Josh Kovensky looks at the “day one” executive orders ex-President Trump is planning if he returns to the White House.

It’s not unexpected. In many ways it was inevitable after Republicans (technically the races are non-partisan) lost their state Supreme Court majority with the election of Janet Protasiewicz back in April. But it’s still a very big deal. The Wisconsin state Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s GOP gerrymander is unconstitutional and ordered the legislature to draw new maps for the 2024 general election. If the current gerrymandered legislature can’t agree on a plan with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, the court said it’s prepared to create its own.

The Court deciding to slow roll Trump’s appeal when it often happily fast rolls topics it’s eager to make law on speaks for itself. It’s also important to remember that the arguments themselves, by any standard of existing legal understanding, are wholly specious. It’s been DOJ policy and conventional understanding for half a century that a sitting president cannot face criminal charges. The president isn’t above the law, the argument goes, but for a mix of practical and separation-of-powers reasons, charges have to wait for after the president leaves office. Trump is arguing that a president can’t ever be charged with a crime. Call it neo-Nixonian reasoning: If the president does it, it can’t be a crime. He’s further arguing, among other things, that if you get acquitted at your impeachment trial you have legal immunity for those acts going forward.

Justice delayed is justice denied. The American republic is waiting for justice. There’s no rationale for this decision other than assisting Trump’s strategy of delay which he hopes, and which may, allow him to end the whole prosecution if he wins the 2024 election.

I very much doubt a majority on the Court has the stomach to actually entertain these arguments. But giving Trump an assist on the calendar? Sure. Absolutely.

We’ve been around the block many times on this question of why Joe Biden is unpopular, whether he’s a weak candidate, whether some other Democrat should replace him, etc. My general take has been that we should be clear with ourselves that it is basically an academic point because Biden will be the nominee. Recently, one of the numbers analysts I follow on Twitter, Lakshya Jain, pointed me to the actual poll data showing that none of the apparently attractive national Democratic possibilities do any better than Biden. Indeed, he seems to do a bit better, if not by a huge amount.