Republicans in Florida’s GOP-dominated state legislature are using the next legislative session that starts March 7 to do their Republican governor’s 2024 bidding on a number of fronts.

State lawmakers plan to propose a bunch of bills that will not only further DeSantis’ ongoing “anti-woke” agenda, but also score him the kind of headlines he needs to continue pulling Trump supporters into his corner ahead of a 2024 campaign launch, which is expected to happen once the state legislature wraps up this new legislative session in May. DeSantis has remained rather coy about the timing of the whole thing, telling “Fox and Friends” last month that he’ll make up his mind about a bid after the session ends. It’s all pretty convenient.

The degree to which the legislature is beholden to DeSantis’ political objectives was apparent several times in the last year, as it passed bills that attack “wokeness” and diversity and voting rights and Florida’s LGBTQ community. The bills sparked outrage, and DeSantis made the kinds of national headlines he can use to cast himself as a suitably aggressive successor to Trump. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Shortly after announcing he will sign a drag show banning bill Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is confronted with a high school picture showing him dressed as a woman. A snippy Lee called the comparison “ridiculous.” (I’d say it’s a silly gotcha. But when you do silly and malicious things that’s totally okay.)

The Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers has a study out today providing data on women in state legislatures in 2023. There are a number of interesting data sets and charts. But the one that got my attention is the list of top ten and bottom ten states by female representation in state legislatures. The states on the lists are about what you would expect. The top ten states are blue states and the bottom ten are thoroughly red. The only real exception is Arizona — number three on the top ten — which may be trending blue but can’t really be called a blue state yet. The bottom ten aren’t just red. They’re overwhelmingly in the South and Deep South — Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana. The spread is also eye-popping. The most female representation was 60.3%. The lowest was West Virginia at 11.9%.

But what jumped out at me was the number one state in the top ten: Nevada.

Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority expressed great skepticism at the Biden White House’s debt-relief plan yesterday. What we should note, however, is how the press and opinion-setting conventional wisdom has reacted to that fact. Every reaction I’ve seen sees it as the White House failing, the White House getting its collective knuckles rapped, basically an attempt and a failure. The White House is in a lot of ways complicit in this state of affairs and that traces back to an abiding set of assumptions, ingrained almost beneath the level of conscious thought, that the Court is a legitimate rule-enforcing body which is owed respect and deference and shouldn’t be pulled into the political fray.

That’s a mistake.