

Yesterday was also election day for two special elections, one in New York to fill the seat made vacant when the House of Representatives expelled George Santos and the other in a Philadelphia suburb to fill a Pennsylvania House seat. Continuing the successful run they've enjoyed in special elections in 2023, Democrats won both, convincingly. Tom Suozzi was elected to take Santos's place, shrinking the small (and dare I say dysfunctional) GOP majority. This result leaves "the G.O.P. able to afford only two defections from the party line on votes when all members are present." And the early March deadlines for funding the government loom (New York Times gifted link, February 14, 2024).

In Pennsylvania, Democrat "Jim Prokopiak won the special election and reaffirmed Democrats’ one-seat majority in the state House, according to the Associated Press, which called the race for him at 8:07 p.m., just after polls closed" (The Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 13, 2024). The article notes that "Democrats have had to defend their majority four times since they took control of the state House in 2023. They have successfully run each on a promise to protect abortion access in Pennsylvania." These latest wins add to the narrative that Democrats have significantly overperformed in a host of 2023 elections. You can see the table, the tally, and the average in "Democrats have been winning big in special elections." The article from ABC News sports a sub-head: "That could bode well for them in the 2024 election."

Let's turn now to a brief recap of the Cheeto Benito trials.

• He's appealed the DC Appellate Court's ruling that he is not immune from criminal prosecution once he's magically been returned to being a mere citizen of the United States. The US Supreme Court has given Special Counsel Jack Smith until February 20 to reply to the Cowardly Lyin's brief. Not a super-urgent briefing schedule but not entirely dilatory either. We shall see.
• The Fulton County judge will be holding an evidentiary hearing tomorrow to determine whether DA Willis and her entire office need to be dismissed from the case. At issue is whether the romantic entanglement with another prosecutor on her staff began BEFORE she hired him, as one of the defendants in the case has alleged, or AFTER, as she and Mr. Wade have both sworn. PBS will carry the televised hearing, beginning at 8:30am CT.
• Judge Merchan, overseeing the NYC case about hush money and fraudulent business records, has denied Boss Tweet's motion to recuse himself. He'll hold a hearing tomorrow to make some decisions on motions and to consider any scheduling conflicts.
• In the Mar-a-lago documents case, Judge Aileen Cannon has held separate hearings with the defendants' lawyers and the DOJ lawyers to deal with protective orders for the classified information in the documents found in the search of the Butternut Berlusconi's retirement home. Special Counsel Jack Smith has called her recent ruling that would unmask the names and grand jury testimony of key witnesses "clear error." Smith has filed an additional brief making his case with additional evidence about the harm such unmasking will surely do.
• Judge Engoron is reportedly going to file his written decision in the NY State case in which he and his company, the Trump Organization, have already been found guilty of fraud. The amount of what's known as disgorgement he will have to pay and whether he and his sons will be barred from doing business in New York State are what followers of this case are waiting to see.

The website Just Security is producing a "Master Calendar of Trump Court Dates: Criminal and Civil Cases" for your edification. If you're a political and court junky, you might want to bookmark it. And you should not miss the superb investigative journalism taking place at Talking Points Memo: Josh Kovensky began a series of articles with new and interesting details about how the various coup plots intertwined. Called The Chesebro Docs, the series begins with an introductory piece: The Legal Coup.

If you missed the February 4 presentations by Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat and state Senator Chris Larson, you can watch the Grassroots North Shore event on YouTube. Professor Ben-Ghiat is a world renowned expert on the rise of authoritarianism. Senator Larson provides a riveting history of what's been happening in Wisconsin over the last 14 years or so. You really should take the time to view it.

Two great organizations — the ACLU and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin — are recruiting people to assist with voter protection issues for the April 2 and November 5 elections.

I've introduced a new section detailing the canvassing the WisDems are organizing ahead of the April 2 election. That is followed by the usual Events list for the next two weeks. The weather in this area has been astonishingly mild (though there does seem to be a snow storm on the way). So engage!

SPRING VOTER OUTREACH WITH LOCAL DEMS TEAMS

Saturday, February 17

Sunday, February 18

A look ahead to plan canvassing to Get Out The Vote for the April 2 election.

Before I dive into the bombshell news of the day, there's a must-not-miss event on Monday, February 12, at 7:00pm. The North Shore Fair Maps group is hosting a webinar with some distinguished national gurus on what the data tell us about messaging for this election."Words and Data Matter" will be presented by Anat Shenker-Osorio, perhaps the best message-master in the United States; and Michael Podhorzer, who understands data better than anybody!  Sign up for the monthly NSFM meeting. 

As I am writing this newsletter (at about 2:15pm CT), the news arrived that the D.C. Court of Appeals had finally handed down a decision in the complete immunity case TFG filed. The news everywhere (except Fox, maybe) will be chewing on the ruling all day, no doubt. And I'm not a lawyer. But I have read the whole thing. And the bottom line is that TFG loses every argument in a unanimous decision. The New York Times has a clear account of it (gifted to bypass the paywall). The paper of record also provides access to the ruling itself with annotations by Charlie Savage. (The full, unannotated opinion is also available.) Both the article and the annotated opinion call attention to a key paragraph early in the decision:

The ruling takes a methodical tour through the key elements of the indictment: "(1) conspiracy to defraud the United States by overturning the election results; (2 ) conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding i.e., the Congress's certification of the electoral vote; (3) obstruction of and attempt to obstruct, the certification of the electoral vote; and (4) conspiracy against the rights of one or more persons to vote and to have their votes counted." This opening section concludes "At this stage of the prosecution, we assume that the allegations set forth inthe Indictment are true." Although it may seem strange that an appeals court would make such an assertion, the assumption is standard practice in this kind of appeal.

The rest of the document meticulously addresses each of the former president's four claims of immunity: "(1) presidential immunity; (2) constitutional provisions, including the Impeachment Judgment Clause and principles stemming from the Double JeopardyClause; (3) statutory grounds; and (4) allegations of selective and vindictive prosecution." Before the court rules on each of the claims, though, it devotes nearly 10 pages responding to an amicus brief from American Oversights that had argued the appeal based on a claim of immunity was procedurally premature. At the end of the longish legal argument, the court disagrees and takes up the four motions claiming immunity on different grounds. I leave it to the experts and punditocracy to tease out the meanings of each part of the argument.

One final note. The account in the Washington Post includes this important nugget: "The court set tight deadlines for that review, saying it would put the ruling on hold until Feb. 12 for Trump to appeal to the Supreme Court but would not wait for the full D.C. Circuit to weigh in."

Local Legal News

It's pretty exciting here in Wisconsin too. As I mentioned in last week's newsletter, the MAGA-controlled legislature got its panties in a twist about the remedial maps that were submitted to the Wisconsin Supreme Court (SCOWIS). So in an attempt to beat what they considered an adverse ruling on electoral maps from SCOWIS, they passed a bill that purported to include essentially the map Governor Evers had submitted to SCOWIS. But it was not the same map. Why? Because they "tweaked" the legislative boundary lines to protect GOP incumbents. The Governor promptly vetoed the bill.

Meanwhile the two expert consultants SCOWIS hired to evaluate the remedial maps were hard at work. In their report, submitted on February 1, they argued that two of the remedial map proposals did not meet the court's requirement that the maps be neutral with respect to political parties. The two sets of maps they disallowed were produced by the Republicans in the legislature and by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (also called the Johnson maps). That leaves four sets of maps still in the running: Clarke petitioners (Law Forward), Governor Evers, Democratic Senators, and the Wright Intervenors. In their conclusions, the consultants write, "From a social science perspective, the Legislature's plan does not deserve further consideration. Of the remaining plans, the Johnson plan appears to have a substantial number of fails on the 'bounded by' constitutional criteria. We also note that both the Legislature's plan and the Johnson plan, from a social science perspective, are partisan gerrymanders. The four other submitted plans are similar on most criteria. From a social science point of view these for [sic] plans are nearly indistinguishable." See the full report. All the parties and accepted amici have until February 8 to respond to the consultants' report. After that, SCOWIS will choose a map.

Then, on February 2, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin has accepted a lawsuit Governor Evers filed "against Republican lawmakers who blocked pay raises for university employees and funding for conservation projects" (Wisconsin Public Radio). The article goes on to say, "The court’s liberal majority agreed to immediately take up Evers’ claim that the committee blockades amounted to 'legislative vetoes' [that] violate the the separation of powers in the Wisconsin Constitution by allowing the legislative branch to alter 'the scope of the executive branch’s discretion.'"

Local Election News

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel online apparently does not consider the DC Circuit Court's opinion worthy of front page coverage, but you can find it if you hunt under the news section and then choose the sub-link "Elections." It does have coverage of the Shorewood School Board election where three candidates are running for a single seat. That means there will be a primary in Shorewood on February 20. The MJS article includes a candidate questionnaire to help sort out your choice. The Grassroots North Shore website also has some information about school board contests in the North Shore suburbs and for school board elections in Ozaukee County.

Grassroots North Shore tries to provide comprehensive election news in every cycle. For the election on April 2, we have a guide to early in-person voting, beginning March 19 and ending March 29 in most of our communities. We also have a page devoted to the two constitutional amendments, called Issue Question 1 and Issue Question 2, that will be on every voter's ballot. We are strongly urging a NO vote on both. They sound innocuous enough, but they are a not-so-subtle end run around the governor's veto. The Issue Questions were first presented as bills the legislature passed along party lines. When the governor vetoed them, the legislature turned them into proposed amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution.

The lawsuit Governor Evers recently filed against several legislative committee chairs also accused the legislature of exercising an unconstitutional nullification of his veto power. You may recall that when Governor Evers was first elected in 2018, the legislature passed and then Governor Walker signed bills restricting the governor's powers. For the MAGAites, taking power away from others and grabbing it for themselves is just the ordinary business of the day.

And if you have the financial ability to contribute to candidates, make sure you check our page of information about campaign contribution limits. You'll find the index to most of our election coverage and useful information about deadlines for registering to vote, requesting an absentee ballot, and more at Elections 2024 on our website.

Lastly, we urge you to request absentee ballots for every election this year. There are many reasons to request an absentee ballot: you can take your time and be thoughtful about your votes, you can do your homework as you choose which candidate you favor; you have an insurance policy in case you get sick — COVID is still dogging us, RSV and the flu are around too, and there's some awful cold virus that seems to last forever — or have an accident or are suddenly called out of town. Even if you request an absentee ballot, you can still vote early in person or vote on election day: just make sure you don't turn in your absentee ballot also! If you do want to vote by absentee ballot, you must either return your ballot by mail or take it in person to your municipal clerk. You CANNOT ask someone else to return your ballot for you.

The spring elections this year are pretty low key. But it's important that you vote, even if every office on your ballot is uncontested. Your vote to turn down the constitutional amendments (Issue Questions 1 and 2) is vital. So too is your vote in the presidential primary. In Democrats' primary, both President Joe Biden and Representative Dean Phillips will be on your ballot. (On the Republican side, Trump, Haley, and a bunch of folks we've already forgotten about will appear.) Because we do not register an affiliation with a political party in this state, you can vote in any party's primary. BUT ONLY IN ONE. I'll have more on the presidential primary closer to the April 2 election.

Meanwhile, Make Yourself Useful

You Can Help Save Our Democracy By Registering Voters in Milwaukee: Everyone! Join The Milwaukee Voter Project registering voters inside three Milwaukee DMV's, 2701 South Chase, Teutonia & Florist and 73rd & Mill. During the months leading up to the Supreme Court Election we produced 3168 paper registrations, thousands of online registrations and made 50,000 voter contacts. We work year around and will give you the simple training and supervision you need. Contact us at our email: [email protected] or phone (414) 218-5944. Much more about on our website.

Voter Protection Team: Join one of our upcoming VoPro 101 trainings! Interested in learning more about Wisconsin election law and how you can help people exercise their right to vote? Attend one of our upcoming Voter Protection 101 Trainings! We will resumed offering these biweekly trainings and we would love for you to join us. We cover election law basics, voter registration, and available resources, and talk about how you can get involved protecting democracy in your community. Sign up for a VoPro 101 session.

Phonebank with us! We will have two phonebank time slots a week, on Monday nights from 5-7pm CT and Thursday afternoons from 12-2pm CT. We will offer training at the beginning of each phonebank and there is no experience required; all you need is yourself and your computer! Sign up for a phonebank that works best for you here and invite anyone you know who might be interested.

We're fated to live in newsworthy times, it seems. Just keeping up feels like a full time job! On the national level, we got news in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case II — a whopping great $83.3 million for damages and punishment. She is making sure to rub it in by appearing on TV as much as possible, proclaiming that the presence of TFG wasn't intimidating at all. Indeed, she said, in person and stripped of his larger-than-life stage presence, he's really just "nothing." We're still waiting for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on TFG's "absolute immunity" claim. Meanwhile, Judge Engoron has said he will decide the NY State fraud claims and the amount of disgorgement (the money acquired fraudulently) TFG and his crooked business will have to pay (plus whether he and his two oldest sons will ever be able to do business in the state again) very soon, possibly by the end of this week. Plus, Nikki Haley is burrowing deeper and deeper under Boss Tweet's skin: ""Haley Hits Trump on Border and His ‘Rants,’ Saying ‘He Feels Threatened’." It's a lot just on the Groper-in-Chief front.

The Wisconsin political news this past week has also been plentiful. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has now acquired remedial maps — that is proposed maps that remedy or fix the flaws the Court found in the current maps — from all the parties to the case plus the amici (friends of the court). You can find the parties' responses to the submissions as well as all the other documents involved in the case here. The responses to the remedial map submissions are all filed on 1-22-2024. So that's the part of the web page to look at.

Needless to say, GOP legislators were not happy with most of the proposed maps. But they seemed to concede that they were going to have to accept some change. As a result, first the Senate and then the Assembly purported to adopt the remedial map Governor Evers submitted, albeit with just a few little changes. The vote in the Senate came "about a week before two consultants are set to submit a report analyzing several map proposals submitted as part of a redistricting case before the state Supreme Court" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 23, 2024). The "tweaks" legislators proposed were to protect incumbents from having to compete against each other in the revised districts. The article goes on to say that "Republicans passed the map proposal as an amendment to a nonpartisan redistricting bill that the Assembly passed in September. Democrats and the public did not see the amendment before the Senate took it up on the floor." The bill they passed, with four Republican Senators joining all the Democrats voting against it, would establish a new, supposedly non-partisan process for adopting election maps in the future. The Assembly approved the bill and the maps the next day. And Governor Evers promptly promised to veto the bill and its attachment.

And presto: just as I have been writing this account, "Evers vetoes new legislative maps passed by Wisconsin Legislature." So what happens next? The legislature may try to override the governor's veto, "but they likely lack the numbers. The maps passed the Senate 17-14 and passed the Assembly 63-35. Both margins are short of the two-thirds majority needed for a veto override." The veto message focused on two pertinent aspects of the changes the legislature had made to the maps the governor submitted: the "gerrymandering" revision to protect GOP power and the "rushed process" used to pass them.

The resulting maps included two Assembly districts that have “non-contiguous territory in violation of our State Constitution.” Bernard Grofman and Jonathan Cervas, the two consultants the Supreme Court hired, will issue a report on February 1 that evaluates the six maps, "laying out how well the map proposals mesh with the court’s order. If Grofman and Cervas find the parties’ maps don’t meet the court’s guidelines, they will be tasked with drawing their own remedial Assembly and Senate maps for justices to consider." As Craig GlIbert notes in his special article to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Monday, "The court’s ruling will shape the struggle for power between the two parties. It will determine how competitive legislative elections are going to be here. And it will dictate how responsive those elections will be to shifts in public opinion and in turnout from one year to another."

The maps are one thing, the presidential preference primary is quite another. Who gets on the ballot for that primary is pretty much decided by the "Presidential Preference Selection Committee, which is run by the Republican Party of Wisconsin and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin" (Wisconsin Public Radio, January 2, 2024). When the committee met, only seven names were approved for ballot access: former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former NJ Governor Chris Christie, and former AR Governor Asa Hutchinson. Only President Biden was selected to appear in the Democratic primary. (See the account in Spectrum News 1, January 2, 2024). All but *rump and Haley have since dropped out of the GOP race.

Representative Dean Phillips, a congressman from neighboring Minnesota running against President Biden in the Democratic primary, has now asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court "to overrule his exclusion [from the primary ballot] based on a provision of state election law that allows ballot access for candidates who are found to have been recognized as serious contenders by the news media." His campaign has complained that the Presidential Preference Selection Committee's decision will "force him to spend about $300,000 to collect signatures through a separate process to acquire ballot access" (gifted Washington Post article, January 29, 2024). The Court has now "asked a state elections board Monday to respond this week to Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips’s claim that he has been unlawfully left off the state’s April 2 primary ballot." He bases his claim on the fact that he won about "20 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire Democratic primary."

Even though the state's GOP has not been faring so well this past week, the MAGAts in our Assembly decided it would be a good time to pass a 14-week abortion ban — with an interesting twist: if enacted into law, it would "call for a binding statewide referendum" (APNews, January 25, 2024) that would appear on the April 2 ballot. In my opinion that might just be the underlying reason for passing such a bill right now: to boost MAGAt turnout in deep red parts of the state. After all, the Assembly did not need to use such an arcane process. The AP story explains that "the bill deploys a seldom-used process by which a law passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor can be enacted only with voters' approval."

Jesse Opoien notes that "it is unclear whether it will receive a vote in the Senate, but Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has pledged to veto it." So it seems to be going nowhere. But even if it were enacted, it seems to me, the referendum would kill it. In a June 2023 Marquette University Law School poll, 66% of Wisconsin respondents said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases! Ten Republicans voted against the bill, demonstrating that at least these representatives don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind is blowing.

As you know, Vice President Kamala Harris began her nationwide Reproductive Freedom tour in Big Bend, Wisconsin. (Go watch her stunning speech on YouTube.) That was at the beginning of last week. Then President Biden came to Wisconsin at the end of the week: "President Joe Biden's reelection effort bookended the week with a focus on abortion access in Wisconsin, starting with a visit from Vice President Kamala Harris and ending with a statement rebuking an Assembly Republican bill passed Thursday asking voters whether the state should ban abortions after 14 weeks of pregnancy" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 26, 2024). As last year's election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court showed, reproductive freedom is a key issue in Wisconsin politics. Janet Protasiewicz, the candidate who clearly stated that she supports it, won by an astonishing 11%. It remains a hot issue this year. Women's rights are decidedly on the ballot with the U.S. Supreme Court about to hear and decide the mifepristone case. That decision will come out in June 2024. Whichever way it goes, it's bound to keep abortion rights in the thick of the presidential race both here and nationwide. And I say, bring it on!

In addition to the items in the Events list, please consider volunteering with the WisDems.

While we continue to wait for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a ruling on TFG's claim to total immunity, a whole bunch of other legal maneuvers are also ongoing.

• There's the E. Jean Carroll 2nd defamation lawsuit, postponed both yesterday and today because of COVID (still with us after all).
• There's Rudy Giuliani's attempt to use bankruptcy proceedings to avoid paying the $148 million the trial court awarded Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
• The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether Colorado can disqualify Orange Julius from the March 5 primary in that state. Meanwhile, a "Federal District Court Issues Order Explaining Why South Carolina and the SC Democratic Party Did Not Violate Cenk Uygur’s Rights in Keeping Him Off Presidential Primary Ballot." On his Election Law Blog, Richard Hasan writes "This is potentially relevant for the Trump disqualification case as an example of a state keeping an ineligible citizen off the (primary) presidential ballot."
• In Georgia, where one of the RICO case defendants alleges that DA Fani Willis has been having an affair with Nathan Wade, one of the special prosecutors on her team, the judge ordered the court records of Wade's divorce proceedings unsealed. The AP reports that the "newly unsealed court records, however, didn’t include any references to the affair allegations." This matter feels like the proverbial tempest in a teapot.
• And Dolt 45 still faces three felony trials (in New York City, in Washington D.C., and in Palm Beach Florida), plus a decision in the New York State fraud trial that wrapped up last week.

In more local politics, Governor Evers will give the State of the State address tonight to "lay out his priorities in front of the Republican-led Legislature, which then delivers a response." According to today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, PBS and WisEye.org will both carry it live. It's scheduled to begin at 7pm.

And in a last-minute announcement, the Wisconsin Senate is convening at 3pm this afternoon to consider passing a bill that would alter the process for creating and approving new legislative election maps. Needless to say, the proposed law, based loosely on what's known as the Iowa model, preserves the legislature's power over the maps and includes the possibility that if the Governor and the Legislature fail to agree on the maps, the process continues ad infinitum (and also ad nauseam). Seems like this is an attempt to nullify the case currently under consideration in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Tonight, of course, the GOP presidential primary is likely to end with a virtual Boss Tweet coronation. All the more reason to make sure you sign up for Grassroots North Shore's annual fundraiser with featured speaker Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a renowned international expert on the rise of authoritarianism. She's a regular presence on MSNBC and other networks as we face rising political violence and a wannabe dictator running to resume his destruction of our democracy. Our own Senator Chris Larson will join her to discuss the authoritarians in our state's government. Also, please contribute to the kitty to help Grassroots North Shore continue to fight the good fight to protect our freedoms.

We're not helpless. We're not daunted. We're not intimidated. After last Tuesday's elections, our great Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler posted on Daily Kos: The takeaways from Cheato Benito's win in Iowa and the democratic win in a Florida legislative seat currently in MAGA hands: "the GOP candidate will be MAGA. And voters, especially women, remain furious about their freedoms being taken away, and will fight like hell to get them back." He notes that Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off her nationwide Reproductive Freedom tour here in Wisconsin. She gave a rousing speech which you can and should hear on YouTube.

Reproductive freedom is under attack, again, as our own MAGAites introduce a 14-week abortion ban, as MAGA national Senators and Representatives continue to pursue a nationwide abortion ban, as the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) takes up the case restricting access to Mifepristone, a decision on which will come by the end of June.

Marriage equality and contraception are also in the crosshairs. In fact, "To the Supreme Court, the 20th Century Was Wrongly Decided" Michael Podhorzer wrote on his substack last year. He argues that the court "has been instrumental in advancing this coalition's agenda, which is to dismantle the New Deal order and reverse the civil and social rights gains made since the postwar period." The country we want to live in, the country we thought we were living in, the country we want our children and grandchildren to inherit from us is under siege from every angle — political, judicial, and economic. We have to RESIST and REFORM in any way we can.

The Events list, of course, offers you some opportunities to learn what you can do. But here's another. As a response to Republicans attempting to ban books around the state, Swing Left Milwaukee in conjunction with the WisDems and the Milwaukee County Democratic Party are doing a “Books For Kids” drive focusing on the books Republicans are trying to ban, such as “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Once collected books will be distributed through the Next Door Foundation to disadvantaged children. If you do not have books to donate please consider a donation to the Next Door Foundation. You can also order books from Amazon sent directly to the foundation. Just visit the Next Door Foundation website and click on the donate button. Five drop sites are located throughout Milwaukee County:

• Milwaukee County Dems Office, 2999 S Delaware Ave Bay View, Monday through Wednesday 10am - 2pm
• WisDems Coordinated Campaign Office, 8405 W Lisbon Ave, Monday through Friday, 12 - 6pm
• Volunteer Porch with Receptacle, 613 E Oklahoma Ave, Bay View
• Volunteer Porch With Receptacle, 1411 17 Ave, South Milwaukee
• Volunteer Porch With Receptacle, 1879 N Cambridge Ave, Milwaukee
  Porch drop off anytime

I want to begin today with the "news" out of Iowa, but before I get to that I want to highlight the upcoming Grassroots North Shore program: Authoritarian Candidates in the Nation and in Wisconsin, on Sunday, February 4, from 5:00 - 6:30pm on Zoom. This program is our annual fundraiser — we don't have any paid staff but we do need to pay for things like our zooms, stamps, postcards, flyers, snacks and water for in person meetings, a PO Box, etc. — so contribute if you can. But even if you can't, you're welcome to attend. This topic is just that important.

Our featured speaker, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, is a renowned international expert on the rise of authoritarianism. Her latest book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (2020; paperback with a new epilogue, 2021), examines how illiberal leaders use corruption, violence, propaganda, and machismo to stay in power, and how resistance to them has unfolded over a century. If you watch MSNBC, you have undoubtedly seen her interviews. If you haven't, you should take a look at one at least. She will discuss national and international movements. Joining her will be state Senator Chris Larson who will take a closer look at some of the most authoritarian wannabes in our legislature.

Now on to the "triumphs" of Adolf Twitler. He won Iowa, of course, with excited headlines all over important media like the New York Times (gifted), the Washington Post (gifted), CNN, and HuffPost. But his big moment doesn't seem all that robust to an astute observer, Mark Sumner, at Daily Kos: "Trump's performance in Iowa is not nearly as good as the media makes it seem."

Wisconsin is once again making some national news, even as Don the Con's exploits continue to gobble up precious news space and air time. The AP is out with a story today headlined "Wisconsin GOP's large majorities expected to shrink under new legislative maps." The Journal Sentinel also has the story, of course, but the AP is picked up by news outlets all over the country, giving it national coverage. You can read an analysis (by John Johnson, Marquette Law School) of the seven maps that were submitted in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin (SCOWIS) on January 12. His is not the only analysis taking place. All the parties to the lawsuit have until January 22 to submit response briefs to SCOWIS. The two consultants the court hired will evaluate all the proposed maps and will file a report on each of them by February 1. Parties to the lawsuit can then respond to the consultants' reports by February 8. At that point, the matter is left in the hands of the seven justices on SCOWIS. There's no timeframe for a decision but the schedule of arguments and briefings suggest that the final decision will follow fairly quickly. Maps of legislative districts must be finalized by mid-March so that people who want to run in those districts will have time to gather nomination signatures of potential constituents.

Voting in this country is and always has been vexed. Who is eligible, how people can register, even sometimes the design of ballots can confuse, confound and effectively disenfranchise. Do you remember the controversial "butterfly ballot" used in the 2000 presidential election in Palm Beach County, Florida? You can see the ballot in question in a 2019 article in The Guardian. This one poorly-designed ballot may have given the election to George W. Bush! Richard Hasan, an expert in election law and professor at UCLA, has an opinion piece in the New York Times today titled The U.S. Lacks What Every Democracy Needs (gifted). It begins "The history of voting in the United States shows the high cost of living with an old Constitution, unevenly enforced by a reluctant Supreme Court."

The piece looks at the history of Supreme Court decisions on voting rights, noting that in its 235-year history, there was only one period when it was "hospitable to broad constitutional voting rights claims. The court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, saw a broad expansion of voting rights in the 1960s, thanks mainly to its capacious reading of the equal protection clause." Hasan identifies three voting pathologies stemming from the Constitution's lack of an "affirmative right to vote." Understanding the role SCOTUS plays in the battle for universal voting rights over the broad sweep of our nation's history can help us understand some more recent court behaviors, including the Rucho (in which the court ruled that partisan gerrymandering was something the federal judicial system could not address) and the infamous 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder that struck down the pre-clearance section of the Voting Rights Act. The Berger, Rehnquist, and Roberts courts have backed away from the Warren court's positions on expanding voting rights. Many scholars, including Hasan, assert that a constitutional amendment affirming the right to vote is not only consonant with other advanced democracies but is the clearest way to address what ails our elections.

In an effort to make Wisconsin's congressional elections less polarized and partisan, a bill "to establish a final-five runoff voting system" has been introduced in the legislature. A hearing on it was held last week. Here's how the bill envisions the process would work:

The bill is authored by Rep. Ron Tusler, a Republican, and Sen. Jeff Smith, a Democrat. Its goal, according to the bill's authors, "is to change the incentive system in the state’s elections and move the more competitive contest from the primary election to the general" (Wisconsin Examiner, January 10, 2024). If you are so minded, you can sign a petition to show your support to Wisconsin legislators.

Last week was momentous in Cheeto Benito's efforts to convince the DC Court of Appeals to dismiss the entire election subversion case on the grounds that a former president cannot be prosecuted for any crimes he may have committed while discharging his responsibilities. In short, his lawyer argued, he has complete immunity from prosecution for official acts. All three judges on the panel expressed considerable skepticism about this claim, but none more so that Judge Pan who made sure Trump’s Lawyer Walked Into a Trap, according to George Conway III. The link takes you, not to the article in The Atlantic (which I cannot access even though I have a subscription and am logged in!), but to an interview on MSNBC with Chris Hayes.

Now that we have traversed the year end revelries, the Events list is once again robust. Make it part of your New Year's commitment to engage!

I'm sending you this "extra" to bring you up to date on some of the key legal events of the week, including my own summary of the week's blockbuster. Enjoy.

On Tuesday, Justice Janet Protasiewicz was sworn in to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. There were a number of laudatory speakers, praising her for her judicial temperament and her kind heart. But the remarks that really stood out were those of Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who has been on the court for 28 years. She noted that in her early years on the court, it was widely recognized as one of the best state supreme courts in the nation, implying that it has fallen in reputation since. But now it will rise again. She was very excited, I think, at the prospect that she will once again find herself in the majority on the court at least on some issues.

Earlier on Tuesday, two *rump allies in Michigan were charged with felonies "in connection with an effort to illegally access and tamper with voting machines in the state after the 2020 election." Because one of them was a recently defeated MAGA candidate for Attorney General in Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel cited a conflict of interest and requested a special prosecutor to investigate and potentially indict the perpetrators. DePerno, the defeated AG candidate, was of course endorsed by TFG. The two men indicted Tuesday bring the number of people the Michigan special prosecutor has named to nine. In a separate but related case, Attorney General Dana Nessel and her office have already charged the 16 fake electors with eight felonies each. So in Michigan, the count of the accused for various forms of 2020 election subversion has reached 25.

Then just moments before Protasiewicz's investiture was to take place, TRE45ON was finally indicted for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election and to maintain his own power. Everyone should read the document, not only to discover what the four felonies he's charged with are, but to see in context some of the most damning evidence special counsel Jack Smith has assembled. A lot of the information has already been aired by the January 6 select committee in the House of Representatives last year. But what is new is newsworthy. For example, it seems that Vice President Pence kept contemporaneous notes of key conversations with TFG, and Jack Smith has them as well as Pence's testimony in front the the Grand Jury.

Paragraph 7 of the indictment forthrightly states the crux of the matter: "The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted, and certified."

Evidence undergirding the accusation that the conspirators, especially TFG, used "knowingly false claims of election fraud" occupies a big chunk of the indictment. As does the scheme to create slates of fake electors in six states, including Wisconsin. In the account Smith has written, the fake electors scheme serves to create false conflict that the conspirators exploited in several ways. One was to pressure VP Pence to exercise his (fictitious) authority to choose between the two sets of electors — one for Joe Biden and one for *rump — as if there were real uncertainty about which sets of electors were the genuine ones. A second was to persuade the beleaguered VP just to send the matter back to the states. The state legislatures — all of them under GOP control — could then "correct" putatively faulty election results so that the *rump electors could be named the genuine ones. A third was to persuade enough members of Congress to object to counting the electoral votes in "contested states." That would  throw the election into the House of Representatives to decide the winner when neither candidate's electoral vote total could reach the 270 necessary to prevail.

Tuesday was quite a day!

What happened on Wednesday, though, has the potential to shake up Wisconsin's political landscape. Within hours of Protasiewicz claiming her seat on the Supreme Court, Law Forward along with a number of other plaintiffs filed a petition "to take jurisdiction of an original action to challenge the gerrymandered state legislative maps." The grounds are these: "the existing maps (1) retaliate against some voters based on their viewpoint and free speech, in violation of Wisconsin’s guarantee of free speech; (2) treats some voters worse than others based on their political views and where they live in violation of Wisconsin’s guarantee of equality; and (3) violate the promise of a free government found in the Wisconsin constitution." You can read about the action on the Law Forward website. You can read the press release and you can watch the press conference they held. On Friday, August 4, Law Forward will hold an online briefing at noon CDT on this new fair maps case.

I forgot some really important things, chiefly events, in the GRNS newsletter I sent yesterday. So here's the stuff I missed.

Wave is looking for volunteers to do some phone banking who want to push for better gun laws in Wisconsin and to advocate for victims and survivors of domestic abuse. WAVE Educational Fund is looking for phone bankers. This volunteer opportunity can be done from your home whenever it's convenient for you, and you can put as much or as little time into it as you want. They’re creating a small, strategic list of Wisconsin legislators who they think can be convinced to sign onto a bill that would make it harder for domestic abusers to get guns. The bill was released late in 2023, so now we just need to build momentum. If you’re interested, email WAVE’s Communications Manager, Heidi Johnson, for more information. She’ll answer all your questions, and provide all the needed resources. Phone banking will be active from late January through late February.

EVENTS

Monday, January 15

Tuesday, January 16

Wednesday, January 17

Thursday, January 18

Friday, January 19

Saturday, January 20

Monday, January 22

Tuesday, January 23

Thursday, January 25

Saturday, January 27

SAVE THE DATE

Multiple Dates and Times

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I'm late, I'm late. There's so much happening right now, that I have been feeling a little overloaded with political and election news. But let's begin with our area's Spring elections and Wisconsin judicial opinions that will have an impact on this year's elections. Then we'll take a look at the national news and Trumpelthinskin's trials and tribulations, finishing up with a unionization drive that's going on at Planned Parenthood Wisconsin.

First, though, let me remind you about the fundraiser for Tammy Baldwin this Sunday, January 14, from 4:00 to 5:30pm at an address in Mequon (available upon request or in response to signing up). Tammy will be facing a well-heeled opponent who will barely have to raise any grassroots funding and will be the beneficiary of the national GOP's funds. As best I can tell, the senate race in Wisconsin will be one of their top targets. If Democrats hope to keep control of the senate after this election cycle, re-electing Baldwin is key. But that's not the only or even the most important reason to support her: she has been an outstanding senator for Wisconsin. Just consult her page of press releases for 2021-2022 (the 117th congress) to see an overview of what she was doing and how focused she has been on helping the residents of Wisconsin succeed.

For the spring 2024 election, the busy bees at Grassroots North Shore have been diligently gathering information about the candidates that you will see on your ballot. For many of Grassroots North Shore's supporters, no primary on February 20 will be needed. There are, however, some areas that will have primaries. Here's a list of the municipalities we know about right now:

• Milwaukee County Supervisor, District 18
• Mayor of Milwaukee
• Milwaukee Alderpersons in Districts 5, 7, and 11
• Shorewood School Board
• Trustee in the Village of Fox Point
• Ozaukee County Supervisor, District 7

We do not yet have all the information we'd like to provide, but the basic bones are accessible through our Elections 2024 page. If you check back on the Elections pages in a couple of weeks, we should have gathered links to candidates' social media pages so that you can be an informed voter. And by the way, the April 2 election is ALSO OUR PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCE PRIMARY. President Biden will be on that ballot and really needs your support. But since we hold a so-called "open primary" that allows you to vote in any party's primary, you can take your choice, depending how the state of the race looks. But beware: you can vote in only one party's primary.

Now that 2024 has begun, it's time to request your absentee ballots at MyVote.WI.gov. That site will offer you the chance to request absentee ballots for ALL THE ELECTIONS in 2024 and we recommend that you take advantage of the opportunity. Voting by mail (or turning in your absentee ballot in person at your clerk's office) is the most secure way to make sure you'll be able to vote. For example, voting absentee means that if you are unexpectedly out of town or under the weather on election day, your vote has already been cast! Problem solved.

Absentee ballots are typically mailed to you 21 days in advance of an election. As usual, you'll need a witness to certify that you are voting your own ballot. But you don't need to be quite as anxious about whether your witness correctly fills out their complete address on the certification envelope. Thanks to lawsuits pursued by the League of Women Voters and Rise, Inc., municipal clerks will once again be allowed to correct minor errors on the certification envelope. (I'll have a fuller explanation of what the court's opinion means below.)

At the very bottom of the Elections 2024 page, you will find the texts of three referendums that will amend the Wisconsin constitution if they are approved by the voters — two of them will appear on the April 2 ballot and the third on the November 5 ballot. We don't yet know the full import of them, but we will certainly have information about what they REALLY mean and a recommendation about whether you should vote to approve each one, or not. So stay tuned.

This year's municipal, judicial, and school board elections look to be much sleepier than the spring elections the last couple of years have been. Most incumbents who are running for re-election are unopposed. For two North Shore communities, there will presumably be write-in campaigns for the Nicolet and Whitefish Bay school boards. Just because these elections don't seem to present a lot of conflict, though, doesn't mean you can safely skip them. It's vital that people get in the habit of voting in every election, even if it means four elections a year, as it often does in Wisconsin. Our local elections and local office holders exert a lot of influence on how our communities function. And they also create the "bench" for candidates at state and national levels. This year, the spring election includes two proposals to amend our state constitution. For that reason alone, you need to VOTE.

As for the change in the way small errors on certification envelopes are handled, the issue seems like a pretty minor concern. But it's not. It may "fly under the radar," but it's one more way to suppress the vote. As Democracy Docket explains, "Wisconsin’s witness address requirement has been a source of confusion and disenfranchisement for years. Under Wisconsin law, when voting absentee, voters must fill out their absentee ballot alongside a witness. The witness must complete and sign a witness certificate that includes the witness’s address. If a witness address is missing, the ballot will not be counted." The court rulings were a major win for voting rights groups and "could prevent thousands of ballots from being unfairly rejected due to witness certificates with an incomplete address." The court order for the Rise, Inc. suit can be found here. The one for the Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is available here.

The biggest judicial news in Wisconsin lately has been the 4-3 ruling of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin that the current legislative district maps are unconstitutional and cannot be used in the fall 2024 elections for Assembly and state Senate. Because new maps have to be in place by early March, the December 22, 2023, decision specified a lickety-split timeline for the parties to submit remedial maps that comply with the technical specifications and data requirements identified by two expert consultants the Court hired for this purpose. The Court hoped that the legislature and the governor could agree on a map in the allotted time. Governor Evers, however, is "not expecting agreement with Republicans on new maps" (Wisconsin State Journal, January 5, 2024). And the proposed maps are due on January 12 (TODAY!). The next steps are as follows:

• January 22, 2024: Each party may file a response brief.
• January 22, 2024: Non-parties with previously granted permission may file a non-party amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief.
• February 1, 2024: the consultants, Dr. Grofman and Dr. Cervas, will evaluate and file a report on each of the parties' submissions based on the criteria identified in the Court's December 22, 2023 opinion. Only if no submission meets the criteria identified will the two consultants submit their own proposed remedial map.
• February 8, 2024: The parties and all amici who have been granted leave to participate may submit a response brief addressing the consultants' report.

Okay, so on to Trumpelthinskin's trials and tribulations just this past week. I'm sure you have seen, read, or heard about TFG's outburst in the closing arguments of the New York State fraud case yesterday. Judge Engoron shut him up after a few minutes of ranting, whereupon he stormed out of the courtroom. Here's the AP account of the court action. The fraud trial threatens to strip him of the right to do business in NY.

Far more serious were the oral arguments before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to determine whether a former president has absolute immunity from prosecution for acts he undertook while he was president. If you were not able to listen to the whole thing when it took place on Tuesday, January 9, you can listen to it here. George Conway, a highly respected conservative attorney and former husband of Kellyanne Conway, explains how Trump's argument fell apart under questioning from one of the judges. Here's a clip of Conway discussing it with Chris Hayes. The AP has a really helpful set of pages for tracking many of the cases against Dolt45.

Finally, 2023 was a really good year for union actions, especially the much covered strikes and then contract settlements at the big three auto makers. Let's keep the momentum going in 2024. The healthcare workers at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin have begun a union organizing drive. They are seeking people to sign the petition supporting their efforts. They have also set up a Facebook page for the effort. Share the links to the FB page and the petition widely to people who support unions!

We're heading toward the shortest day of the year — Thursday, December 21 — or the darkest day of the year, if your mind runs that way. Politically speaking, it's been pretty dark for a while. But on December 22, the days will start to grow longer and the nights shorter. In today's newsletter — the last one of 2023 — I'm going to be a bit of a pollyanna, seeing the glass half full, if you will. I hope you will indulge me.

I begin the upbeat with Mr. Optimism himself, Simon Rosenberg, in his recent Hopium Chronicles posting: Three Things I'm Thinking About As We Head Into 2024. He writes that three facts about 2023 buoy his outlook.

• The Strong Democratic Performance Since Dobbs - It’s The Most Important Electoral Data Out There Now
• The Remarkably Robust American Economy Gives Biden A Strong Foundation For His Re-Election
• Trump’s Historic Baggage Is Being Overly Discounted in Current Analysis About 2024

Rosenberg goes on to elaborate each point. On TFG's "Historic Baggage And Ongoing Betrayal of The Country Is Being Overly Discounted in Current Analysis," he points out that "The media is simply not spending enough time war-gaming out what Trump’s unprecedented, Olympian level of baggage will mean for him and the GOP next year. Recent polling suggests it could be a very big problem." He then lists 10 bullet points describing Adolf Twitler's execrable behavior. Rosenberg's post is well worth a read.

The judicial arena is particularly lively right now. So there's a lot to read and to know, starting with the decision of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Mark Meadow's case for removal from a state court in Fulton County, Georgia, to the federal court in the Northern District of Georgia. In a unanimous decision delivered only three days after the court heard oral arguments, the court denied the appeal. In doing so, the court relied on two key arguments. First, the statute in question "applies only to current government officials, not former ones like Meadows" (Politico, December 18, 2023). And second, "the panel of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit concluded that, even if Meadows were still in office, his argument would still fail because the state’s charges against Meadows are about an alleged criminal agreement to join a conspiracy, not about any actions Meadows took as Trump’s chief of staff."

At her highly respected blog, empty wheel, Marcy Wheeler points out that the ruling is as applicable to Boss Tweet as it is to Mark Meadows: "Meadows (and by extension, Trump) had no authority over state elections and electioneering of Meadows (and by extension, Trump) was not in their official duties." Many major news organizations covered the story: ABCNews, CBS News, and The Hill, to name a few.

Then, of course, there's the Rudy Guiliani humiliation. The defamation trial ended with a jury verdict specifying that Rudy pay Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss a cool $148 million (see Paul Waldman's take at the MSNBC website). Whereupon he held a press conference to repeat the lies: "Giuliani doubled down on the baseless conspiracy theory that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.... He also claimed that his allegations against the two election workers were 'supportable' but that he didn't have the opportunity to present the evidence at trial." (As Rachel Maddow might say: BULLPUCKY!) The two former Georgia election workers are suing again, this time asking that they be allowed to seek the jury award now, before Giuliani can try to hide his assets, and that Guiliani be prohibited from spouting lies about them in the future.

On the judicial front for our antihero, Kate Shaw has an important op-ed in today's New York Times (gifted): Trump Has Always Wanted to Be King. The Supreme Court Should Rid Him of That Delusion. Explaining why the question of presidential immunity is already in front of SCOTUS (as well as before the D.C. Circuit Court), Shaw writes: "To advance the Jan. 6 case against Mr. Trump, the special counsel Jack Smith wants to skip a step at the appellate court and have the Supreme Court rule on that critical question, since a ruling in Mr. Trump’s favor would end the case. A protracted delay could have the same effect, preventing the trial from happening before the election and allowing Mr. Trump to call off the prosecution if he wins." She goes on to explore the legal cases that have addressed this issue and have found the claim of presidential immunity wanting. "In 2020 a 7-to-2 majority in Trump v. Vance rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that he should not have to cooperate with a subpoena in a state criminal case. And the court was unanimous in rejecting Mr. Trump’s arguments for absolute immunity."

Here are some key dates to watch in the two cases for presidential immunity. SCOTUS has set the due date for TFG's response to special counsel Jack Smith's appeal for Wednesday, December 20 (like tomorrow!) Meanwhile the Appellate Court has set the following schedule:

• Dec. 23, 2023: Trump brief due
• Dec. 30, 2023: Smith brief due
• Jan. 2, 2024: Trump reply brief due
• Jan. 9, 2024: Oral arguments

Also, Judge Engoron isn't having what our Butternut Berlusconi is dishing. Not only does he deny TFG's motion to dismiss the NY state fraud trial, he lights into the so-called expert witness that was supposed to undercut the government's case: "Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron slammed Bartov in a Monday evening ruling denying the defendants’ latest request for a directed verdict in the $250 million case" (Daily Kos, December 19, 2023).

On the local scene, the League of Progressive Seniors held a compelling seminar on the "Threats to Your Vote in Wisconsin" last Friday. State Senator Chris Larson gave an insightful talk on the history of legislative action on voting rights in Wisconsin over the last decade. Claire Woodall, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Election Commission, followed up with an empirically-supported view of where the ease of voting in Wisconsin is now compared to where it was in the past. You can and should watch the video.

Farewell 2023. I'm going to be visiting family and friends on the east coast for the next two weeks. So the next newsletter won't appear until January 9, 2024. And hello 2024. The Events list is especially sparse right now. But it will not stay that way. Savor the next couple of quiet weeks, at least on the Grassroots North Shore front. And then suit up for action!

I wanted to send this newsletter out a bit early this week because there are a couple of campaign kickoffs on Tuesday evening you might not want to miss (see the Events list below). But an emergency meeting of a working group for the Politics, Elections, and Campaigns committee got in the way. Oh well. This week is full of legal and political issues that look forward to the next election. But before we dive in, I want to wish everyone the warmest of holiday cheer. We are in the middle of Chanukah and looking forward to Christmas and Kwanzaa right around the corner, followed swiftly by New Year's Eve and Day. A busy time, and I hope some respite from angst and anger.

In the comeuppance division, Rudy G's trial for defamation began Monday. It's a jury trial but the main judgment — that he defamed Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss — has already been decided. Why? Because that great lawyer and statesman Giuliani repeatedly refused to obey the court's orders to produce evidence in the case and to turn it over to the plaintiffs. So the judge just declared judgment: Rudy is guilty of defamation! No doubt this case determining the amount RG must pay will be covered on the news. In their opening statement, "attorneys for Freeman and Moss played recordings of some of the messages for the jury in U.S. District Court in D.C., where Giuliani could be held liable for up to $43.5 million in damages" (Washington Post, December 11, 2023, gifted to get you through the paywall). The threats were of course racist and frightening.

Meanwhile, Dolt 45 once again shows that underneath all the bluster and bullying, he is a coward afraid to take the stand in his own defense in the NY State fraud trial. Alina Habba, one of his many defense lawyers, told the press last Thursday, "her boss 'doesn’t cower' and looked forward to testifying once again in his own defense" (Vanity Fair, December 11, 2023). And at his Saturday rally, TFG told yet another of his bizarre stories in which he claimed some unnamed but "fantastic" general once told him that debating Hillary Clinton after the Access Hollywood tape came out was more courageous than fighting a war. The author of the piece, Eric Lutz, writes, "If Trump is perhaps 'cowering' now, it may be because his last appearance on the witness stand didn’t go so well." In short, that first stint on the stand was a temper-tantrum. Lutz wryly notes that "there is a difference between making unchallenged statements outside the courtroom and making them on the witness stand, under oath."

A special election to replace expelled Representative George Santos will take place on February 13. The Democrats have already rallied behind the man who formerly held the seat — Tom Suozzi. (You can see his Ballotpedia page and his campaign website.) According to TPM, one potential opponent will be "Philip Sean Grillo, a 49-year-old man from Queens who ... filed the paperwork to run for office in New York’s 3rd Congressional District." Grillo, it turns out, participated in the January 6 Insurrection! He "was found guilty of 'felony obstruction of an official proceeding and other charges related to his conduct during the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol,' the Department of Justice announced in a news release this week.” A convicted felon to replace the soon-to-be  convicted felon who was just expelled? Why not.

Special counsel Jack Smith is making tracks. "The special counsel urged the justices to move with exceptional speed, and they quickly agreed to fast-track the first phase of the case, says Monday's New York Times (gifted). Smith filed the appeal Monday afternoon; the US Supreme Court granted at least the first part of his request, namely that they "put their consideration of whether to hear the case on a fast track." Benedict Donald's lawyers have until December 20 to file their response. At the same time, Smith's "team filed papers to Judge Chutkin asking her to keep the March 4 trial date and saying she could still work on certain aspects of the case even as the appeal was being heard." Every day we hear news about this criminal trial and every day our anxiety deepens. But Smith and company are on it.

On the home front, despite the fact that Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Robert Spindell together with the other nine fake GOP electors settled the civil suit against them and agreed that Joe Biden won the election here, Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu "rejected Democrats' calls to rescind [Spindell's] appointment to the state elections commission" (AP post in Daily Kos). LeMahieu's excuse? The imposters were simply following a "legal strategy" that failed. They definitely were NOT part of a "a sinister plot to overturn an election.” If you believe that crap, Devin LeMahieu no doubt has a bridge he wants to sell you.

Even though it's December and we're barreling towards the most intense holiday season of the year, we have to plan past January 1. So ...

Let's Take Action

• If you live in Milwaukee County, you would be doing a mitzvah (that is, a marvelous thing, a blessing) if you dropped by the Milwaukee County Democratic Party's office (2999 S Delaware Ave, Milwaukee) any time between 3:00 and 7:00pm on Wednesday, December 13. You can then sign nomination papers for both county and (if you reside there) and city candidates. Campaigns have only until January 2nd to collect and submit the necessary signatures to get on the ballot, so the sooner the signatures are collected, the better.
  
  
• Donate items to the Democrats "Christmas is for Kids Holiday Toy Drive." The Dems are collecting new, unwrapped toys for kids of all ages plus donations of new towels and washcloths, children's socks, child and adult sized t-shirts, and travel sized toiletries. This drive is for the benefit of St. Ann Center for Intergenerational Care Bucyrus Campus and Mr. Bob's Under the Bridge Homeless Outreach. Donations can be dropped off at the Milwaukee Democratic Party Office (2999 South Delaware Ave, Milwaukee) Monday through Wednesday from 10:00am - 2:00pm (or during the Open House and nomination-paper signing from 3:00-7:00 on Wednesday, December 13) and on Thursday from 9:00am - 12:00pm. Items can also be dropped off at the Coordinated Campaign Office (8405 W Lisbon Ave, Milwaukee) Tuesday through Friday from 12:00pm through 8:00pm and Saturday from 9:00am - 5:00pm.
  
  
• Activate America has a new postcard writing opportunity focused on the special election for former Representative Santo's House seat taking place on Tuesday, February 13. The Democrat running for the seat is Tom Suozzi, who held the seat for 6 years before he left to run for governor. Activate America will be alerting voters to this “pop-up” election and boosting name recognition for this highly qualified candidate. To volunteer for this postcard campaign, just sign up HERE.

Other postcard campaigns at Activate America are also described on the sign-up page. But keep in mind that Grassroots North Shore will be working on a postcard campaign that will launch in January, 4-5 weeks ahead of the February 20, 2024, primary. We'll be soliciting your help too!