Like clockwork, President Trump on Wednesday sparked a new controversy centered on his shirking of democratic norms. This time, it was Trump refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses the November election.

Among the various ways the Trump administration is seeking to bend and rework the rules of government this year is a policy, announced by the President in July, to exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment count.

This has been a long-time goal for some on the political right. But what would the policy mean in practice?

Our design team has a snazzy new graphic explaining the Trump policy and its potential impact:

In the midst of the orchestrated mayhem of the moment it is important to step back from the chaos and take stock of what has happened in recent weeks. Yesterday the President again refused to commit to leaving office peacefully if he loses the election. It was credibly reported that the President’s advisors are laying the groundwork and lobbying state legislators to press friendly state legislatures to reject the vote counts in their states and declare President Trump the winner. President Trump meanwhile says a ninth Justice must be on the Court to decide the outcome of the election. In his threats to reject the results of the election at yesterday’s press conference President Trump said he might concede the results of the election if they “get rid of the ballots”, by which he seemed to me end voting by mail.

The notional justification for all these wild claims and threats, almost entirely unprecedented in American history, is the false claim of voter fraud and the more general specter of election chaos – delays, missing ballots, interminable legal disputes, insoluble legal questions that leave the decision in the hands of the Supreme Court or grants some spurious rationale for overruling a botched election.

California will outlaw the sales of all new gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks by 2035.

GOP is now claiming Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) made it too easy to vote.

Allies of the president have been murmuring ominously about potential October surprises all year. There’s the Durham investigation, Giuliani’s conspiracy theories, and Senator Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) investigation into Ukraine-related Biden allegations, to name a few.

We got the results of that last one this morning. But, alas! There is no surprise.

As I’ve mentioned a number of times, beyond our ordinary tasks of government, I think an audit of the executive branch is critical after President Trump leaves office. But in these perilous final weeks before the 2020 election we can see another pressing need spotlighted by a lawless President but not created by him: the scaffolding of the US government, the state, the Republic itself, simply isn’t up to code. Like an old house that long predates all the codes and regulations that are mandatory in new structures it’s held up well enough and it simply makes no sense to force a renovation. But in a storm all those problems come to the surface. And in the aftermath of damage you wouldn’t rebuild it in the old way.

There was never any real doubt that Republicans would move swiftly to fill the seat of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And now a number of key Republican senators have come out to endorse Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) effort to do so. Whether a vote will happen before or after Election Day remains something of an open question, but once McConnell has the votes he will say “go.”

As you’ve seen me argue, Democrats must add either two or four seats to the Supreme Court if Republicans proceed with another corrupt Court appointment and Democrats win the presidency and the senate. There may be other remedies I haven’t thought of. There may be better ones. But I’m certain we are at the point where a real, practical and credible remedy is essential. With that in mind I wanted to make a point about general principles.

Over the weekend I had a specific granular COVID-safety related question that I wanted an answer to to guide our family’s safety protocols. It was a weird response to observe in myself that I routinely disregarded information from the CDC and the FDA as I searched for information on Google. Today we have another good example of why they’ve lost credibility.