Tomorrow is Independence Day in the US, as well as election day in the UK.

A brief note here, about current activity in prediction markets. PredictIt has a contract on who the 2024 Democratic nominee will be, which pays out $1.00 if you’re right and zero if you’re not, and hence can be viewed as a market-based probability assessment. Through the last three months, the Biden contract had traded steadily in the $0.81 to $0.89 range, on fairly light volume.

Ever since the debate, volume on that contract has ticked up significantly, and Biden’s value has been declining. Twenty-four hours ago, the Biden contract was at $0.63. Twelve hours ago, it was at $0.44. An hour ago, it was $0.41. Right now, it’s down to $0.28. The Harris contract started trading level with the Biden contract for the first time several hours ago, and right now it is up to $0.57.

A new CNN poll has Trump ahead of Biden 49-43, but Trump ahead of Harris by a narrower margin, 47-45. The poll also said that 75% of registered voters believe the Democrats’ chances would be improved by taking Biden off the ticket.

Yesterday SCOTUS released its opinions in Trump v. U.S., the presidential immunity case. Here is how the Court’s website succinctly describes its holding, in a 6-3 decision falling squarely along party lines:

“The nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority; he is also entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts; there is no immunity for unofficial acts.“

A rather startling outcome, and one that produced the relatively rare wording “I dissent”, rather than the usual “I respectfully dissent”, from the liberals. Sotomayor went further with her rhetoric, ending her opinion with the following sentence: “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

The paradigm advanced by Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion, per this layman’s reading, is as follows. If the government seeks to prosecute an ex-President for actions taken in office, then there first needs to be an analysis performed of how those actions fall into three different buckets: official acts having absolute immunity (for which no prosecution is possible), unofficial acts (for which there is no impediment to prosecution), and official acts having presumptive immunity. In order to pursue a prosecution with respect to an act falling within that latter category, the government bears the “burden to rebut the presumption of immunity” by “show[ing] that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no ‘dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch'” (the quotations are from Roberts’ opinion; the internal quotation is from the Court’s 1982 opinion in Fitzgerald v. Nixon, the previous case law on presidential immunity in a civil rather than criminal context). Moreover, “[q]uestions about whether the President may be held liable for particular actions, consistent with the separation of powers, must be addressed at the outset of a proceeding,” which I believe means that if a trial court were to rule that a prosecution could move forward, that decision would be subject to interlocutory appeal before the trial could proceed.

With this decision, the U.S. v. Trump Jan 6th case will soon be returned to Judge Chutkan; but even in a world where Trump does not win re-election and order the prosecution’s end, a trial in that case now seems years away. What seems likely to happen later this summer is some form of evidentiary hearing, under which the tripartite analysis described above is performed. However, whatever ruling Chutkan makes would likely be appealed to the D.C. Circuit, and ultimately SCOTUS, before a trial could be conducted. And some of the conduct described in the original indictment, such as Trump’s efforts to install Jeffrey Clark as Acting Attorney General, are not only the type of official acts that are non-prosecutable but also, per Roberts’ opinion, cannot be introduced as evidence in a prosecution of other acts. Other conduct, such as Trump’s conversations with Vice President Pence about Pence’s role in counting electoral votes, lies in the gray area and may eventually come back to SCOTUS for final resolution, but in the normal course of events (i.e., after briefing, determination by a trial court, and appellate review).

This decision will surely have implications for the U.S. v. Trump documents case under Judge Cannon, although that case has already been moving at a glacial pace. Cannon will likely be very interested in Justice Thomas’ solo concurrence in Trump v. U.S., in which Thomas urges lower courts to seriously engage with the argument that Special Counsel Smith lacks the legal authority to prosecute anyone. As such, one can easily imagine that issue making its way to SCOTUS in the normal course of events, before either U.S. v. Trump case can go to trial.

And although we’ve already had our verdict in New York v. Trump, this SCOTUS decision will seemingly have an impact on that case as well. Yesterday Trump’s attorneys filed a motion to have the verdict set aside. Today Judge Merchan set deadline for both sides’ briefings on that motion and set a date of September 6th for his ruling; in conjunction with that, he delayed sentencing from July 11th to September 18th (if necessary). My intuition is that ultimately the SCOTUS ruling will not have any impact on the New York conviction, but we shall see.

Looking beyond the impact of Trump v. U.S. on Trump’s current legal woes, the Court’s decision has significant implications as to what mechanisms exist to mitigate Presidential behavior. To the extent certain actions lie within the exclusive domain of the executive branch, under Trump v. U.S. the President is immune from future prosecutions for those actions, and as such impeachment becomes the only punitive mechanism available. Roberts’ logic as to this being how our constitutional system was intended to operate is, if not unassailable, at least very compelling. The problem in practice is that the founders did not anticipate the extent to which Congress and the President would become politically co-dependent, making a successful impeachment extremely difficult if not impossible. With yesterday’s decision, it becomes even more vital to keep would-be bad actors out of the White House in the first instance, which is really what the election of 2024 is about.

In other news, we have a headline from Politico today that reads “Democrats begin attacking Biden’s performance and campaign,” with at least one sitting Democratic congressman (Doggett, a 77-year-old from the Texas 37th, a safe blue seat in Austin) openly calling for Biden to drop out. Tim Ryan, a former Democratic congressman who made an early exit from the 2020 presidential primary (endorsing Biden) and then lost the Ohio Senate election to J.D. Vance in 2022, published an op-ed in Newsweek calling for Harris to be the nominee.

Oh, boy.

Perhaps the best way to summarize Thursday’s first presidential debate is this: Within 24 hours, the New York Times’ editorial board had published an op-ed urging Biden to drop out of the race as soon as possible, to give the Democrats ample time to nominate somebody else.

I watched the first 20 minutes of the debate, before turning over to the Olympic track & field trials in disgust. In what I heard, Trump was coherent and controlled, albeit incredibly mendacious; whereas Biden was occasionally incoherent and nothing like the statesman who had made forceful addresses at this year’s State of the Union and the 80th anniversary of D-Day. It is hard to imagine that Biden’s lethargic performance swayed many votes in his direction, and easy to imagine that it would cause voters to be more sympathetic to Trump.

At the same time, one should not lose sight of the vast number of lies that Trump managed to tell in a 90-minute debate. After the debate Biden said “it’s hard to debate a liar,” which is true. But honestly, I went to bed that night saddened about how far our politics have fallen, that we’re left to choose between a convicted felon who lies continuously and behind whom a once-great political party has completely fallen in line, and a once-great leader whose best days are clearly behind him.

Unless, that is, Biden can be convinced to fall on his sword and withdraw. We’re now 48 hours out from the debate and there’s no real sign as of yet that Biden is seriously considering this. One can hope for a July surprise.

The next morning, SCOTUS did not release its decision in Trump v. U.S., but did announce that Monday will be the final day of the current term, so we should have clarity on the outcome of that case very soon. The Court did release a 5-4 opinion in Fischer v. U.S. that may have some implications for the U.S. v. Trump Jan 6th case, as the decision narrowed the scope of a clause originally found within the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that was used by prosecutors in many of the actions taken against Jan 6th defendants.

We’re now only 5 days away from the UK elections, which are increasingly looking like they just might be to British politics what 1993 was to Canadian politics: the decimation of the mainstream right-of-centre party to the benefit of a further right upstart, all in the context of a landslide win for the main left-of-centre party. Per the Economist, Labour is almost certain to win a majority, and there is some doubt as to who the second-largest party would be, as polling suggests that the Conservatives and the new Reform UK party (hmmm, that name sounds familiar…) are neck-and-neck. The Economist’s current median forecast is for Reform to win only 2 seats versus 106 for the Conservatives; however, Reform’s range of outcomes is 0 – 97, while the Conservatives’ range of outcomes is 27 – 202. Some similar dynamics are at play north of Hadrian’s wall, but between the Scottish National Party (median 23, range 0 – 54) and the Liberal Democrats (median 48, range 17 – 90).

With the first debate happening later today, I decided it was about time to return to the naming format that I had used with my “Election 2020” posts, using a day count for the subtitle instead of something topical.

Honestly, as a sports fan it has been a difficult week to pay attention to politics. We had a magnificent Stanley Cup Final Game 7 on Monday, with the Oilers failing to break the now-31-year Canadian curse; in global football, both the European Championship and an expanded Copa America (being played in the U.S. with some CONCACAF teams joining the CONMEBOL regulars) are ongoing; the NBA draft was last night, continuing today; the NHL draft is tomorrow night, continuing the day after; and various U.S. Olympic Trials are in flight: those for swimming & diving recently ended in Indianapolis and Knoxville, those for track & field are ongoing in Eugene, and those for gymnastics are getting underway here in Minneapolis.

There were further Congressional primaries this Tuesday, and while the Good-McGuire race in Virginia from the previous week remains too close to call, this week an incumbent was scalped in an even more expensive primary race. However, this time it was on the Democratic side of the aisle, as one of the most radical left House members was successfully primaried to his right, reflecting the fact that redistricting had recently added portions of Westchester County to what was previously a Bronx-heavy seat. George Latimer beat the incumbent, Jamaal Bowman, 59-41 in what has been called the most expensive primary ever; Bowman’s pro-Palestinian views brought a lot of pro-Israel PAC money into the election. In other primary news, controversial Republican Lauren Boebert successfully carpetbagged her way into a safer seat than her own. She will be the Republican candidate this fall to replace Ken Buck in the Colorado 4th, leaving an open election this fall in her former seat, the 3rd.

SCOTUS released opinions both yesterday and today, and will release more tomorrow, but did not announce that tomorrow would be the final day. Trump v. U.S. is still outstanding, so it could come tomorrow, or perhaps Monday.

Yesterday former Congressman and Jan 6th Committee member Adam Kinzinger became perhaps the first prominent anti-Trump Republican politician to take the next logical step and formally endorse Biden.

Another interesting development yesterday was the release by Nate Silver of the first version of his best-in-class political model for the 2024 Presidential election. His model presently has a Trump as a 65% favorite to win, as difficult as that may be to hear.

Nationally, he has Biden with a slight popular vote lead, 47.2% to 47.0% However, to focus on the key states:

• Pennsylvania is 59% for Trump, with an average margin of 1.1%;
• Michigan is 54% for Trump, with an average margin of 0.6%; and
• Wisconsin is 57% for Trump, with an average margin of 0.8%.

Silver’s model also has Minnesota at 27% for Trump, making it the equivalent for his campaign of states like Nevada (31%), Arizona (23%), and Georgia (20%) for Biden’s — the difference being, of course, that in 2020 Biden won each of those latter three states. The only “expand the map” state that Silver’s model sees as more than a remote potential for Biden is North Carolina, at 14%.

Silver also estimates that Pr{Biden wins election | Biden wins all of PA, MI, WI} = 97%, which is a helpful heuristic to keep in mind as time passes.

Today marks the earliest summer solstice since 1796, a presidential election brought back to public attention more recently by Hamilton’s “One Last Time”. If only one, or preferably both, of 2024’s presidential candidates had followed Washington’s advice…

Not a lot going on of interest right now, but that is likely to change shortly.

First, we are now only 7 days away from the first announced presidential debate, and all indications are that the debate will happen as planned – Biden vs. Trump (with no RFK Jr), on CNN, with no studio audience, and with an ability for moderators to turn off one candidate’s mike when it’s the other’s turn to speak.

Second, we are also running out of time in the SCOTUS fiscal year for the Court to release its opinion in Trump v. U.S. It seems quite possible that the opinion could get released the morning of, or the morning after, the debate; oh, joy. As SCOTUS works through its caseload, it did today uphold the constitutionality of one particular and fairly obscure part of the Trump-era tax act. An adverse decision in that case would have implied that the types of “wealth taxes” occasionally proposed by progressives were unconstitutional, but the favorable outcome here for the government does not imply that a wealth tax would be constitutional.

Some political news of interest this week out of Virginia’s congressional primary elections, on both sides of the aisle.

For the Democrats: Yevgeny “Eugene” Vindman won the primary for the Virginia 7th, which is the Cantor/Brat/Spanberger seat (with Spanberger having retired to run for Governor in 2025); he and his better-known twin brother Alexander were key figures in the events leading to Trump’s first impeachment trial. While Spanberger won re-election in 2022, 52-48, this is probably one of the most marginal seats currently held by the Democrats, having gone only 50-49 for Biden in 2020. With Vindman having not previously held any elected office, this places the Democrats’ ability to retain an important seat in the hands of a political neophyte, albeit one with significant experience serving in government.

For the Republicans: the MAGA-on-MAGA primary for the Virginia 5th (a seat that went 54-45 for Trump in 2020) remains unresolved after election night, as they wait for mail-in ballots and provisional ballots to be counted. The incumbent, Bob Good, is chair of the House Freedom Caucus and one of the 8 Republicans who helped force Speaker McCarthy out. However, he committed the sin of having endorsed DeSantis in the primaries, and as such both McCarthy and Trump had endorsed Good’s equally MAGAite challenger, state senator John McGuire (who had been a losing candidate in the 2020 Republican primary in the 7th to face Spanberger). Both sides dumped in significant amounts of money, leading to an unusually high $14.5 million in ad spending for a primary. The election night result is McGuire by 321 votes, 50.3-49.7.

Once again I find myself coming back from a vacation during which I didn’t update the blog, which means there are a myriad of different things to discuss, in brief:

New York v. Trump. Earlier this week the newly-convicted felon was required to make an appearance with a probation officer, as part of the standard process through which a pre-sentencing report is compiled. Alas, Trump was permitted to take the appointment virtually, which he reportedly did from his Florida residence.

Georgia v. Trump, et al. The Georgia Court of Appeals recently announced that it would hear the defendants’ interlocutory appeal of Judge McAfee’s March ruling that Fulton County D.A. Willis should not be removed from the case, and moreover indefinitely delayed all activity in the case pending that appeal. Assuming that the prosecutors are unsuccessful in their effort to get the appeal belatedly dismissed, this would seemingly make it impossible for a trial to commence in 2024.

U.S. v. Trump (Florida). Judge Cannon continues to move the case along very slowly, and in a manner that has attracted significant criticism from pundits. Next week she is scheduled to hold a hearing on Trump’s motion that the indictment should be dismissed on the grounds that Special Counsel Smith’s appointment was unlawful, an issue that has been repeatedly raised in recent months in various contexts by Northwestern law professor and Federalist Society co-chair Steven Calabresi.

SCOTUS. No news yet from SCOTUS on Trump v. U.S., which in turn means no new developments out of Judge Chutkan’s courtroom in the D.C. flavor of U.S. v. Trump.

We are, however, into the season where contentious SCOTUS opinions will be coming at us fast and furious for the next couple of weeks. Today’s headline was a 9-0 Kavanaugh decision in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine where the Court overturned lower court rulings that, while stayed pending SCOTUS action, would have unwound recent regulatory actions that eased access to a medication used to induce abortion. The SCOTUS ruling was based entirely on the notion that these plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the suit, leaving open the possibility that other plaintiffs could advance similar claims against the FDA. As such, the immediate political impact of today’s decision seems minimal.

Menendez. The federal corruption trial of Sen. Menendez (D-NJ) continues, with recent testimony from one of his alleged co-conspirators. During the trial Menendez submitted paperwork to run for re-election as an independent, although he has until early August to withdraw his name from the ballot.

Hunter Biden. Since my last post, President Biden’s second son Hunter has been tried and convicted on federal gun charges, namely that he purchased a gun during a period of time when he was regularly using crack cocaine but yet stated on a federal firearms acquisition form that he was not a drug user. He is scheduled to face trial later this fall on tax evasion charges. Both sets of charges came from an investigation led by U.S. Special Counsel David Weiss, a Trump appointee who remained in office under the current administration and then was made a Special Counsel last year.

I haven’t talked about Hunter Biden before in these posts, and it would take more words than I care to write to provide ample context. Suffice it to say that, in certain circles, Hunter Biden is considered an exceptionally important figure in U.S. politics — the key to unlocking President Biden’s purportedly vast corruption with Chinese and Russian interests. In reality, Hunter is more likely just a man who made a number of bad choices as he neared middle age, first in attempting to cash in on his family name, and later in his personal conduct.

Hunter Biden’s conviction this week has interesting parallels to last month’s conviction of Trump. In both cases the decision to prosecute on these charges is somewhat unusual and has attracted criticism. However Hunter’s conviction helps to refute the allegations that Trump’s prosecution represents some form of weaponization of the rule of law. Instead, both convictions illustrate a principle that prosecutors will charge cases that they believe they can prove to a jury, without regard to the identity of the accused. It is also noteworthy to contrast Trump’s post-verdict behavior with President Biden’s reaction to Hunter’s conviction — respecting the verdict and indicating he would not pardon his son.

Additionally, this is a difficult case for Trump and the Republicans to rally behind. For one thing, it’s hard for Trump to argue on the one hand that Special Counsel Smith’s appointment was illegitimate, and then crow about convictions achieved by Special Counsel Weiss. But more fundamentally, it’s hard for the 2nd Amendment crowd to accept the notion that lying about one’s drug use on a form used to purchase a gun ought to be a federal crime. Given all of this, it is not clear that Hunter Biden’s legal woes are that much of a net negative to his father’s re-election chances.

By-Elections. This week there was a surprise of sorts in a by-election for an open House seat in Ohio’s 6th Congressional District, which spans a number of rural counties on the state’s eastern border. This district went 72-26 for Trump in 2020, and in the 2022 House election the long-time Republican incumbent won 68-32. However, this week the Republican candidate only won 55-45.

By contrast, several weeks ago there was a similar by-election in New York’s 26th District, a Buffalo-centric riding which had gone 62-35 for Biden in 2020 and 64-36 for the long-time Democratic incumbent in the 2022 House election. In that by-election, the Democratic candidate won 68-32.

Both by-elections continue a recent trend of swings towards the Democrats when people actually assemble to vote, even if polling has not been kind to Biden.

DJT. TMTG did manage to swiftly find a new audit firm and released its first quarter financial statements only a couple of weeks late. The company’s GAAP losses for first quarter 2024 were an eyepopping $327.6 million, but in fairness most of that appears to be non-recurring, non-cash losses related to the execution of the SPAC transaction. The company’s non-GAAP “adjusted EBITDA” metric showed losses of $12.1 million for the quarter, on revenue of $0.8 million.

In recent days DJT stock has been trading around $40, implying a market capitalization of about $7 billion.

Jumping the Shark. Finally, while it is a fool’s errand to try and keep up with the amount of crazy stuff that comes out of candidate Trump’s mouth, his recent diatribe about sharks at a rally in Las Vegas has attracted considerable attention. At the same rally he also articulated an apparent new policy position that cash tips would no longer constitute taxable income; leave it to a real estate magnate to think up new ways of avoiding recognition of taxable income, amirite?

About twelve years ago, I was anxiously awaiting the SCOTUS decision in the first major case about the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, NFIB v. Sebelius. Too anxiously, to be honest. My anxiety about it was such that, when the appointed hour came, I decided I didn’t want to be in a position to hear the news immediately and thereby find out whether I’d wasted much of the previous two years of my life (working on ACA implementation issues for health insurers). I was visiting my parents at their cottage, with no television, and I decided to leave my cellphone in the cottage and go for a boat ride in the middle of the river. And then I came in from the boat to discover that Roberts had sided with the liberals to save the ACA, and I was emotional for a few moments, and then life went on.

Yesterday afternoon was much the same for me. I was waiting for my daughter’s school bus to arrive when the news came in that the jury in New York v. Trump, after about 9 hours of deliberation, had announced that they had reached a verdict and it would be announced in about half an hour. After fetching my daughter and coming home and turning on the TV, I then decided… to take a shower (having mown the lawn earlier).

And so it was that I was in the shower yesterday when my daughter entered the bathroom, at her mother’s prodding, to share the news: “All 34 counts: guilty.” I was emotional for a few moments, and then life went on.

Sentencing has been set for July 11th, which is mere days before the Republican National Convention. By all appearances, neither this conviction nor the upcoming sentencing will have any impact whatsoever on the outcome of the RNC; one of our two major parties is going to nominate a recently convicted felon for the Presidency. That remains the reality of the politics of 2024, such is Trump’s grip on the GOP.

There appears to be a diversity of views on what the sentencing outcome will be. On the one hand, Trump has no criminal record and these are Class E felonies, facts which would argue in favor of probation rather than jail time. There is also the optical difficulty of jailing someone who is about to be nominated by a major party for president. On the other hand, there are many extenuating circumstances here unrelated to the upcoming election, including not only the defendant’s utter lack of responsibility for his actions (as he continues to exclaim that he is “completely innocent”) and expressions of contempt towards the justice system, but also the seriousness of the uncharged electoral crimes that the jury found merited the elevation of these business record falsification crimes from misdemeanors to felonies. It is also unclear whether any prison sentence would be stayed pending appeal.

In other electoral news, it was recently announced that the UK will have a general election on July 4th. I do admire their electoral efficiency. Meanwhile back in the US, the governor of Ohio called a special legislative session in an attempt to resolve the impasse that might have left Biden off the ballot this fall in the state, due to the fact that the DNC is scheduled to occur less than 90 days before the election. However with legislative solutions remaining stalled, it sounds like the Democratic Party will conduct a virtual nomination of Biden in advance of the DNC itself, in order to qualify him for the Ohio ballot.

Yesterday Michael Cohen took the stand in New York v. Trump for a small amount of additional cross-examination, followed by a small amount of redirect, after which as expected the prosecution rested. In total the prosecution’s case took 15 days of trial time, spread over several weeks.

Thereafter the defense put on two witnesses, neither of whom are household names, and rested its case this morning without putting Trump on the stand. At that point, with the Memorial Day weekend looming Judge Merchan dismissed the jury for the week. At this point all 12 original jurors remain intact, interestingly.

As such, further activity in the trial this week will be limited to bickering around jury instructions; and then a week from today, May 28th, we will have closing arguments followed by jury instructions, after which things will be in the jury’s hands.

In other news, last Friday Trump made an effort to play offense on the electoral map by leaving Florida after Barron’s high school graduation to give a speech a few miles from my house, at the Minnesota GOP’s annual Lincoln-Reagan Dinner in St. Paul. I am skeptical that Minnesota is really in play this year, but it probably is a reasonable ‘aspirational’ state for the Republicans, not unlike North Carolina or Florida for the Democrats. I was somewhat surprised to learn, from the news coverage of Trump’s visit, that Minnesota last voted for a Republican for President way back in 1972; thank you, Walter Mondale.

I should also mention a second N.Y.C. trial of political interest that got underway last week: N.J. Senator Menendez is on trial for federal bribery charges. He is up for re-election this fall, and while he declined to participate in the Democratic primary after his indictment, he has left open the possibility that if acquitted he could run in the general as an independent against the Democratic candidate, expected to be Representative Andrew Kim.

Some shocking political news on Wednesday, as the Biden and Trump campaigns announced that they have agreed to forsake the Commission on Presidential Debates (which has sponsored all presidential debates from the 1988 election forward) and instead will have two privately arranged presidential debates, one on CNN on June 27th and another on ABC on September 10th. Unlike recent presidential debates, the CNN debate will reportedly take place in a studio with no audience present.

It’s crazy to think of a presidential debate taking place weeks in advance of either major party’s nominating convention, but such is the nature of our times I suppose.

Mine appears to be a minority view, but I’m of the belief that Biden should have refused to debate Trump on principle, arguing that the President of the United States should not engage with an individual that a state court concluded was an oath-breaking insurrectionist. I am holding out some hope that the reason Biden agreed to the debates now, before New York v. Trump reaches a jury, was so that if the jury convicts Trump, Biden could then say something like this: “Prior to his conviction Trump was innocent until proven guilty, and it was under that presumption of innocence that I had announced my willingness to debate him; but now that he is a convicted felon, it would be unbecoming of the President of the United States to share a stage with Trump. I’ll happily debate any other non-felon Republican who comes forward in Trump’s stead.”

One potential advantage of the two campaigns’ having reached their own deal on debates is that it takes potential third-party debate participants out of the picture. I haven’t previously talked about it in this series of blog posts, but there is a third-party candidate that is frequently polling at or above the 10% mark in polls that are not restricted to the two major-party candidates: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. RFK Jr is a very unorthodox candidate: historically a Democrat (and originally a potential primary opponent to Biden before he announced he would instead go the independent route), but with a diverse set of political views, and perhaps best known for his strong anti-vaccine positions. Both major party candidates are accusing him of being a stalking horse designed to draw support from their opponent. As such, both candidates had an incentive to deny his candidacy the oxygen that participating in official CPD debates, were his polling numbers to remain strong, could provide.

Today the trial in New York v. Trump takes its usual Wednesday day off. Michael Cohen took the stand first thing Monday morning, and gave a day-and-a-half of direct testimony, followed by half-a-day so far of cross-examination.

Judge Merchan had previously allowed Trump’s request to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation on Friday, so tomorrow will be the only remaining day of trial this week. The expectation is that Cohen’s cross-examination will wrap up tomorrow, after which the prosecution is expected to rest its case. It is unclear whether the defense will call any witnesses, but if they do that will likely commence on Monday. After that, we’ll be down to closing arguments and jury instructions. It is not impossible to imagine that we’ll have a verdict before Memorial Day.

In other news, yesterday there were primary elections in Nebraska and West Virginia. As expected, WV Governor Justice – yet another controversial billionaire (or, perhaps, ex-billionaire) – won the Republican Senate primary and becomes the prohibitive favorite to flip the open Senate seat being vacated by Manchin.

Over in Nebraska, all 5 incumbent Republican congresspersons faced primary opponents (including 2 Senators, there being a special election this fall for appointed Senator Ricketts’ seat to fill out the remainder of Sasse’s term). Interestingly, the MAGAified Nebraska state GOP had endorsed all of the non-incumbents. However incumbency proved to be more powerful than the endorsement, as all 5 incumbents won handily. The closest race as expected involved Congressman Bacon, a comparatively moderate Republican in a district that Biden won 52-46 in 2020; as of midnight Bacon was ahead 62-38.

In the presidential primaries, Trump’s margin over Haley in Nebraska was only 80-18, two months after she’d dropped out; the remaining 2% went to businessman and bridge player Perry Johnson, whose self-financed 2024 campaign never quite got off the ground as he failed to qualify for any of the GOP debates in 2023. By comparison, Biden won 90-10 in Nebraska, with Rep. Phillips the other candidate on the ballot. As one might expect, Trump did better – and Biden worse – in West Virginia. Here Haley won less than 10% of the vote, while Biden was held to just above 70% by Phillips and three extremely obscure candidates, only one of which I’d heard of previously.

Finally, the New York Times released a series of swing state polls earlier this week that look very bad for President Biden, but at the same time decent for Democratic chances of retaining the Senate:

• In Arizona, Biden trails Trump 42-49, but Gallego leads Lake 45-41 for Sen. Sinema’s open seat;
• In Nevada, Biden trails Trump 39-50, but Sen. Rosen leads Sam Brown (presumably not the British singer of “Stop” fame) 40-38;
• In Pennsylvania, Biden trails Trump 44-47, but Sen. Casey leads David McCormick 46-41;
• In Wisconsin, Biden leads Trump 47-45 but is out-performed by Sen. Baldwin, who leads Eric Hovde 49-40;
• Biden trails Trump badly in two important swing states that do not have a Senate race this fall, Michigan (42-49) and Georgia (39-49).

I honestly do not know what to make of any of this data.