What you missed when Trump was indicted
Trump’s historic indictment was obviously the main story in Washington this week, and we’ll get to that and its implications below. But the wall-to-wall coverage on cable news and in beltway publications may have obscured a number of other consequential developments — many at the state level.
Let’s start with the campaigns.
In Chicago, former teachers’ union organizer Brandon Johnson beat Paul Vallas in the city’s mayoral runoff, marking a victory for progressives over moderate Democrats.
In Wisconsin, Democratic-backed Judge Janet Protasiewicz won a state Supreme Court seat — giving liberals their first majority on the court in 15 years ahead of potential fights on abortion, congressional redistricting and election administration. But what Wisconites giveth, some also taketh away: Republicans won a suburban Milwaukee special state Senate election, which scored them a super majority that the Associated Press reported could be used to impeach statewide Democratic-elected officeholders.
In North Carolina, state House Republicans didn’t even need an election to secure a super majority after Democratic state Rep. Tricia Cotham — who won her blue district by 20 points last fall — joined the Republican Party. Her move gave the GOP the votes in both chambers to override any veto by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
And then there’s Tennessee. The state’s Republican-dominated House expelled two Black freshman lawmakers, while sparing a third legislator who is white, in response to the three Democrats’ gun safety protest on the chamber’s floor last week following the Nashville mass school shooting. That prompted a statement from Biden condemning the actions as “shocking” and “undemocratic” after Tennessee Republicans likened the Democrats’ protest to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Elsewhere, Republican legislators advanced efforts to restrict services to and acceptance of transgender people — a key piece of their cultural campaign ahead of next year’s elections. The governors of Indiana and Idaho signed legislation banning gender-affirming care for young people, and the Kansas Legislature overturned Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of legislation to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports in school.
Amid all of this, the Biden administration proposed a rule that would bar U.S. schools and colleges from banning participation by transgender athletes under Title IX but allow teams to create some limits in certain cases. The latter part prompted concerns by advocates for transgender athletes that the rules do not go far enough. But those advocates did get a bit of a reprieve when the Supreme Court declined to immediately reinstate a 2021 West Virginia law that barred transgender athletes from playing on female sports teams from middle school through college.
On abortion rights, Florida Republicans are pushing, as soon as this week, to approve legislation that would ban most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a politically risky move for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who’s expected to announce a presidential bid later this year. Meanwhile, Idaho became the first state to restrict interstate travel for abortions. On the other hand, things went the other way in Michigan, where Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill to repeal her state’s 1931 abortion ban.
And on guns, DeSantis signed into law legislation that would make Florida the 26th state in the country to allow for the permitless carrying of firearms, marking yet another state-level policy victory for the GOP.
When it comes to international relations, Trump’s week in the spotlight also overshadowed McCarthy’s major bipartisan summit with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in California, which coincided with a visit to the island by a bipartisan congressional delegation led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas). McCarthy’s summit earned him rare praise by his predecessor and critic, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and it reportedly left the Taiwanese thinking the current speaker may soon visit the island, after all.
The Biden administration is also grappling with a newly announced oil production reduction by OPEC+, whose impact on Americans Biden has downplayed, and used a week focused on everything else to reveal a 12-page summary of an internal report detailing its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan (it laid the blame largely on Trump).
And finally, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was the subject of a major ProPublica investigation that detailed his cozy relationship with a Republican donor that included unreported lavish travel and trips. That has renewed calls on Capitol Hill for stronger ethics rules for Supreme Court justices.
Trump’s indictment and 2024
After weeks of suspense, Trump was finally charged.
Last week, he became the first former or sitting president to face criminal charges, with 34 felony counts by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accusing him of conspiring to undermine the 2016 election by paying hush money in order to silence claims of extramarital affairs that could have been harmful to his presidential candidacy. He pleaded not guilty, kicking off a case with provisions Trump’s lawyers will try to exploit and a process that will likely take several months to resolve — potentially into the heat of the 2024 GOP nominating process.
For now, Trump has held onto support from the party’s expected electorate. After weeks of coverage of the potential charges, Trump began the week with support from 55% of potential Republican primary voters, up 3 percentage points from last Wednesday, the day before news broke that a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict him. (Check back this week for our next update to our 2024 GOP primary tracker.)
After being arraigned on Tuesday, Trump gave a speech at Mar-a-Lago where he attacked the judge overseeing the case and his family after he urged Trump to “refrain from making statements that are likely to incite violence or civil unrest.” Judge Juan Merchan, his family and the Manhattan court have since received numerous threats, NBC News reported.
Trump also used the “D” word that his party previously leveraged successfully to make Democrats look weak on law enforcement, calling on congressional Republicans to “defund” the Justice Department and the FBI. Senate Republicans such as Lindsey Graham (S.C) and Susan Collins (Maine), the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, panned the suggestion.
In his Mar-a-Lago speech, Trump also lit into other ongoing criminal investigations against him, particularly special counsel Jack Smith’s probe, which continues to heat up.
Smith’s investigators are said to have uncovered new evidence pointing to possible obstruction by the former president after obtaining emails and text messages from a former Trump aide, according to the Washington Post. And, a spokesman for former Vice President Mike Pence said he will not appeal a judge’s ruling ordering him to testify before a grand jury probing efforts to overturn the 2020 election, setting up an appearance by the potential Republican presidential contender as soon as this month.
Trump is getting some help from Capitol Hill. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) announced their endorsements of him, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) subpoenaed New York County Special Assistant District Attorney Mark Pomerantz as part of his probe into investigations into Trump. (Jordan has also left open the door to subpoenaing Bragg.)
Amid this criminal scrutiny, DeSantis, Trump’s closest-polling potential challenger, picked up a new endorsement from conservative Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who became the second House Republican to back his bid after Texas Rep. Chip Roy’s (R) formal backing late last month. Trump also got a new challenger in former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who announced that he will run for the GOP’s 2024 nod and urged Trump to drop out of the race due to his New York indictment.
The Trump drama is also giving Biden cover, as he continues to delay his own 2024 announcement. Axios reported that the sitting president may not announce his re-election plans until as late as July — a move his allies and advisers think would allow him to contrast his incumbency with Trump-related chaos in the Republican Party.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist who is former President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, joined self-help author Marianne Williamson in launching a long-shot bid for the Democratic nomination for president, reportedly at the urging of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Bannon is said to see Kennedy as able to inject chaos in the Democratic contest and stoke anti-vaccine sentiment more broadly with his 2024 bid.
