We begin today’s roundup with John Nichols at The Nation who details the assault on democracy taking place in Wisconsin after Democrats swept elections there:
The changes that they propose to enact this week, in a rushed lame-duck session of the legislature, are dramatic and dangerous. They have drawn loud protests from newspapers that usually back Republicans, good-government groups, and citizens who have rallied at the state Capitol. The newly elected governor of Wisconsin, Democrat Tony Evers, calls the scheme to take key policy making and appointment powers away from him and from newly elected Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul “another embarrassment for Wisconsin”—a historically progressive state that has seen its reputation badly damaged by the constant maneuvering of Walker and his fellow Republicans to undermine voting rights and consolidate power.
Here’s analysis by Dan Kaufman in The New York Times:
No one is really bothering to hide the purpose of this lame duck legislation: to continue the Republicans’ hold on state government, even at the expense of core democratic principles like respect for the separation of powers and majority rule. The legislation would nullify the decision-making of Wisconsin’s voters, who rejected Republicans for every statewide office in the November midterms.
The lame duck legislation would, for example, prevent Mr. Evers from fulfilling a campaign promise to take Wisconsin out of a multistate lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act. It will also diminish the governor’s control over the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, a scandal-ridden public-private agency created by Mr. Walker to foster job creation, by giving the legislature an equal number of appointees to the board as the governor and revoking the governor’s power to appoint the board’s chief executive.
Colby Itkowitz and Felicia Sonmez at The Fix point out that it’s not just in Wisconsin where Republicans are exerting revenge on Democratic winners:
In Michigan, where Democrats last month won the governor’s mansion as well as the races for attorney general and secretary of state, Republican lawmakers last week introduced measures that would water down the authority of those positions on campaign finance oversight and other legal matters. All three statewide winners are women, as one Detroit Free Press columnist pointed out.
Switching topics to Mueller’s investigation, at USA Today, Peter Zeidenberg lays out how Mueller appears to building a conspiracy case:
Defenders of the president have, despite the obvious progress of the Mueller investigation — more than 30 indictments or guilty pleas, including Trump’s campaign chairman, personal lawyer, national security adviser, deputy campaign manager and foreign policy adviser — consistently argued that “no collusion” has been proved. While it is true that the charges made public have not alleged conspiracy (there is no crime of “collusion”) it should be clear to all but the most obtuse by now that the endgame is drawing near. Mueller is laying out the predicate for a wide-ranging conspiracy case that will likely ensnare the president’s family and, quite likely, Trump himself.
On a final note, Deanna Paul at The Washington Post rounds up the experts to explain how Donald Trump’s latest tweets appear to violate the law:
Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that the most striking thing about Monday was that there were two statements in proximity.
“It comes very close to the statutory definition of witness tampering,” he said. “It’s a mirror image of the first tweet, only he’s praising a witness for not cooperating with the implication of reward,” he said, adding that Trump has pardon power over Stone.
“We’re so used to President Trump transgressing norms in his public declarations,” Eisen said, “but he may have crossed the legal line.”