This article is produced as a collaboration between Bolts and Mother Jones.

For the first time since the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020, voters in Minneapolis and greater Hennepin County will vote for their new top prosecutor. County Attorney Michael Freeman, whose office came under intense scrutiny that summer over racial disparities and its handling of police brutality, announced last fall he was not seeking re-election. An August primary cut a crowded field down to two candidates: Mary Moriarty, the county’s former chief public defender who regularly clashed with Freeman during her tenure, and Martha Holton Dimick, a judge who used to work for Freeman’s predecessor, Senator Amy Klobuchar. 

The candidates embody two sides of a debate that has divided Minneapolis and the nation since the summer of 2020. Moriarty is carrying the mantle of progressive criminal justice reform. Amidst a surge in homicides, Holton Dimick strives for a more traditional law and order agenda, and often seems outright hostile to the prospect of wielding the prosecutor’s office for the purpose of reform. 

“A referendum on what we want to do as a community moving forward since George Floyd was murdered,” is how Malaika Eban, the Deputy Director at the Minneapolis-based Legal Rights Center, described the race for Hennepin County Attorney. “Even though this is a nonpartisan race, [the candidates] have been offering two really different perspectives on what to do in order to keep our community safe,” she added. 

Floyd’s killing on a south Minneapolis street corner in 2020 sparked a historic nationwide outpouring of protest and debate over policing and racism in America. This call for a less punitive, less racist system of policing dovetailed with the aims of reform-minded prosecutors in cities around the US who have leveraged the discretion held within district attorney’s offices in an attempt to undo mass incarceration. But since 2020 reform critics have invoked the rise in violent crime around the country to push back, and they often use Minneapolis as an example in their arguments about how criminal justice reform has gone too far. 

In a rambling letter responding to the January 6 committee, Donald Trump waxed nonsense about a witch hunt, Black Lives Matter, and television ratings—littering the entire document with his trademark chaotic capitalizations and election lies. But despite dedicating 14 pages to the matter, the former president declined to answer the only question of consequence: whether he’ll comply with the committee’s subpoena and finally testify.

That, of course, was likely the point. After all, if you wanted to convey useful information, you probably wouldn’t kick off a letter to Congress with, “THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!” While much of the document recycles his false electoral conspiracy theories—you can take a full tour of the letter here if you have the patience for that kind of stuff—I feel the need to call out the appendix:

What you see above transcends an ordinary, sloppily done Microsoft Word, import-images job. It’s also a snapshot into the mind of a former president nearly two years after his historically disgraceful departure from the White House. Does he seem overly concerned with his ever-mounting legal woes? No, and we have plenty of other publicly available evidence to support that inkling, such as Trump having the gall to start something called “Trump Organization II” while being sued for financial fraud. Instead, Trump continues to obsess over seemingly pointless details, in this case, crowd size. He logs paragraphs worth of complaints in a letter to lawmakers about how the media failed to give him credit for attracting a large audience to the rally that proceeded the attack on the US Capitol. Here’s a glimpse:

The massive size of this crowd, and its meaning, has never been a subject of your Committee, nor has it been discussed by the Fake News Media that absolutely refuses to acknowledge, in any way, shape or form, the magnitude of what was taking place. In fact, for such a historic event, there are very few pictures that accurately show the event, or how many people were really there. Incredibly, it seems that pictures showing the size of the event were perhaps cancelled, scrubbed, deleted or, in any event, not available, but we still have some—as attached.

So, there we have it. Not long before an all-but-certain announcement heralding his future attempt to storm his way back into the White House, Donald Trump is here to remind you that in addition to being a menace to democracy, an unabashed bigot, and general terror—he’s also just a small-minded boy, writing hate mail to the January 6 committee, whining about crowd sizes. 

Clarence Larkin’s commentary on THE BOOK OF REVELATION is written LIKE THIS, crafted with occasional capitalizations to emphasize IMAGES and TERMS. Reading it doesn’t feel like being shouted at but rather kind and intimate, as though he’s DIRECTING our attention in the same way a CHILD is directed to look at CARDINALS and CATERPILLARS during NATURE WALKS. Larkin directs the reader to symbols like THE SEVEN SEALS, a kingdom made of STONE, and the NEW HEAVEN and NEW EARTH. As a writing style, its effect is in guiding the EYE to see ONE THING over another. Eventually we’re pointed to this: a vision of the New City. There shall be NO NIGHT there: they need no candle, neither light of the Sun; for the Lord God giveth them LIGHT; and THEY SHALL REIGN FOR EVER and EVER.

***

I grew up in Willoughby, Ohio, the supposed subject of the Twilight Zone episode “A Stop at Willoughby” (1960), in which a man falls asleep during his daily commute and DREAMS of a train station for a UTOPIAN TOWN. The opening narration begins: “This is Gart Williams, age thirty-eight, a man protected by a suit of armor, all held together by one bolt. Just a moment ago, someone removed the bolt, and Mr. Williams’s protection fell away and left him a naked target.” A naked target, the episode suggests, for virulent daydreaming. It’s a cold winter, and Gart is an advertising executive so beleaguered by both wife and boss that his only respite is the commute he spends dreaming of a better place. As his life spirals horrific—his wife thinks he’s a coward, he fails at his job—Willoughby from the window waxes idyllic: parasols, pushcarts, summertime in 1888. It is a backward-looking fantasy, one he indulges in daily while sleeping.

My Policeman is quiet and understated – and 'the opposite of explosive'

We check in with some of football’s most important Steves: Steven Gerrard, Steve Cooper, and... Steve Bruce. Oh no, there’s more.

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On the spring day last year the Supreme Court announced it would hear a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, Sarah Lipton-Lubet knew immediately how the case would end: the court, stacked with six conservative Justices, would kill the right to abortion. A veteran reproductive rights advocate and lawyer who was consulting for multiple reproductive rights groups at the time, her realization was followed by another: She needed a new job. She’d spent the better part of two decades fighting for abortion access, relying on a backbone of judicial decisions that upheld reproductive rights—and on the premise of a Supreme Court that would uphold those precedents. But that wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

“Simply trying to move around the pieces on the playing field that existed was not going to treat this like the crisis that it was, the crisis that it is now.” Instead of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, she needed to plug the hole and right the ship. About two months later, she became executive director of Take Back the Court. This is an advocacy group that since 2018 has been leading the movement to add four justices to the Supreme Court and dethrone the conservative majority that now controls it. With the legal precedent central to her previous work now dead, Lipton-Lubet is fighting to change the make-up of the court before every other progressive priority goes the way of Roe. “I’ve never felt more hopeful about my work,” she says.

The movement to reform the Supreme Court is gaining momentum and credibility at a rapid pace in large part because of people like Lipton-Lubet—advocates for progressive causes who watched the ascension of Trump-appointed justices to ill-gotten seats on the bench and have now concluded that their life’s work can never be realized if the Supreme Court’s current conservative majority remains in power.

Staring down the court’s new term, which began last week, reform feels even more urgent. The court stands poised to allow more pollution of America’s water, to end affirmative action in college admissions, to give businesses the right to discriminate against LGBTQ people, and to green light gerrymandering schemes that disempower people of color. And that’s just the big cases in the term’s first three months. This is worse than a nightmare for the left, as SCOTUSBlog founder Tom Goldstein explained in July, because “you wake up from a nightmare and it’s over at some point.” But this court’s rulings will shape American life “for the next quarter century.”

Once considered both practically impossible and political suicide, there are now roughly 63 members of Congress who’ve sponsored legislation to expand the court, with several more behind legislation to impose term limits on the justices. Under pressure from the left, President Joe Biden summoned a commission to study Supreme Court reform, including court expansion, something inconceivable just a few years ago. On the heels of the high court’s decision to undo abortion rights this summer, advocacy groups focused on reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, gun control, environmental issues, and climate change have all, for the first time, begun advocating for added justices.

From Alien to Triangle of Sadness, the power of the gross-out scene

Feel sympathy for the members of the January 6 House Select Committee.

They were handed a task simultaneously easy and arduous: demonstrating to the American public that a president—fully supported by one of the nation’s two main political parties—plotted to overturn election results to remain in office, incited violence to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, and on the day of the riot willfully and malevolently abandoned his duties as a defender of the Constitution.

This is akin to arguing the case that the sky is blue. It’s a simple proposition—unless you are addressing people who refuse to believe reality. The committee’s investigation has confirmed and expanded the ugly story of January 6, reinforcing its importance for Americans who already feared the Trumpian war on democracy, and perhaps encouraging those who haven’t paid close attention to the consequences and implications of that day to do so.  Persuading Trumpland was never in the cards. The sky there is not blue.

The committee’s hearing on Thursday—which is assumed to be its last before the midterm elections, and perhaps its final public session (especially if the Republicans win back the House)—was a retelling of Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election, with a few new and startling pieces of evidence sprinkled in.

A key element of demagoguery and authoritarianism is to deny truth, and Trump has illustrated the power of relentless disinformation.

The sordid basic details are well established: Trump prepared to declare victory and claim the election was rigged even before Election Day. Afterward, he hurled a multitude of false allegations and promoted unsubstantiated and loony conspiracy theories. He initiated multiple (and perhaps illegal) schemes to overturn the results, pressuring state leaders, Department of Justice officials and, ultimately, his own vice president, to join the various plots. He encouraged his irrationally irate supporters to flock to Washington on January 6 and then, though he’d been told that many in the crowd were armed with weapons and tactical equipment, urged them to march on the Capitol. As the insurrectionist riot spread, he inflamed the marauders with a tweet attacking VP Mike Pence, watched the violence unfold on Fox News, and for hours did nothing to call off his cherished mob.

The congressional committee investigating January 6 on Thursday revealed new evidence that Donald Trump had a preexisting plan to falsely declare victory on election night in 2020—part of a plot to use made-up voting fraud claims in an attempt to retain power.

For the second time, the committee played leaked audio first reported by Mother Jones in which Trump adviser Steve Bannon, during an October 31, 2020, meeting, said that Trump had a “strategy” to prematurely assert he had won on Election Day. Explaining the so-called “red mirage,” in which Trump would show early leads in key states before mail-in ballots favoring Joe Biden were counted, Bannon said: “Trump’s going to take advantage of it. That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”

“He’s gonna declare victory,” Bannon said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”

On November 1, 2020, before Election Day, Axios first reported Trump’s plan. But Trump denied it at the time. And he and his supporters have since claimed that he was not lying when he announced—just hours after the polls had closed—that he had won. He legitimately believed election fraud cost him victory, they claim.

The committee, however, presented new evidence Thursday that Trump actually knew he had lost—he admitted it to aides—and that his victory declaration was part of plan to rally his supporters to help him stay in office anyway.

New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a judge on Thursday to appoint an independent financial monitor to oversee Donald Trump’s finances until her $250 million civil fraud lawsuit against him is resolved. James cited what she said was ongoing evidence of continuing fraud on the part of Trump and his company, including the creation of an entirely new corporate entity named “Trump Organization II LLC” on September 21, the same day James originally filed her suit. The new company could be part of an attempt to hide assets, James said.

James’ lawsuit accuses Trump, his adult children, and his companies of fraudulently manipulating statements detailing the former president’s net worth to get better deals from banks and insurance companies. 

“Since we filed this sweeping lawsuit last month, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization have continued those same fraudulent practices and taken measures to evade responsibility,” James said in a statement Thursday. “Today, we are seeking an immediate stop to these actions because Mr. Trump should not get to play by different rules.”

Besides asking for $250 million to make up for the financial benefits James says the Trumps improperly received thanks to fraud, James is also asking that the Trumps and Trump’s companies lose their business licenses to operate in New York and be banned from commercial real estate transactions for five years. Obviously, the newly created company was not a target of James’ suit and, for now at least, is not included on the list of companies that could be punished if her suit is successful. James’ filing on Thursday asks a judge to order the Trumps not to transfer their assets in an effort to escape her jurisdiction. James also wants the judge to require that any efforts by the Trumps to move assets be approved in advance by the court. Finally, James is requesting the appointment of an independent overseer to monitor Trump’s finances to make sure he’s complying with all of the rules. 

Trump’s attorney in the case, Alina Habba, did not return a request for comment. However, in an email from Habba to James’ office that James included with her filing on Thursday, Habba wrote that her clients have no problem agreeing not to remove assets from James’ jurisdiction.