We may get to a crossroads this week over the situation Senator Dianne Feinstein's absence in Washington has created. But that's not the same thing as the problem actually being resolved, which could take longer. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is reportedly going to call for a vote on temporarily replacing Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee, while still allowing her to keep her Senate seat. Not having Feinstein in Washington impacts the Democrats' ability to round up enough votes -- but not in a critical way -- for Senate floor votes. Not having Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee, however, has meant the halt of Biden judicial nominees getting expedited committee votes to move their nominations to the floor. That is a much more serious matter.

What seems likely to happen next is that Schumer will call for "unanimous consent" to approve the temporary committee assignment shuffle. However, any single senator can block this move, and two Republicans have already indicated they are going to do so (Tim Cotton and Marsha Blackburn). Which means the motion for unanimous consent will fail.

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There's a new reality in American politics, and one political party is reaping the benefits of it while the other is trapped in a downward spiral of ever-increasing extremism. Some Republicans are beginning to understand the power of the sleeping giant they have awoken, but there's really no easy way out from the conundrum they have created for themselves. Abortion is going to be a potent political issue for at least the next few elections, and Republicans' only answer so far is to double down, triple down, or quadruple down on forcing the most extreme positions they can come up with on as many of the American people as they possibly can.

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The ranks of the 2024 Republican presidential field just grew by one. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina is the new entrant, but at this point (with the exception of Ron DeSantis) it really looks for all the world like nothing more than a race to be Donald Trump's vice-presidential pick. I say that for two reasons -- the fact that so far no one else other than DeSantis has gotten any sort of traction at all in the polls, and the fact that none of the candidates have really directly taken on Trump in any meaningful way. To put it another way: there still isn't an "anti-Trump" candidate in the running.

Officially, there aren't that many people actually running yet. Scott, for instance, didn't even announce that he was about to officially announce his bid -- instead he merely indicated that at some unspecified point in the future he would probably be making an announcement about his upcoming official announcement. In Washington-speak, he "formed a presidential exploratory committee." Which is official enough, for our purposes -- it's more than some others have done yet.

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Senator Dianne Feinstein is not back at work. This means that since February, the citizens of California have only been represented in the Senate by a single senator. Which, in a 51-49 Senate, is starting to become a problem. Feinstein has already said she will be retiring instead of seeking re-election in 2024, but she had planned on finishing her term before stepping down. Three prominent Democrats have already begun campaigning for her seat. But if she doesn't finish her term, then it's going to upset the entire Senate election applecart.

Even though I live in California, I hadn't really realized how long Feinstein's absence has been. She was diagnosed with shingles (which I have heard is a particularly painful disease to contract), and she was hospitalized for treatment. She is now out of the hospital and resting at her home in San Francisco. And she is 89 years old.

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You can choose your metaphor for the bind the Republican Party has created for itself on the issue of abortion. The most popular (since it seems to be the most fitting) is that they are the dog who finally caught the car and now don't know what to do with it. Or maybe they've painted themselves into a corner and are now trapped on a shrinking piece of political real estate. But I'm going to start this off with a different one: Republicans riding down a very slippery slope on a toboggan.

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Republicans seem to be increasingly fond of using the levers of government -- any levers of government they control -- to get their own way, no matter what. Perhaps this was spurred by Donald Trump's attitudes (and/or lawlessness) or perhaps it is the end result of a gradual Republican slide towards authoritarianism, but whatever the actual cause Republicans are now engaged in rather extraordinary uses of government power to punish those whose political opinions they disagree with. This is a far cry from the traditional Republican stance against "Big Government" it should be noted -- just one more in a long list of previous ideological positions they have completely abandoned in the Trumpian era. They now seem to have settled on: "The era of Big (Republican) Government is at hand!" as a guiding principle.

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Today's Republican Party is not just the Party of Trump, it also is now the Party of Trumpism -- or to put it in plainer terms: authoritarianism. "We're going to do whatever we want to do, because we can" seems to be the new rallying slogan for Republicans. Never mind what the public thinks or wants, never mind the possible political backlash, it's just going to be full steam ahead for as long as they can get away with it.

The week began with the new episode of the continuing saga of The Trump Circus (this week's episode: "Merry Arrestmas!"), where the nation was treated to the spectacle of a former president being charged with 34 felonies in New York City. The best single sentence summing up the day's events came from a Washington Post article:

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The Tennessee state house chamber just took a step down a very dangerous path. It voted to expel one of its members on purely partisan lines (this is as of this writing -- votes on expelling two others are expected shortly). Expulsion has historically been used only in the most drastic and serious instances, such as when a member has been convicted of a crime but refuses to resign their seat. This time around, three Democrats are up for expulsion for mounting a political protest on the chamber's floor. That's it -- there was no other underlying reason. They're getting kicked out for being rude.

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Significant political news was made yesterday, and it happened far from a New York courtroom. Two elections were held, in Wisconsin and Chicago, and in both cases the progressive candidate emerged victorious. This will have some wider repercussions on the Democratic Party, so it's worth taking a look at what just happened in a little more detail.

Wisconsin Supreme Court

This was the big one, both for those who live in Wisconsin and for Democrats in general. A seat on Wisconsin's Supreme Court opened up, when a conservative retired at the end of her term rather than seek re-election. The balance of power on the court had been 4-3 towards the conservatives, which had empowered the rest of the state's Republicans to go on an ideological spree that reaches back to the days of Governor Scott Walker. The Wisconsin Supreme Court came within one vote of overturning their electoral results in 2020 and throwing the election to Donald Trump, which shows how conservative this court has been (one lone conservative voted against doing so, which saved us all from such a disastrous and undemocratic outcome). So the race for the swing vote was a very big deal indeed.

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[Written before Trump's evening remarks]

As I write this, America is in an extended intermission between Act 1 and Act 2 of today's political drama. Donald Trump has surrendered himself to the New York authorities, been arraigned, been charged with 34 felonies, and been released. He is currently en route to Florida, where he will later give a speech and/or press conference from his own golf resort.

The television networks heavily covered the morning's events and I expect they will break into regular programming once again for Trump's comments. Indictment or not, this is the type of breathless news coverage Trump has been missing, so I expect he'll be back to his old self for his remarks, revelling in the nationwide attention.

I have not read the legal filings yet, so I am going to refrain from commenting on the relative weakness or strength of the actual charges. There'll be plenty of time to do so later. Instead I merely offer up a few observations from watching the day's events unfold.

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