'What’s happening today in Manhattan’s criminal court is important. Holding a former president accountable to the rule of law is essential. But what’s happening today in Wisconsin may prove as, if not more, important to the future of American democracy.'
One of the biggest challenges to the future of American democracy is unfolding today, but not in Manhattan. It’s occurring in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is a key swing state in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Its Supreme Court and legislature could be critical to the outcome. The Republican candidate for that seat, Dan Knodl, has suggested he might try to do so if he doesn’t like who’s elected to the court. Another way Trump could have won in 2020 was if the outcome of the election had been determined by Republican-controlled state legislatures in Wisconsin and other swing states — as Trump and many Republican members of Congress sought. Yet another reason today’s Wisconsin races are so important.Friends, this is how authoritarian minorities steal governments from democratic majorities: They do it step by step. They design voting districts to freeze out a majority of voters.
To satisfy the public’s seemingly insatiable craving for Trump entertainment, the media is filling the void with Trump swag: wall-to-wall “special coverage,” on-the-spot correspondents, panels of pundits, interviews with current and past Trump lawyers and former prosecutors, opinion polls, interviews with “average” Trump supporters, and mindless chatter about Trump’s moods .
Wisconsin is the most gerrymandered state in the nation. Although voters in the state divide almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans, Republicans hold 63 out of 99 seats in the state Assembly and 21 of 33 seats in the state Senate.to leave partisan gerrymandering cases to state courts.