It’s MLK Day today; the Iowa Caucuses are tonight.

Over the weekend the final Des Moines Register poll came out, putting Trump at 48% in Iowa. At this point there are only three other Republican active candidates of note: former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley, polling at 20%; Florida governor Ron DeSantis, at 16%; and political neophyte Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, at 8%.

And tomorrow, yet another trial involving Trump will commence in New York. I’d kind of forgotten about this one which, given what I’m about to describe, is remarkable, in a sad way.

As background: In 2019, the journalist E. Jean Carroll published an account of her having been sexually assaulted by Trump in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room. Trump vehemently denied this, leading Carroll to sue Trump for defamation. While that case (Carroll I) was still wending its way through the court, Carroll sued Trump again in November 2022 (Carroll II) under a newly-passed New York law called the Adult Survivors Act, which created a one-year window in which civil suits relating to sexual offenses for which the statute of limitations had passed could be filed.

Carroll II went to a jury trial in April 2023, and the jury found that Trump had committed sexual assault and defamed Carroll, awarding Carroll $5 million of damages. In the wake of the verdict, Trump immediately made defamatory comments about Carroll on national television, leading Carroll to amend her allegations in Carroll I accordingly to add the new comments.

The progress of Carroll I through the system had been delayed by questions of – what else? – Presidential immunity, on the theory that the sitting President’s response to an allegation against him constituted an official act for which he would be immune from civil litigation under the so-called Westfall Act (a 1988 statute enacted to override the SCOTUS decision in Westfall v. Erwin). In light of a D.C. Circuit appellate decision in January 2023 in Carroll I, in July the DOJ submitted a letter indicating that it no longer believed that Trump was “acting within the scope and employment of his office as President” in his 2019 comments about Carroll, and hence it no longer believed the Westfall Act was salient to this case.

This removed the impediment for Carroll I to proceed to trial. In September 2023 the assigned judge, Lewis Kaplan, issued a summary judgment in favor of Carroll, in light of the findings in Carroll II. As such the trial scheduled to start tomorrow in Carroll I is, much like the Trump Org civil trial, very limited in scope to determining the amount of damages Trump owes for defamatory acts that have already been legally deemed to have occurred. In particular, quoting from a memorandum opinion Kaplan issued last week in advance of the trial: “[T]he fact that Mr. Trump sexually abused – indeed, raped – Ms. Carroll has been conclusively established and is binding in this case.”

So, to sum up: The candidate currently polling at 48% in a four-way Iowa caucus field is the individual who, the very next day, will be standing trial for $10 million of potential damages relating to the fact that, several months ago, a jury “conclusively established” that he committed sexual assault and defamed his accuser.

Once again, everything about that sentence would have been stunning prior to the last several years. But in our world, tomorrow’s trial might not even make the Top Five list of Trump-related trials currently in the public eye.

We’re three days away from the Iowa caucuses, but nobody really cares. Even though Trump did not win Iowa in 2016, everyone expects he will win handily this time, although record cold weather could possibly throw a spanner in the works.

Instead, the more interesting news of the week came from two different courtrooms – one in D.C., and one in New York City – both of which featured cameo appearances by Trump.

We start Tuesday in D.C., where the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals heard Trump’s interlocutory appeal in the criminal case arising out of the events of January 6th, with the appellant himself taking the unusual step of being in the audience.

Procedurally, the D.C. Circuit had moved extremely quickly to hear this case, motivated perhaps by the fact that the district court trial date had been set for March 4th, and perhaps also by the fact that if the D.C. Circuit hadn’t shown its willingness to move so swiftly then the Supreme Court might have been more inclined to grant the government’s motion for certiorari before judgment. The district court judge, Tanya Chutkan, issued her ruling denying Trump’s motions to dismiss the charges on grounds of presidential immunity and constitutional immunity on December 1st; by December 13th the D.C. Circuit had granted the appeal with a swift schedule for briefing, making it possible to have oral arguments on January 9th. That is, by the standards of the appellate courts, incredibly fast.

Trump’s argument for immunity attempts to weave together two concepts. One is that SCOTUS previously established, in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, a principle that Presidents are immune from civil (as opposed to criminal) liability for actions lying within the “outer perimeter” of their duties, whereas no prior case has ever explored potential criminal liability for Presidential actions (recalling that Ford pardoned Nixon shortly after taking office, mooting the issue with respect to Tricky Dick). The other is that Section 3 of Article I of the Constitution says explicitly that, after an impeachment trial by the Senate, “the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”

From this raw material, Trump’s current legal team has advanced a principle that a former President can only face criminal liability for official actions after a Senate conviction on impeachment charges related to those actions. Consequently, per this purported legal principle, the January 6th charges must be dismissed since Trump was acquitted in the February 2021 impeachment trial.

Or, as former Obama administration official Eric Solomon wittily put it: “Trump’s position is that Biden can kill him if 34 Senators agree.”

Among the many factors undermining Trump’s legal argument – in addition to it being a logically fallacious reading of the Constitutional language, and to it having crazy potential consequences – is the fact that various prior actions contra-indicate this interpretation of the law. One example is Nixon’s acceptance of Ford’s pardon; if Nixon were immune on the grounds that he had not been impeached and convicted, then there was nothing for which he needed to be pardoned. Another example is that, in Trump’s second impeachment trial, his then legal team argued that impeachment was pointless since he was already out of office and since he would now be subject to the criminal justice system for his conduct on January 6th.

As such, the widespread consensus is that Trump will lose this appeal. However the question remains, how exactly will he lose it, and how rapidly; and then, what happens next in terms of further avenues of appeal on this issue before the district court trial can commence.

Norman Eisen and two co-authors wrote an extensive treatise earlier this week, laying out a dizzying variety of possibilities. As I write this it is now the Friday night three days after oral argument, and nothing has come out of the D.C. Circuit yet; the waiting game continues.

Two days later in New York, Trump was once again inside a courtroom, as part of the closing arguments of what I’ll refer to as the “New York Trump Org” case, a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney Letitia James against Trump and other family members who served as executives of the interconnected family of companies that Trump likes to style as the “Trump Organization.”

I’ll likely talk about this suit at greater length when the decision is issued, which should happen by the end of January, and hence will make do for now with a brief summary.

The allegations made by James in September 2022 were: that the Trump Organization repeatedly prepared, and disseminated to potential lenders and insurers, unaudited financial statements that purported to have been prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP but in fact were not; that, in doing so, the Trump Organization violated a New York law regarding “persistent fraud or illegality in the carrying on, conducting or transacting of business”; and that the appropriate remedy is to prevent Trump from conducting business in New York for 5 years and to have him disgorge at least $250 million.

For reasons I don’t entirely understand, this trial is being heard by a judge alone, and not by a jury. Furthermore, the judge (Arthur Engoron) kicked off the trial in September 2023 with a finding of fact that fraud had in fact occurred, making the trial’s sole purpose the quantification of how much Trump would need to disgorge. The prosecution is now arguing that amount should be $370 million.

Trump has been attacking the judge and the process throughout the trial, and he sought to personally participate in the closing arguments this week. That went about as well as you think it might.

So, to sum up: The presumptive winner of next week’s Iowa caucuses spent his week making legal arguments about the scope of presidential immunity that would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous, followed by ranting against the sole arbiter who will determine whether his business interests in New York remain viable and how many hundreds of millions of dollars he may have to forfeit as a penalty for committing civil fraud.

That would have been a pretty astonishing sentence to write, prior to these 2020s. Now, it’s just part of the background noise of the world in which we live.

This blog has remained inactive for the past three years, having last been used to document in real time my take on news related to the US Presidential Election of 2020.

As 2024 dawns, we once again find ourselves in a situation where the presidential election is incredibly important, feels incredibly uncertain, and is subject to vast amounts of judicial scrutiny. As such, once again I think it will be fruitful to try and document events as they happen over the next several months, although given work pressures these posts may be infrequent over the next few months.

So, where are we, and how did we get there over the past three years?

Although we are weeks away from the Iowa caucuses, there has been virtually no suspense about how either party’s Presidential nomination will proceed. For the Democrats, to my personal disappointment Biden is seeking re-election, and has attracted only token opposition. Meanwhile the Republican party has devolved into a personality cult around Trump, to an even greater extent than was true in 2020. While there are several other candidates running in the Republican primary, Trump’s lead over the field is so large that he has skipped every single debate; nor, with the singular exception of Christie, have any of the other candidates seen fit to criticize Trump, for fear of being cast out of the party as apostates. That’s what happened to Liz Cheney, formerly the third-ranking House Republican, but primaried out of her safe Wyoming seat in 2022 in light of her role as vice-chairperson of the House Committee investigating January 6th.

Trump never accepted his defeat in 2020. His second impeachment trial didn’t take place until February 2021, after he was already out of office. It led to an acquittal, attracting only 57 Senate votes to convict, with many of those who voted to acquit (including McConnell) indicating that their vote reflected the fact that his term was over and therefore impeachment seemed inappropriate and/or unnecessary. After the acquittal, Trump in effect never stopped campaigning, although he didn’t officially declare his 2024 candidacy until days after the 2022 midterms.

Biden’s presidency has by many measures been a success, although public perception has fallen short of the reality, and his approval ratings have generally been in the low 40s. The country made it through the COVID-19 pandemic, although substantial stimulus spending in 2021 was not done in a particularly efficient manner and likely contributed to significant inflation in 2022. However, notwithstanding that fiscal imbalance remains a significant problem and climate change appears to be getting worse, the immediate economy is in the type of shape than an incumbent president running for re-election would want; and yet, Biden is not benefiting from these domestic conditions. Foreign policy issues have been challenging, with the Russia-Ukraine war nearing its 3rd year but with Republican support for Ukraine waning, with the US exit from Afghanistan having gone poorly, and more recently with the Israel-Hamas war creating fissures in the Democratic coalition.

In early 2021, the new Congress was slated to have a 50-50 split in the Senate, and a 222-213 Democratic edge in the House. Coming out of the 2022 midterms the House remained 222-213, but now with the Republicans in control, while the Democrats actually gained a seat in the Senate; this was an unexpectedly good midterm performance for the party occupying the White House. The ideological makeup of the typical Congressional Republican continues to grow more Trumpian, a trend that seems likely to continue in 2024 as many of the remaining ‘mainstream Republicans’, such as Romney, are not running for re-election. House Republicans have had significant difficulty actually governing in 2023. It took days of voting for them to elect Kevin McCarthy as speaker, and then several months later he was pushed out, after which it took Republicans a month to elect a new speaker after rejecting the first several logical replacements. A common prediction is that Congress will remain split after the 2024 election, but with the parties switching sides: the Republicans may retake the Senate thanks to Manchin’s decision to retire and an otherwise favorable set of seats in play, while the Democrats may retake the House as judicial decisions in states like New York, Wisconsin, and Alabama lead to more favorable 2024 maps than those used in 2022.

But the real trauma looming over the country right now involves judicial activity involving Trump. There are civil suits; there are criminal suits, both state and federal; there are suits involving electoral law; and there is appellate activity arising from each of these categories. Two appellate cases are of immediate interest.

The first relates to what I’ll refer to as the “D.C. criminal case,” in which Trump (and, for interests of speed, Trump alone) has been charged with multiple crimes arising out of January 6th. While a trial has been scheduled to start on March 4th, there is substantial doubt as to whether that date will stick. In December, the district court ruled against Trump on two issues where his ability to appeal is interlocutory in nature, meaning the appeal must be resolved before the trial can occur: one issue is whether a former President is immune from criminal prosecution for events occurring during the Presidency; and the other is whether Trump’s impeachment acquittal forestalls a subsequent prosecution on double jeopardy grounds. Trump has raised other defenses that were also rejected by the district court, but those issues do not give rise to interlocutory appeals, just post-conviction appeals.

The special counsel prosecuting Trump in the D.C. criminal case, Jack Smith, had asked the Supreme Court to hear Trump’s interlocutory appeal directly, instead of having it proceed normally in the D.C. Circuit Court. SCOTUS denied that request, but the D.C. Circuit Court is moving with extreme speed, and will hear Trump’s appeal on January 9th. Win or lose, this case will surely reach SCOTUS; but when?

The second relates to a heretofore obscure clause of the US Constitution, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Serious arguments have been advanced that, under this clause, Trump is ineligible to hold the Presidency going forward, on the grounds he participated in an insurrection against the US government — to wit, the events of January 6th. The Supreme Court of Colorado very recently ruled that, under Colorado law, Trump is ineligible to appear on the Republican primary ballot. Trump has appealed this ruling to SCOTUS, who just agreed to hear the case – again moving briskly, with oral arguments scheduled for February 8th. The Secretary of State of Maine has also determined that Trump is ineligible to be on the Maine primary ballot, while other states including Michigan and Minnesota have declined to take action with respect to their state’s primary ballot, but holding out the possibility that action could be appropriate under their state’s law with respect to a general election ballot.

Part of what makes this upcoming SCOTUS case very interesting is that a number of conservative legal scholars and jurists have come out in defense of the SCOCO ruling and have said that SCOTUS ought to affirm it. As such, from the standpoint of the six Republican-appointed justices, there may be a very serious conflict between the legal and interpretative principles to which they claim to adhere, and the political interests of the Republican party. On top of that, the case appears to have serious institutional implications for SCOTUS, as whichever side loses is unlikely to accept the decision as being legally legitimate.

It is going to be a long and interesting year: Stand back and stand by. (Too soon?)

A few days before Election Day, I decided it would be beneficial to record some observations about the election in real-time, recognizing that 2020 was likely to be an election of unusual historical importance, and thinking that it would be helpful in future years to have a reminder of the winding path the nation went down on its way to achieving clarity about the results of that election.

I think we all got more than we bargained for: A closer-than-expected election that took several days for the major media organizations to call; an incumbent President who refused to accept the results of the election or concede to his opponent, despite lacking any tangible evidence that the election was not free and fair; a series of increasingly absurd and fundamentally anti-democracy legal arguments advanced by the President and his advocates in an attempt for him to retain power; Senate control, and with it any chance for Biden to have a meaningful chance of advancing an agenda, hinging on two Senate runoff elections in early January; and, just yesterday, the completely unprecedented impeachment of a President mere days before he is scheduled to leave office due to his conduct in refusing to accept the results of the election he lost, leading to an insurrection of sorts against Capitol Hill.

This seems like the right time to “break the wand,” as Bill James once put it, and stop this series of blog posts. Yes, there is still some election-related news ahead of us: Georgia has not yet certified the Senate runoff elections, so Schumer has not replaced McConnell as majority leader; one House race in New York remains undetermined, and there’s some possibility that the losing candidate in another House race in Iowa could successfully plead her case with the House Administration Committee; there’s an impeachment trial to occur; and of course there is the inauguration itself, and the non-trivial possibility of further political violence before or during the inauguration. But, for all intents and purposes, the election is behind us.

Behind us, but far from forgotten. The events of late 2020 will reverberate, I fear, for many years to come. On that theme I want to end this series of posts by talking about an opinion piece published yesterday in The Bulwark by its executive editor, Jonathan Last, a conservative writer.

Last starts by talking about what he calls “the big lie”:

Trump’s contention that the results of the 2020 election are fraudulent is a lie. Not a mistake, not a difference of opinion, not a misunderstanding. A lie. …

Nothing can get better in American politics until this lie is repudiated by the main body of the Republican party in the public square, with enough force and repetition that the majority of Republican voters cease to believe it.

Even if armed insurrection is not a weekly occurrence, a government cannot function when a third of the citizens believe it is literally, not rhetorically, illegitimate. It is not be possible to legislate or build consensus or even enforce the laws when you begin with a substantial minority who literally believe that the government is the product of a coup.

What the Republican party has done over the last two months is akin to having dropped polonium into America’s political groundwater.

And the radiation from their lie has poisoned everything.

Last also helps put in some perspective the behavior of the Capitol Hill insurrectionists and their sympathizers:

[I]f this lie remains in American politics, there will be no peace or comity.

Think about it from the perspective of the person who believes the lie: They have been told by the president of the United States that the election was fraudulent. The vast majority of the president’s party has testified to the truth of this story. The only reasonable conclusion of this tale is that America is currently undergoing a coup. That the incoming government is not only illegitimate, but is an occupying, authoritarian force.

If you believe that—if you really, truly believe it—then how could you acquiesce in anything that is happening? How could you pay taxes? Why would you obey laws? Why wouldn’t you storm the Capitol? Because if you believe this lie—really, truly believe it—then you are trying to save our democratic republic.

If you believe the lie that Democrats have ousted the duly-elected president of the United States in a bloodless junta, then what could President Joe Biden possibly do to bring about unity?

Nothing. Because he would be—literally—a tyrant.

This, tragically, is the world we now have to live in, thanks in fundamental part to Trump’s inability to accept that he lost the election.

As Last indicates, for our nation to truly heal we need the Republican leadership to refute the “big lie”. Senator Romney already took steps in that direction, in his remarks on the Senate floor the evening of the insurrection:

The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. That is the burden, and the duty, of leadership. The truth is that President-elect Biden won this election. President Trump lost. 

I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic that enough other Republicans will ever follow suit for it to change the hearts and minds of tens of millions of my fellow Americans. And that saddens, and frightens, me.

The House impeachment vote took place earlier in the day than was expected. After a single day of hearings and debate, the House voted 232-197 to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection,” with 10 Republicans joining with the Democrats.

McConnell, who remains Majority Leader at this time because the state of Georgia has not yet certified the results of this month’s Senate runoff elections, confirmed that he is not prepared to re-convene the Senate earlier than originally scheduled so that an impeachment trial could commence immediately. Part of his reasoning is that it even if he were to immediately re-convene the Senate, it would be impossible to conduct a fair impeachment trial on a fast enough timeframe to have the trial end before inauguration day. McConnell has also signalled that his mind is not made up on how he would vote in the Senate trial, which is a stark contrast to the first impeachment.

As such, the timing of Senate action on the impeachment remains unclear. President-elect Biden reiterated today his hope that “Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation.”

The focus of the political world today will be on the impeachment hearing in the House, which is expected to both start and commence today, and by every indication Pelosi has the votes to impeach Trump.

I noted last night that the vote to have the House urge Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment was a partisan one. It turns out that is not quite true, as one Republican congressman voted in favor of the motion: Kinzinger from IL-16, who as I noted previously has been openly critical of Trump in recent days. Many pundits feel like the timing of the release of Pence’s letter to Pelosi saying he wouldn’t invoke the 25th Amendment, coming as it did in advance of the vote, was designed to give Republicans cover to vote against the motion on the grounds that the motion was already known to be pointless given Pence’s stated position.

As I alluded to last night, I have sympathy here for Pence’s point of view. There are two constitutional mechanisms for having somebody else assume the powers of the Presidency in mid-term. One, the 25th Amendment, is designed for use by the Executive branch in situations where the President is incapable of performing the duties of the job. The other, impeachment, is designed for use by the Legislative branch in situations where the President has committed wrong-doing. From a precedential standpoint, impeachment clearly seems like the more appropriate of the two mechanisms to address Trump’s recent actions. It’s not like he’s incapable of performing the job – at least, not any more incapable than he ever was…

Having said that, the fundamental tension here is one of timing. If the House convicts today, it would be difficult under any circumstances to have a full-blown Senate impeachment trial before January 20th, and McConnell has already indicated that parliamentary considerations would prevent the trial from starting until the 20th. That has motivated the potential for using the 25th Amendment to resolve the timing problems associated with using impeachment, even though impeachment is the more appropriate mechanism absent practicality concerns.

To this point the general consensus has been that a post-inauguration Senate trial of an impeachment action that occurred in the House while Trump was in office is allowable, with the implication that a conviction could bar Trump from running for President in 2024. However this morning the Washington Post has an op-ed from Michael Luttig saying, no, that’s not the right way to read the Constitution.

Luttig, you might recall, was a serious candidate for the two Supreme Court seats that opened up in the summer of 2005, ultimately filled by Roberts and Alito. The next year, with his Supreme Court dreams apparently destined to go unfulfilled, he left the 4th Circuit to become chief legal counsel at Boeing, retiring from that post when he turned 65 in 2019. Luttig believes there is sufficient doubt about whether the Senate has the authority to convict someone who is no longer in office that, were Trump to be convicted by the Senate after January 20th, ultimately the Supreme Court would need to resolve the matter as a so-called case of first impression – a matter that has never before been litigated.

The House just passed the resolution urging Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, on a the vote of 223-205 along partisan lines. The vote was essentially symbolic, as earlier in the evening Pence had released a letter to Pelosi saying he would not invoke the 25th Amendment. In his letter Pence makes the rather compelling argument that the 25th Amendment “is not a means of punishment or usurpation.”

And so we move tomorrow to the next stage, an impeachment vote. At this point at least 4 House Republicans have gone on record as saying they will vote for impeachment, and it seems likely there will be rather more than that.

Trump made his first public remarks in days today, and in characteristic fashion he asserted that his pre-riot rally speech on January 6th was “totally appropriate” and that this second impeachment, like the first one, was a “witch hunt” and “hoax.”

We’re still awaiting tonight’s House vote on the resolution asking Pence to immediately invoke the 25th Amendment, with the implied threat being that if Pence doesn’t do it then tomorrow the House will vote to impeach Trump. Remarkable, really, that on January 13th there could be an impeachment vote regarding conduct that happened on January 6th.

However there has been a lot of interesting reporting this afternoon:

• House Minority Leader McCarthy has supposedly indicated to his caucus that they GOP leadership will not “whip” tomorrow’s impeachment vote, allowing Republicans to vote their conscience.
• The #3 Republican in the House, Rep. Cheney, has just stated that she will vote in favor of impeachment.
• The current headline on the New York Times is “McConnell Said To Believe That Trump Committed Impeachable Offenses,” with reporting that McConnell “is pleased that Democrats are moving to impeach him, believing that it will make it easier to purge him from the party.”

Today, as the House reconvened, an attempt was made to use unanimous consent to pass a resolution calling upon Pence to immediately invoke the 25th Amendment. As expected, a Republican congressman intervened to withhold consent. The full House is expected to vote on the resolution tomorrow night, and it is expected to pass.

Assuming Trump remains in office the day after tomorrow, the House is expected to vote on an article of impeachment that evening, and once again it is expected to pass. As such, in about 48 hours’ time Trump will have become either the second President to resign from office, or (far more likely) the first President to become impeached by the House twice. There is a sense that some House Republicans are likely to support this impeachment, unlike the first impeachment for which the House vote attracted no Republican votes.

What happens after that remains unclear. Biden has reportedly asked Senate parliamentarians for clarity on whether the Senate might be able to pursue an impeachment trial in parallel with other business like confirming his Cabinet, instead of the trial necessarily crowding out all other Senate business.

Some have started to suggest that another potential course of action against Trump involves Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a now-obscure clause originally intended to prevent Confederate rebels from serving in Congress after the end of the war. One legal scholar has suggested that an argument can be made that Trump has already ceased to be President under the terms of that amendment by virtue of the events of January 6th, which could serve as future legal grounds to disregard, say, any Presidential pardons issued after that date. A more mainstream view is that Congress could vote to indicate that it believes Trump’s actions violated this amendments, and then the issue would be thrown to the courts.

Today another Cabinet member resigned, namely acting DHS Secretary Wolf, although he did not cite the events of last week as an influence on his decision to resign several days early.

And Trump suffered two indignities in the past twenty-four hours that one imagines are close to his heart. First, the PGA of America announced that they were pulling the 2022 PGA Championship from the Trump-branded golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. Second, today NFL coach Bill Belichick announced that he was turning down the opportunity to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump, after the honor had already been publicized. Keep in mind that in 2015 Belichick was named “most hated coach in the NFL” by Sports Illustrated. When Bill Belichick thinks you’re bad for his brand…

A relatively quiet weekend. With Trump having been banned from Twitter and most other social media platforms, the nation hasn’t heard from him all weekend. That hasn’t happened in, well, what feels like forever.

It is expected that tomorrow the House will start the ball rolling on a 2nd impeachment of Trump, although the outcome remains murky. Given that Senate rules in all likelihood preclude an impeachment trial from commencing before the inauguration, there have been suggestions that even if the House votes to impeach Trump in the next 10 days, the House may intentionally delay the transmittal to the Senate of the articles of impeachment. That would allow Biden and Senator Schumer to focus the proverbial “first 100 days” of the new administration on substantive matters, and then later pivot to the more symbolic task of holding an impeachment trial.

A number of companies, including a former employer of mine, have announced that their PACs will no longer make campaign contributions to those officials who voted against certifying the election results. That’s a start at the long task of turning the “sedition caucus” into political pariahs.

Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State who received three electoral college votes from faithless electors in 2016 (albeit all from electors pledged to Clinton rather than Trump, confusingly), announced that after last week he no longer considers himself a Republican.