It’s rare to simultaneously feel red-hot anger and wistfulness,
-- especially when merely reading a document.

But those are exactly the emotions that washed over me when I read the redacted version of special counsel Jack Smith’s brief reciting in detail the evidence against Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election.

The #anger is at the #Supreme #Court for depriving the American people of the chance for a full public airing of Donald Trump’s attempt to use fraud and trickery to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory before voters consider whether to put Trump back in office beginning January 2025.

The #wistfulness comes with the recognition that there is about an even chance that this will be the last evidence produced by the federal government of this nefarious plot.

If Donald Trump wins election next month, the end of this prosecution is certain and the risks of future election subversion heightened.

slate.com/news-and-politics/20…

Jack Smith’s Big New Jan. 6 Brief Is a Major Indictment of the Supreme Court

The newly unsealed document contains the most detailed evidence of Trump’s attempts to subvert the election yet.

^{Richard L. Hasen (Slate)}

Two men recognized and exploited the anti-democratic loopholes within America’s rickety democracy
-- in order to deliver Republicans victories that they could never win at the ballot box.

Now their willfully minoritarian creations threaten the very essence of a representative democracy:

if Donald #Trump, rightwing courts, #gerrymandered state legislatures and an extreme Republican #caucus in the US House of Representatives create constitutional #chaos over the certification of this presidential election, 👉two men cleared the path.

The single-minded determination of #Leonard #Leo built a conservative supermajority on the US #supreme #court and ♦️stacked lower and state courts with Republican #ideologues that have pushed the nation to the right via the least accountable branch of government.

#Chris #Jankowski masterminded the partisan #gerrymanders that ♦️tilted state legislatures and congressional delegations across the south and the purple midwest toward extreme Republicans,
♦️ended Barack Obama’s second term before it started, and ♦️rendered elections in Wisconsinand North Carolina all but meaningless over the last decade and a half.

Leo and Jankowski understood, separately, that the courts and state legislatures were undervalued and often undefended targets for a deliberate strategy aimed at capturing important levers of power that sometimes float under the radar.

They could be Moneyball-ed, to borrow the term Michael Lewis used in his book about how the Oakland A’s made an end-run around large-market teams by understanding value that their opponents overlooked.

What Leo and Jankowski built separately would soon reinforce the other’s creation (with, of course, crucial assists from chief justice #John #Roberts), tightening the knots around meaningful elections, pushing policy to the extreme right and 💥making it nearly impossible for voters to do anything about it

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Two men have re-engineered the US electoral system in favor of Republicans

If the right strews constitutional chaos over the certification of this presidential election, two people will have cleared the path

^{Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)}