Dem
47
GOP
53
For readers who care about, well, people, the above item is a bit of a downer. It's possible that this one will lift folks' spirits, because Donald Trump and his administration suffered a trio of unusually high-profile setbacks yesterday.
We're going to organize this by geography, working north to south, since we can't think of a better option. We're going to assign the first setback to northeast Pennsylvania, because that is where Kilmar Abrego Garcia was being held, at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center. Yesterday, Judge Paula Xinis, who sits as part of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, ruled that the White House has failed to produce any of the necessary documents or evidence to justify the continued incarceration of Abrego Garcia, and so she ordered him released, immediately.
The fundamental problem here, for those who are fuzzy on the details, is that the charges against Abrego Garcia were trumped up (literally and metaphorically), apparently because he was detained by accident in the first place. There is little chance of an actual conviction from an American court, so the administration really wanted to send Abrego Garcia abroad, ideally to the most hellish hellhole they could find. But no nation, even the hellholes, would take him. So, facing the business end of Xinis' gavel, the administration has apparently already released Abrego Garcia. They say they will appeal, and it's also possible they'll find yet another excuse to pick him up and detain him. But maybe, just maybe, the administration will finally accept that this one is a loser, and is not worth any more black eyes, and will leave him and his family in peace. That would not only be the right thing to do, it would be the smart thing, even if Stephen Miller thinks otherwise.
Next up, since it's definitely south of northern Pennsylvania, is Indianapolis, IN. There, the Indiana state Senate held its long-awaited vote on redistricting. And the senators poked Trump in the eye, bigly. When we wrote our sorta preview of the vote, we implied that there might just be enough Democrats and anti-gerrymandering Republicans to eke out a victory. We were not correct about that. In fact, the final vote was 31-18 against. That 31 is all of the Democrats in the chamber, plus 21 Republican members. Put another way, even a majority of Republican state senators voted against the bill. This despite a relentless pressure campaign from the Trump administration.
Now that Trump has definitively lost, he and his allies are threatening revenge against the 21 apostates. We wonder if he, and the angry supporters (e.g., Turning Point USA) who are promising to back his campaign of recrimination, will actually follow through in 6 months (Indiana's primaries are on May 5). Between now and then, Trump will end up in a hundred more catfights, and will train his sights on dozens and dozens of additional enemies. Might the Hoosiers eventually drop off the list? It's possible.
If Trump & Co. do attempt to take revenge, then that will be a monumentally stupid, and an incredibly selfish and childish, decision. But inasmuch as Trump regularly does things that are stupid, selfish and childish, that is certainly possible. To start, as we have already pointed out, it's going to be all hands (and all dollars) on deck time for the GOP in 2026, and it is incredibly foolish to waste resources on internecine squabbles. To paraphrase LBJ, you want everyone inside the tent pissing out, not inside the tent pissing on each other.
On top of that, those 21 Republicans are also politicians, and they have a better sense of dynamics of their home district than do Donald Trump, or Mike Johnson, or Trump's pollster Tony Fabrizio. It is improbable that all 21 of them decided to fall on their swords, and to sacrifice their careers, all at the same time. Surely they must have good reason to believe that voting against the bill is more politically viable than voting for it. So, if Trump tries to take them all down, he risks yet another black eye if a whole bunch of them (or all of them) survive.
And speaking of the politics of the situation, we have not really been able to understand why Hoosier Republican voters so dislike this gerrymandering push, other than the general anti-gerrymandering arguments about fairness and representation. We read a few pieces on the subject, and they weren't particularly enlightening. We did get an e-mail from reader R.K. in Indianapolis on the subject, however:
I was raised in Indiana and have lived here for most of my life and have been following the redistricting news with particular interest since it turned to Indiana. While I don't believe your analysis of some of the reasons why Indiana was the first to refuse the redistricting call of Trump was wrong, I believe there is an element you're missing that was highlighted by State Senator Spencer Deery (R) where he said "As long as I have breath, I will use my voice to resist a federal government that attempts to bully, direct, and control this state or any state."
Quite simply, Indiana has a pretty significant Little Brother Syndrome streak throughout the state and wants to be seen as Very Important and worth taking seriously. This is why we have put so much effort into sports hosting (Amateur Sports Capital of the World!) and why Barack Obama won here in 2008 (the Democratic primaries were decided in Indiana that year, so they had to actually show up and talk to us!). This Little Brother Syndrome also infects the local politicians to the breaking point you just saw here, where the more the federal government tried to strong-arm the local politicians, the more local politicians fought back on impulse to say "No, you don't get to take away our autonomy. We matter too!"
Throw in a couple weeks of national attention for Indiana and fawning articles about how brave those Republican senators were for standing up to Trump, and I highly doubt many of them have to worry about their jobs for quite a while.
Sounds very plausible to us. And if you're trying to decide whether you should trust our assessment of Indiana politics, or R.K. in Indianapolis' assessment, we suggest you really ought to go with R.K. in Indianapolis.
After the matter was decided, Johnson talked to reporters and said it really doesn't matter, and he's still bullish on the Republicans' prospects in Indiana. When we saw that, it immediately brought to mind a word that has a lot of the same letters as "bullish," and they are even in a similar order. Keep in mind that the whole point here was to break up a D+21 district. There is NO WAY a district like that flips, pretty much ever. Certainly not under the conditions likely to be in effect next year. When a politician peddles obvious spin, they have to make it seem like they believe it. There is no way Johnson believes this kind of tripe, which is why we are generally unimpressed with his skillz (and yes, we deliberately spelled that with a 'z').
And now, our final stop, in Alexandria, VA. For the second time in as many weeks, the administration tried to indict New York AG Letitia James for mortgage fraud. And for the second time in as many weeks, the administration failed to indict New York AG Letitia James for mortgage fraud, as a grand jury once again refused to buy what the government's attorneys were selling. We shall now state the obvious, namely that if Trump & Co. can't even get a grand jury indictment, there is no way they get a jury conviction.
We are not sure what the administration thinks it is achieving with this crusade against James. Is it exciting the base that Trump is taking on a Black woman? Maybe, but we doubt it, especially because he also keeps losing to that very same Black woman. We assume that the whole thing is just an outlet for Trump's rage, and it makes him feel better that he's making her jump through hoops and that he's forcing her to pay for legal representation (though we wonder if there's maybe some sort of GoFundMe that is helping defray those costs).
Whatever is going on with James, the fact is that Trump's shtick has always been "tough" and "powerful" and "winner." And every time he gets beaten, part of the facade crumbles away. With the New York AG, as with Abrego Garcia, as with the Indiana senators, just dropping the matter isn't merely the decent thing to do, it's the smart thing to do. But this is not an administration, or a president, known for doing the smart thing. (Z)