The term “constitutional crisis” gets used a lot these days. By a very fair definition we’ve been in one since January. A more apt and consequential meaning, however, is a crisis in which the legitimacy and continuation of the state rests in the balance or whether it fragments and degenerates into civil war, military rule or state disintegration. Today President Trump proposed something that, to my view, for the first time provides a path to such a crisis.

We’ve got more from Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), the avatar of post-law Washington DC, where they let you do it if you’re a Republican.

Remember all the way back in February DC police were called to Mills’ apartment over an alleged assault of a woman who was not his wife. (Mills’ wife lives back in his home district. She’s a kind of Schrodinger’s Wife, but we’ll get back to that.) Subsequent news confirmed that the woman was Mills’ DC girlfriend, and when we last checked in on this story a couple weeks ago she still appeared to be his girlfriend, notwithstanding the alleged assault. (She soon recanted her accusation after the incident.) DC law being under the management of Jan. 6 attorney Ed Martin at the time meant Mills skated on that incident, though there was some question of whether the DC police might also have botched the initial arrest and investigation in ways that might have made prosecution difficult even if Republicans were still required to follow the law in DC.

Then three weeks ago we learned that Mills was in the process of being evicted from his $21,000-a-month DC apartment, which he appeared to stop paying rent on right after the alleged assault.

We are now almost to $430,000 ($428,583)! The momentum builds! Can we get to $440,000 by the end of the day? Click here!!!!!!!

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I wanted to flag for you what I think is an important shift in the assumptions and behaviors of key institutionalist or middle-of-the-road Democrats. Here I don’t mean ideology so much as behavior, the critical spectrum between fight and norms.

Four days ago, Chuck Schumer or, most likely, someone on his social media team, posted a screen shot of an AP headline that read “Senate heads home with no deal to speed confirmations as irate Trump tells Schumer to ‘go to hell.'”