Did Wisconsin Just Offer a Glimpse of a Post-Trump Future?

Let’s start with a rare ray of good news. In Wisconsin, liberal judge Chris Taylor absolutely boat-raced her Republican opponent, Maria Lazar. The victory gives Democrats a 5–2 advantage on the Wisconsin state Supreme Court and ensures that Democrats will control the court during the 2028 presidential election cycle.

People might remember last year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race—the one that Elon Musk tried to buy, the one that became the most expensive judicial election in history. The GOP candidate lost anyway, and Democrats took control of the court for the first time in 15 years.

This year, the stakes weren’t as stark. Taylor and Lazar were running to replace a Republican judge, meaning that even if Lazar won, Republicans would still have been in the minority (3–4) on the court. Moreover, Musk and all of the Republican-aligned PACs kept their money in their pockets, meaning that Taylor was actually able to outspend Lazar. Turnout was low.

Still, Taylor didn’t just beat Lazar in the liberal strongholds of Milwaukee and Madison; she beat Lazar in rural Wisconsin, flipping 29 counties that went for Trump in 2024. In some places, she shifted those counties to the left by 33 points.

I don’t want to read too much into these results. A low-stakes, low-turnout judicial election is not really an analogue for the November midterms. But it’s another example of a problem Republicans have had throughout the Trump era: Trump voters show up for Trump; they don’t turn out in numbers when Trump’s name is not on the ballot.

The problem with running a cult of personality is that, eventually, the cult leader dies, and his personality goes with him. The post-Trump Republican Party is, frankly, unknowable at this point. Even they don’t know what they’re going to do once he’s gone. People will be vying to be “the next Trump” for the rest of our natural lives. And we simply have no idea what lies or stupidity Trump’s voters will believe next.

In the meantime, Trump’s name will not appear on any ballot this November. If Trump actually allows us to have a normal election, that could be very bad for his party.

The Bad and the Ugly

• The second-most-terrifying story this week (second to Trump’s threats to wipe out an entire civilization) was this New York Times report about silicon sampling. No, it’s not a story about tech bros licking sand to find more material for their data centers, though it would be nice if they tried that. It’s about a poll that was recently published where the responses to the poll were generated by AI. Our tech overlords are literally trying to obviate the need to ask the public their actual opinions, in an opinion poll, and instead just use AI to tell us what opinions we hold. It’s straight-up dystopian.
• A group of Latino New Yorkers has filed a massive class-action lawsuit against ICE alleging racial profiling. They argue that ICE is targeting Latinos for stops and arrests without any reasonable assessment of their citizenship status. This is precisely the scenario alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh gave his blessing to in a shadow docket ruling last year that centered on ICE’s occupation of Los Angeles. In that case, ICE’s unconstitutional racism was not the central issue, but it will be in this one when it undoubtedly makes its way to the Supreme Court in a couple of years.
• We learned this week that Justice Samuel Alito was briefly hospitalized two weeks ago for “dehydration.” I continue to believe that Alito will announce his retirement in June so he can be replaced by Trump before the midterms.
• The Third Circuit Court of Appeals blocked an attempt by the state of New Jersey to regulate Kalshi and other “prediction markets.” The court essentially said that the sites are not a form of sports gambling but are effectively contractual “swaps,” meaning that the only appropriate regulator is the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. See, to me, this only proves that commodities trading is also a form of gambling and should be regulated as such… but nooo, when rich people do it, it’s not “gambling,” it’s “finance.”  
• U.S. News & World Report released its first ranking of American law schools in 1987. Yale Law School was number one. Yale has been number one every single year that the law school rankings have existed—until now. This year’s USN rankings put Stanford at number one, with Yale falling into a tie for number two with the University of Chicago. I have not read up on the vagaries of how USN produces its rankings, so I’m just going to chalk this up to Yale finally getting dinged for producing JD Vance.

Inspired Takes

• Elizabeth Spiers goes deep on the anti-intellectualism of the tech-bro mafia for The Nation.
• I wrote last week that I think Trump is going to lose his birthright citizenship case in front of the Supreme Court. But Jay Willis writes that such a loss might only be temporary, as this case likely marks the beginning of the white-wing crusade against birthright citizenship. Since the right defeated Roe v. Wade, it has been looking for a new legal cause to motivate voters to give them continued control of the courts, and this might be it.
• Lawyer David R. Lurie wrote “A Regime of Idiots; A Complete Inventory of Trump Stooges,” in which he broke down every category of stooge Trump has surrounded himself with. This is a Darwin Award–level taxonomy of stupidity and incompetence.

Worst Argument of the Week

One of the stooges Lurie highlights—in fact, the very first stooge he highlights—is acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Blanche is a former defense lawyer for Trump, a man who got that job because no “good” lawyer would take it, and who has now leveraged his willingness to debase himself for Trump to become the top dog at the Department of Justice.

Blanche summed up his personal raison d’être at a press conference this week when he said: “If [Trump] chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’” The attorney general is supposed to be the lawyer for the American people, not the president’s number-one stan, but the guy running the joint—at least until Trump nominates his next attorney general—goes weak in the knees for the criminal in chief.

What’s wild about the elevation of Blanche is that the woman he replaced, Pam Bondi, also showed devout loyalty to Trump. She was unceremoniously fired last month—but not because she stood up to Trump or failed to carry out some policy he favored. She was fired because those policies were flatly illegal or unconstitutional, and she lost repeatedly in court.

The fact that Trump thinks Blanche can do better shows that Trump fundamentally misunderstands the nature of his problem. Trump reportedly said that Bondi lacked “smarts and guts.” He’s not wrong: Bondi showed herself to be not very smart and obviously lacked the “guts” to stand up to Trump’s maniac schemes. But Blanche is no better: He’s just as much of an intellectual lightweight as Bondi, and he appears to be even more gutless.

But finding a dumber, more pliable AG than Bondi is not going to reverse Trump’s fortunes in the lower courts. Trump loses because his orders are illegal. If he orders Blanche to do illegal things, Blanche will also lose. That’s just the way this goes. No matter how many times you jump off your roof, you will always fall, and you will likely hurt yourself unless John Roberts is there to catch you.

The assumed difference between Bondi and Blanche (or whomever Trump eventually lands on for the job—other contenders allegedly include former representative Lee Zeldin and former wino Jeanine Pirro) is that Bondi did not prosecute Trump’s political enemies, while the next AG will. But there is just no evidence that Bondi was unwilling to prosecute Trump’s enemies, or that Blanche will succeed if he does.

Unlike Trump, his political enemies have committed no crimes. There’s only so much a prosecutor can do to prosecute a person who has committed no crimes. Judges, even Trump-aligned judges, dismiss cases that are brought against people who have committed no crimes.

Bondi was a terrible AG. Blanche will be a terrible AG. Whoever Trump picks after he tires of Blanche will be a terrible AG. But I guess I disagree with many Democrats who say that the next person after Bondi will be “worse.” I think we already are at the bottom of this particular barrel. To be worse than Bondi or Blanche, you actually have to be smarter than them. More crafty. More able to sanewash Trump’s facially illegal desires into something resembling lawful conduct.

Trump does not pick smart people. He does not pick people who will redirect his worst impulses into something that can pass legal muster. He only wants sycophants, so sycophants will be all that he gets.

What I Wrote

Impeachment today, impeachment tomorrow, impeachment forever. Trump has threatened genocide against the people of Iran, and we have to try to remove him from office, I wrote.

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

It’s tax season. I don’t know anything about “taxes”; my wife is the mathlete in the family. I also don’t know about tax law. My theory is that you can only be intellectually present for a finite number of legal classes before your brain rebels out of sheer boredom and makes you seek the dopamine rush of illicit drugs, so “tax” was the time I allowed my brain to go fallow and play Everquest in law school.

But while doomscrolling social media this week, I saw that The Washington Post re-promoted a story from earlier this year (I no longer subscribe) about a lawyer suing the IRS to get her dog claimed as a dependent for tax purposes.

I have thoughts on this! Not expert tax-law thoughts (again, snooooooze), but general animal-law thoughts (a seminar in which I did pay attention). Here is my unified theory of everything when it comes to animal law: We need an entirely different category of law for animals.

I know that sounds circular, but hear me out. Currently, the law treats animals, including pets, as mere “property.” We have some laws that deal with animal cruelty (laws that are woefully under-enforced, as I’ve written about before)—but in the main, animals are the property of their “owners,” who are free to do with them as they please, within reason.

This is wrong. Animals are not property. They’re not inanimate objects. The law should not treat them like a semiconscious throw rug or office furniture that occasionally poops.

The most commonly proposed alternative to the current state of the law is to give animals people rights, and treat them like something approaching human children. This is also wrong. Animals are not people. They’re not children. And whenever I think about how inadequately this country protects actual children—from school shootings to Epstein to the environment—the idea of people running up to me to tell me that their freaking dog deserves the same rights we can’t even secure for my Black-ass kids just makes me angry.

Of course, I love our family dog with nearly the same passion that I have for my human children, so I get where people are coming from. Which is why I believe so strongly that protecting these precious beasts by analogy to things they are not does them a disservice. They’re not property, not children—they are their own thing and should be treated as their own thing under the law.

Does a person have a right to tax relief for taking care of their dog? No. Of course not. It’s a fucking dog. Pay your taxes so human children can have roads and schools. But should a person be able to access affordable healthcare for their pup? Of course. It’s a fucking dog, a living, breathing animal who should not have to suffer while the owner makes a choice between food and healthcare. (I’m focusing on dogs, because I’m allergic to cats and also don’t trust them, but, you know, cats, bears, snakes, Philadelphia Phillies fans, insert your animal of choice). Should a dog have rights that extend to it regardless of who “owns” it? Yes. Does that mean I can’t put my dog on a leash because I’d never do that to my kids? No. And also, don’t tempt me with leashes for kids.

I haven’t thought through all the contours and possible permutations of this. As with any legal canon, it would be developed over time. In my own version, I tend to make a hard distinction between animals that are delicious and animals that are not, but I’m not sure if such a distinction could or should hold up in court.

My simple point is this: Animals should have rights. Those rights should not fall under property rights and should also be different from people rights. Those rights should flow to the animals, not the people claiming ownership over the animals.

And, yes, thinking of a more robust conception of animal rights naturally leads to a much more robust conception of environmental rights for all the animals we thankfully have not yet caged or driven to extinction. Thanks for asking.

***

If you enjoyed this installment of Elie v. U.S., click here to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Friday.