Lindsay Beyerstein

Before leaving office, President Joe Biden announced that the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution had been ratified. A few days later, Donald Trump, an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon, took Biden’s place as the president of the United States.

The contrast could not be more stark.

In a Trump administration, rape is a career-booster. And why not? For the narcissist-in-chief, slavish emulation is the sincerest form of flattery. Trump has been accused of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment by at least 26 women since the 1970s, including his ex-wife Ivana and writer E. Jean Carroll....

Donald Trump campaigned against consensual reality and won. Every plank of his platform – from the economy to immigration to abortion – was based on easily provable lies.

Despite Trump’s bombastic assertions to the contrary, inflation is down, growth is up, illegal border crossings are down, crime is down, and vaccines work great. Tariffs are taxes on imports and American companies say they’re planning to raise prices.

None of that mattered at the polls because Trump created a conspiracist permission structure to ignore the facts and focus on hate....

You wouldn’t expect a presidential candidate to make a massive middle class tax hike the centerpiece of his economic platform, but that’s exactly what Donald Trump is doing.

Trump has vowed to slap a 20 percent tax on all imports, a 60 percent tax on all Chinese imports and a 2,000 percent tax on imported cars.

These taxes are known as tariffs. Everything from tequila to video game consoles would cost more. Trump’s tariffs would cost the average family nearly $4,000 a year and rising prices would accelerate inflation....

A snarky aside from a Republican special counsel, lackluster presidential poll numbers and a pass on a Super Bowl interview have plunged certain pundits into full-blown, sweaty-palmed panic.

Ezra Klein of the Times, Damon Linker of The Atlantic, and Substacker Nate Silver say president Joe Biden should refuse to seek a second term despite his outstanding record in office because … he seems kind of old.

Klein and Linker propose instead that Biden release the delegates he wins in the primary to choose the Democratic nominee at the party’s convention in late August. This proposal is madness. If punditry had standards, it would be malpractice....

The Harvard-educated Chesebro pled guilty in October to a single felony count of conspiring to file false documents in Georgia.

This was a generous plea deal given that Chesebro conceived the massive fake electors’ scheme and micromanaged its execution

The attorney general of Nevada announced that six fake electors, including the chair and vice chair of the Nevada GOP, have been indicted for their bid to steal the 2020 election for Donald Trump. ...