It's another one of those days where what I write may be wildly out of date by the time I post it, I should begin by stating. Everyone in the political world is watching Atlanta right now (the hashtag "#IndictmentWatch" is trending on what used to be called Twitter), to see whether Donald Trump will be indicted at some point today or whether we'll all have to wait until tomorrow for it to be unveiled. The biggest development (outside of rampant speculation) came when the judge who will be handling any such indictment did not clear his courtroom (of journalists) at 5:00 P.M. today, indicating that the grand jury may work late and produce an indictment at some point this evening.

Plenty of witnesses either have already been presented to this grand jury, or else are awaiting their turn to testify in the courthouse. This was somewhat of a surprise to the media, who all expected these witnesses to appear tomorrow, and this is what gave rise to the anticipation that charges could appear sometime today.

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The biggest political news of the past week came from Ohio, where the voters resoundingly rejected a stealth plan by the Republicans to kill an abortion ballot measure that will appear on November's ballot. By a 57-43 margin, the voters sent a loud "No!" to the GOP, who were trying to change the rules in the middle of the game. This will have national reverberations, especially after Buckeye voters return in a few months to enshrine abortion rights in their state's constitution.

This was merely the latest in an unbroken series of victories for those fighting for women's rights at the state level. These have included ballot measures that either directly addressed abortion or stealthily sidled up to it as well as a state supreme court race in Wisconsin -- and in all of them the forced-birth side lost. Badly.

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Sooner or later, America is going to have to have a rational debate over abortion. When the Supreme Court tossed out Roe v. Wade, it opened the door to any state setting pretty much any restrictions on abortion they chose to. Some of these are Draconian in nature, while others are slightly more reasonable. On the other side of the divide, blue states are enshrining the right to an abortion in their state's laws or constitution. These generally mirror the protections in Roe, with some alterations in some cases. But the real end goal for both sides is going to be a national abortion law, to finally legally codify what rights all American women actually have over their own bodies. Nothing short is going to work, since much like in the Civil Rights era some states are always going to go to the extremes -- on what is essentially a very basic human right. If the states refuse to uphold basic human rights, the federal government is going to have to step in and do so.

Politically, this is going to be very hard to do. It would probably require a modification of the Senate's filibuster rules to allow bills on basic constitutional rights to join budget bills in only needing a simple majority to pass the Senate. It will also likely require a trifecta of one party or the other simultaneously holding control of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House. Even then it's not assured, though.

Whenever this debate is finally joined, we're all going to have to start speaking about things in more precise language -- and that definitely includes the media. Right now a sort of shorthand is being used which obscures what various restrictions on abortion actually mean. So I'll begin with a definition of terms.

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In the end, it wasn't even close. Yesterday, Ohio voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have taken away their own rights. In this particular case, it wasn't directly about abortion rights, instead it was the right of a majority of voters in the state to amend the state's constitution. Republicans wanted to raise the threshold from a simple majority to a supermajority of 60 percent. The voters voted "No" on the issue by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent -- a pretty resounding 14-point rejection.

But of course this wasn't just about some arcane governmental rules. It was a stalking horse for another Ohio ballot initiative, one which will appear on this November's ballot. And that one is about abortion. If yesterday's vote had been successful (if the proposal had passed), then the abortion amendment would have had to get at least 60 percent of the vote to pass. It is currently polling in the high 50s -- which was the entire point of the exercise.

The November referendum, if it passes, will enshrine abortion rights in the state's constitution. This will mean two things: the state-level politicians and the state courts will essentially be removed from the process of making abortion laws; and, secondly, the only way to change this in the future would be through another ballot referendum which either overturned or otherwise changed the new amendment. Just like on the national level, when something is part of the constitution (federal or state), the legislature can't pass unconstitutional laws which contradict it. Well, they can try, but then the judges can then toss such laws out (since judges are bound to follow the constitution and interpret whether laws are allowable or not, but have no power to change the constitution's text at all). And no vote in the legislature can overturn a constitutional amendment -- to change that, another constitutional amendment is necessary (see, for reference: Prohibition).

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Donald Trump's legal team has reacted to the election-interference indictment of the former president with a rather novel legal strategy. They're essentially claiming that Trump never believed he lost the 2020 election -- and if you listen to what he has to say about it even now, he still believes he somehow won. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, delusional.

Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election. That is a fact. His losses in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona sealed his fate. It wasn't even particularly close in the Electoral College -- Joe Biden won 306 votes to Trump's 232. Trump would have had to shift 38 of those votes to his column to have won, which would have meant shifting a minimum of three of those battleground states. And there was no evidence in any of them of any sort of fraud or any other inaccuracies that would have led to flipping the state. Not one. Ipso facto, Trump lost.

The election interference case against Trump will attempt to prove that Trump both knew this and even admitted it to others on occasion. So Team Trump will attempt to prove that Trump never admitted the truth and to this day still does not believe it. Their legal argument is that Trump is deluded and nothing can change his delusion in any way -- no matter how many people tell him he is wrong and that he lost, he will never believe it.

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The Republican Party, as time goes by, has become less and less a fan of democracy. This is a direct result of both their policies being unpopular and their fealty to Donald Trump driving away voters who used to be in their camp. So they figure if they can't win a fair vote, they'll just change the rules.

This is happening in plenty of places, but all eyes will be on the anti-democratic effort in Ohio tomorrow to restrict citizens' ability to enact policies by direct democracy. Ohio Republicans, it bears pointing out, have already gerrymandered their state in extreme ways -- which leads to laughably lopsided results:

Donald J. Trump won 53.3 percent of Ohio's votes in the 2020 presidential election. But Republicans control 67 percent of seats in the State House -- and 79 percent in the State Senate.

That's some prime, grade-A gerrymandering, you've got to admit. But unfortunately for Republicans, Ohio is one of those states where long ago Progressives (and other reform-minded political parties) forced changes to wrest some political control out of the hands of the politicians and put it directly into the hands of The People. This happened way back in 1912, in Ohio.

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You'll have to excuse us for thinking that this week's momentous events were all the direct result of a lost opportunity. For all the people who are grumbling that Donald Trump should have been criminally charged with trying to subvert American democracy and the will of the people a lot earlier than now -- which, by the way, now includes Trump himself complaining that it should have happened earlier -- let's place the real blame where it belongs: on Mitch McConnell and all the other cowardly Republican senators who voted with Trump in his second impeachment trial. If McConnell and nine more GOP senators had stood firm and done the right thing back then -- mere days after the January 6th insurrection attempt -- then we simply would not be where we are now.

McConnell, weasel that he is, first delayed the start of the Senate trial (after the House impeached Trump in record time) so it wouldn't finish until after Trump left office, and then used his own inaction as an excuse not to do the right thing. He could have started the trial with plenty of time to go before Trump left office, but he didn't. Instead, he explained he was voting for Trump because people who had already left office shouldn't be subject to impeachment and removal. This, after refusing to start the trial while Trump was still in office -- a weaselly move if ever there was one.

But removal from office isn't the only penalty that can be imposed by impeachment and conviction. While an impeachment trial cannot levy punishments such as imprisonment or fines (which are reserved for the criminal justice system), it can impose political punishments, up to and including barring someone from ever holding public office again in this country. Any public office.

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Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, was arraigned today in a federal courtroom on some very serious felony charges. The most striking thing about today's events, however, was how routine they have now become. This is (depending on how you count them) either the third such indictment of Trump or the fourth (I would say third, as the previous court filing was merely a superseded indictment that beefed up his second indictment, so the two should really be seen as only one). And Trump could have one more serious indictment and arraignment in his very near future, in Fulton County, Georgia. As with just about everything to do with Trump's presidency, this is all unprecedented. But it's also becoming routine.

The media knew this, and today's coverage was a lot more low-key than it had been previously. They knew they weren't going to get any shots of Trump inside the courthouse, and they were further constrained by the fact that no helicopter/drone footage of the motorcade was possible (due to D.C. being heavily-restricted airspace, for obvious reasons). To make up for the lack, Trump allowed a media vehicle to ride with his motorcade, so we got shots through the windshield of the arrival and departure of the Trump convoy. The crowds outside the courthouse were a lot smaller, continuing a trend. And from the early accounts, even the proceedings inside the courtroom were a lot more relaxed than the previous two Trump has faced.

We're not quite at the point of: "In other news, Donald Trump was arraigned on more felony charges today -- meanwhile, in sports...." But we're certainly closer than we were in the first two arraignments.

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While it is certainly now going to be a one-subject week, I thought it'd be worth it to take a little pause between Trump's new federal criminal indictment and his impending arrest and arraignment tomorrow to take a look into an aspect of all of this that is (at least, for the moment) being overshadowed by Trump's new felony charges: what is happening at the state level. I will admit that I am partly doing this because I had at least three-quarters of yesterday's pre-indictment article already written, and it seems a shame to just toss it out. But now I have a larger point to make about six other states as well, which I'll get to at the end.

To begin with, though, here's what I had teed up for yesterday (the opening paragraph, obviously, is now out of date):

Michigan

Two weeks ago, Donald Trump revealed that Special Counsel Jack Smith had sent him a letter informing Trump that he was officially a target of an investigation into the events surrounding the failed insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Since then, the political world has been on "indictment watch," awaiting news that Trump has been indicted for even more criminal activity than he already has. This waiting game started with just the federal investigation led by Smith but has now grown to also include the investigation into Trump and his minions in Georgia (since she had previously cleared the courthouse schedule for the first three weeks in August). But so far, the indictments that have actually been handed down during this waiting period have all been for other cases dealing with other alleged crimes. The most recent of these dropped today in Michigan.

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It has been one of those days as a political commentator where you have to chuck out what you've been working on and start all over again. While I had three-fourths of a column written about new election-interference indictments handed down in Michigan today, late in the day (East Coast time) Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal grand jury indicted Donald Trump on four felony counts, all having to do with Trump's Big Lie that the 2020 election had somehow been stolen from him.

I just finished listening to Smith give his brief statement to the press and then sat down and read all 45 pages of the indictment -- which I urge everyone to take the time to do. I will doubtlessly have much more to say about it all in the coming days, but wanted to write down a few snap reactions and then indulge in a bit of speculation -- on a mystery that will likely be solved by the rest of the political journalistic world by the time the sun goes down (if they're worth their salt at all, that is): who are the six unindicted (as of yet) co-conspirators?

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