Huge Wisconsin race...Chicago mayor...Live Trump coverage tonight...
The history-making spectacle of a former president in custody is hard to top in importance, but the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin later tonight might just do it, as it could decide everything from abortion rights in the state to future control of the House to the 2024 presidential election.
I’ll be on air live tonight for a few hours starting at 7:30 p.m. on the Breaking Points network with Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti, and Emily Jashinsky, which you can catch here. We’ll roll Trump’s speech, react to it, and also talk about the elections tonight in Wisconsin and Chicago.
Conservatives currently hold a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin state Supreme Court. In 2020, one of those judges sided with the three liberals to narrowly toss out Trump’s challenge to the presidential election results in Wisconsin. Had the court sided with Trump, the fight over the transfer of power would have been dramatically different.
Despite Wisconsin being a 50-50 state, the state-sanctioned gerrymander means that Republicans have near-super majorities in the state legislature, even as Democrats hold the governor’s mansion. Of the eight congressional representatives, six of them (!) are Republicans. Given the way the lines are drawn, Democrats would need to win an election by something like 10 points to have even a shot at winning power. A new Supreme Court could change that.
Wisconsin also has an 1840 law on the books that bans abortion in almost all cases. Whether the law is valid is a question that’s winding its way through the courts, but while it is, abortion is effectively banned in the state. Janet Protasiewicz, a progressive Milwaukee County judge, has made abortion rights a key element of her campaign, while her opponent, former Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, has virtually ignored it. It’s a reflection of how each party views the politics of abortion: Now that they’ve won, it’s a huge liability for Republicans. If this report from one precinct in Wisconsin from Sam Levine, my old HuffPost colleague, is indicative of a broader trend, abortion will be crucial in the minds of voters and Democrats have a real shot at flipping the court. At the same time, Republicans have been hopeful that the prosecution of Trump will drive GOP voters to the polls in frustration. Polls close at 9 p.m. eastern time.
The other big election, where polls close at 8 p.m. eastern time, is in Chicago, where progressive Brandon Johnson faces eccentric conservative Paul Vallas, who has made most of his career in the education reform space. He’s running with the support of the police union, promising a tough-on-crime approach; Johnson has also talked extensively on public safety, but urges an education over incarceration approach. Johnson is a middle school teacher who rose up as an organizer with the teachers union, and now serves in the city council. It’s the most serious attempt to take on the Chicago machine since Harold Washington in the early 1980s beat back the same forces. Johnson is relying on a tenuous coalition of working class Black voters and a progressive movement that is coded – somewhat but not entirely unfairly – as heavily white. Linking those two distinct but sometimes overlapping forces is essential to building a progressive coalition that can dominate inside the Democratic Party (good article on that dynamic in the race here). The Working Families Party has made inroads in Chicago, through the surging growth of its affiliate, United Working Families, which is on track to grow its presence on the council. Polls have the mayoral race extremely close.
Hope to see you tonight.