Following former President Trump’s first criminal conviction—and his rambling against the outcome—he’s claiming that the possibility of being sentenced to house arrest or jail time doesn’t bother him.

“I’m okay with it,” Trump said on Fox & Friends Weekend, in his first interview since a dozen jurors handed down guilty verdicts on 34 of 34 felony charges for falsifying business records on Thursday.

The Fox & Friends hosts said they spent 90 minutes interviewing the former president at his Bedminster, New Jersey estate. In the 11-minute clip that aired Sunday, Trump ranted and repeated many of his complaints about the case and his political opponents: the people trying to hold him accountable are “deranged,” the trial was “a scam,” President Biden “can’t put two sentences together,” Democrats are “a threat to democracy.” Trump also called the guilty verdict, which he plans to appeal, “tougher on my family than it is for me.”

And, ever the martyr, the former president added that he thinks a sentence of jail or house arrest would throw his adoring public into upheaval. “I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” he said. “I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

But that remains to be seen. A CBS News/YouGov poll released today found that while 45 percent of respondents thought Trump should not serve prison time for the conviction, 38 percent think he should, with 17 percent unsure. An ABC/Ipsos poll found that half of Americans agree with the verdict—and nearly as many, 49 percent, think Trump should end his presidential campaign because of it.

Meanwhile, top Republicans are privately bracing for the possibility that their presumptive nominee may be incarcerated when the party officially nominates him at July’s Republican National Convention, according to a report on CBS’ Face the Nation. The former president’s sentencing is set for July 11; the four-day RNC kicks off in Milwaukee on July 15.

Some legal experts think Trump’s chances of jail time are slim given his age, 77, and his lack of a criminal record. He could simply be sentenced to probation. But incarceration is certainly possible, especially given Trump’s repeated violations of a gag order barring him from “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” remarks about witnesses, jurors, court workers, and their families.

One thing is for sure: Jail time wouldn’t stop his campaign. “He is running for president,” Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, told the BBC on Sunday. “Nothing will change there.”

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who previously called January 6 rioters “insurrectionists” who “should face the full extent of federal law,” is now singing a different tune: Many of those insurrectionists, he believes, should be “considered” for, and receive, presidential pardons.

On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Cotton said people “who did not attack a law enforcement officer, [and] who did not damage public property ” on Jan. 6 should be “considered” for a pardon.

“Anyone who is charged with silly misdemeanors about parading on public grounds without a permit, who did not attack a law enforcement officer, who did not damage public property, their pardon should be considered—in many cases, I would say it should be granted,” Cotton said. (As Meet the Press fill-in host Peter Alexander pointed out, that’s different from Trump’s recent pledge to pardon all of the more than 800 rioters who have been sentenced, whom he has called “hostages” and “political prisoners.”)

The senator went on to insist that he believes the Supreme Court will soon erase the insurrectionists’ convictions anyway, referring to Fischer v. US, the case focused on the Justice Department’s use of the “obstructing an official proceeding” charge against January 6 participants. (As my colleague Dan Friedman wrote, a favorable ruling for the rioters could disrupt the convictions of 350 participants; as Dan also wrote, it’s not clear how the high court will rule in the case, contrary to Cotton’s claims that it’ll be a slam-dunk for the rioters. A decision is expected by the end of the month.)

Cotton’s change of heart over the treatment of the insurrectionists under the law may have something to do with his rumored status as an increasingly attractive contender as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee, according to a New York Times report published last week. The Times report, which cites three anonymous people close to Trump, says the now–convicted felon sees Cotton as disciplined and an effective communicator, and likes the fact that he served in the Army and is a fellow Ivy League graduate.

Another part of his apparent VP audition on Meet the Press this morning came when Cotton—who voted to certify the 2020 election results—said that, while he does not believe that Congress has the authority to reject electors certified by states, he’d only accept this year’s results “if it’s a fair and a free election.”

“Any candidate of any party has a perfect right to pursue legal remedies if they believe there’s been fraud or cheating in an election,” Cotton said. Trump and his allies, of course, made use of this right, filing more than 60 court cases challenging the results of the 2020 contest. All but one failed; the sole legal victory was on a technical matter in Pennsylvania, and would not have changed the election outcome in the state, where Biden won by more than 80,000 votes, according to USA Today.

Other rumored Trump VP contenders have played the same game as Cotton, publicly reversing their previously articulated positions to align with Trump’s, or walking back previous criticisms of him. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have all gone on television and, in various ways, refused to commit to certifying this year’s election results no matter who wins—even though Scott and Rubio both voted to certify the 2020 results. (Vance was not yet in office in 2020, and has since said he would not have certified the results. Stefanik voted to overturn them.)

But for all his posturing, when this morning’s interview turned to talk about Trump’s VP shortlist, Cotton played coy. “I suspect only he knows who’s on his short list,” Cotton said of Trump. “I have not talked to the president or his campaign about his vice-presidential selection or any position in his administration.”

He added, “Any great patriot, if offered a chance to serve our country by the president, would have to consider it seriously.”

And any aspiring Trump VP, it appears, has to abandon their convictions and fall in line with the ex-president to be seriously considered for the job.

In April of 2023, right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder announced that he and his wife, Hilary, were divorcing—an event, he explained to listeners of Louder with Crowder, to which he did not consent. She “didn’t want to be married anymore,” he said, “and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted.”  

Crowder, upset, lamented: “My beliefs don’t matter.” 

His venting—which did not include the context of potential abuse he inflicted; a video from 2021 surfaced soon after Crowder’s podcast posted showing him restricting Hilary from access to a car because she would not do “wifely things”—was a watershed moment.

The right has long pushed policies to enshrine a specific view of marriage. But the open discussion of making divorce harder has—in large part because of dudes online with podcasts and politicians who want to appeal to dudes who listen to dudes on podcasts—become more obvious over the last year. Crowder’s rant was a crossover point in uncovering a renewed push by the GOP to roll back no-fault divorce laws. It gave more mainstream attention to a burgeoning men’s movement centered on family values.

“I think divorce should basically be outlawed, or it should be at least greatly restricted,” The Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said, while referencing Crowder. Podcaster Tim Pool said no-fault divorce is “ruining relationships,” on an episode where he cites Jordan Peterson and jokes that, “maybe we would just be better if, I don’t know, women just had to wear red dresses and bonnets.”  

Over the past year, I’ve been following this effort for Mother Jones. During that time, I have written about how conservatives, both elected and not, have been trying to make divorce harder. These arguments are often deeply influenced by religion and depend on misogynistic understandings of marriage, women, and money.

When I initially set up a Google Alert for “no-fault divorce” last summer, the news was pretty sparse. Now, I’m getting updates daily.  

Just as rolling back abortion rights was a concerted effort of religious groups, conservative provocateurs, and legislators, so is this anti-no-fault-divorce movement. The growing crowd of anti-woke Republicans, stewarded by men like Crowder, has taken up making divorce harder and turned it into a perfect recruiting tool to bring young misogynists into the fold. By pairing the moral panics about the changing norms of marriage and wokeness, with a hefty splash of masculinity-baiting, the GOP can appeal to some of the most conservative young male voters in generations.

Young women, according to research by Gallup, are becoming more liberal than previous generations. But young men have trended toward conservatism. This group of voters is increasingly available to, and coveted by, Republican candidates. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) released a book, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, to speak to them. Donald Trump Jr. launched a hunting magazine, Field Ethos, that, according to co-founder and CEO Jason Vincent appeals to the “unapologetic male mindset” (which is a draw for women, too, he told Politico). Tucker Carlson released a documentary called The End of Men.

Return, right-wing conservatives seem to say in these works, to the world before society decayed into the libidinous lawlessness of abortion and divorce. Be a good man—and enter a marriage. Have children. Provide for “the family.” This nostalgia is fundamentally wrapped up with a backslide on rights won by women since the mid-20th century.

Women are more likely to initiate divorces, and, historically, no-fault divorce has been specifically beneficial for wives seeking separation. A 2003 working paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that, in states that allowed one partner to unilaterally push for divorce, total female suicide declined by around 20 percent. There was no similar decline for men. Keeping divorce simpler also benefits those experiencing domestic abuse. Fault-based systems are costly and take more time—two resources that victims often lack.

This rhetorical push from the right is happening online and in homes across the country, but also in statehouses, and from the mouths of some of the most powerful people in politics. Just this week, the Texas GOP doubled down on their support for rolling back no-fault divorce in their official party platform. The Nebraska GOP’s website notes, “We believe no-fault divorce should be limited to situations in which the couple has no children of the marriage.”  

“For the sake of families,” Ben Carson, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and current Republican vice-presidential hopeful, wrote in his book, The Perilous Fight, released this month, “we should enact legislation to remove or radically reduce incidences of no-fault divorce.” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) has suggested he abides strictly to the “’til death do us part” view of divorce, even in unhappy or violent marriages. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has questioned no-fault divorce since he was a Harvard undergraduate in 1997. 

And of course, there’s current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: one of the most prominent people in the country to get a “covenant marriage.”

In 1997, Louisiana—the Johnson’s home state—became the first in the country to pass a covenant marriage law, which allowed newlyweds to opt for a religion-based contract that makes it significantly harder to get divorced. Arizona and Arkansas followed. These unions provide an alternative to regular marriage certificates, which permit couples to get no-fault divorces.

If the Johnsons ever sought divorce, they would legally need to seek counseling first. Then, they would still only be able to separate if they proved one of the following requirements: adultery, “commission of a felony,” abandonment for one year, physical or sexual abuse of the spouse or of a child, or living apart for two years. 

Those seeking a no-fault divorce don’t have to do any of that—no wrongdoing needs to occur for couples to part ways. Starting in 1969, when then–California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the country’s first no-fault divorce law, these statutes have provided a way out for couples wanting to go their separate ways. While Reagan, according to his son, would later consider supporting no-fault divorce his “greatest regret” in life, these laws have stuck around and helped change how we view divorce nationwide.   

In 2001, Johnson and his wife Kelly went on Good Morning America to talk about what made their nuptials special. Host Diane Sawyer was curious about this new thing called “covenant marriage,” and wanted to ask the Johnsons, who were one of the first couples to try it out, about the appeal.

“Critics of this again say, ‘you should be able to promise and mean it and not have to bring the law in,’” Sawyer said. “You’re letting states legislate something that is really a religious or a personal commitment.”  

“That’s true,” Johnson responds, “but I’m not sure why they oppose it. Because society, we have a vested interest in preserving marriages because all of the social ills that come from the root cause of divorce and the law, the state, is going to sanction some type of marriage, so why not have an option that’s more binding?” 

This is the regular argument of many on the right, that marriage should be held sacred in the law. What’s the harm in making divorce harder?

Hearing that, I can’t help but think of a woman I spoke with last fall.

Eleanor, who chose to conceal her name for safety, told me about one harm—how complicated it was, already, for her to leave her abusive partner and file successfully for divorce, and how much worse it would have been if she had to prove the abuse. A mother, Eleanor lives in Texas and while going through her divorce in 2020, was balancing keeping her and her children safe from her husband, who she says sexually assaulted and strangled her.

“I almost died,” Eleanor told me. “The notion that this could even be made any more difficult than it already is,” she explained of divorce, baffled and scared her.

As any schoolkid might tell you, US elections are based on a bedrock principle: one person, one vote. Simple as that. Each vote carries the same weight. Yet for much of the country’s history, that hasn’t been the case. At various points, whole classes of people were shut out of voting: enslaved Black Americans, Native Americans, and poor white people. The first time women had the right to vote was in 1919. This week’s episode of Reveal is about a current version of this very old problem.

For this show, host Al Letson does a deep dive with Mother Jones national voting rights correspondent Ari Berman about his new book, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It.

They first discuss America’s early years and examine how the political institutions created by the Founding Fathers were meant to constrain democracy. This system is still alive in the modern era, Berman says, through institutions like the Electoral College and the US Senate, which were designed as checks against the power of the majority. What’s more, Berman argues that the Supreme Court is a product of these two skewed institutions. Then there are newer tactics—like voter suppression and gerrymandering—that are layered on top of this anti-democratic foundation to entrench the power of a conservative white minority.

Next, they trace the rise of conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan and how he opened the door for Donald Trump. Buchanan made white Republicans fear becoming a racial minority. And he opposed the Voting Rights Act, which struck down obstacles to voting like poll taxes and literacy tests that had been used to keep people of color from the polls. Buchanan never came close to winning the presidency, but he transformed white anxiety into an organizing principle that has become a centerpiece of much of today’s Republican Party.

Finally, the show follows successful efforts by citizen activists in Michigan to end political gerrymandering and reinforce the democratic principle of one person, one vote. Berman argues that this state-based organizing should be a national model for democratic reform.

Moms for Liberty is on a mission.

The conservative “parents’ rights” group will spend more than $3 million on ads in swing states ahead of the election, according to a Wednesday report in the Associated Press.

Known for stirring the panic about pronoun usage in schools and pioneering book bans across the country, Moms for Liberty plans to target voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. They hope to expand to Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania later this year, according to the AP.

Tina Descovich, one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, said that their goal is to “activate” their members who do not vote. The group doesn’t endorse specific presidential candidates, but their preferences—for electing right-wing representatives—are clear: The latest ad campaign, the AP reports, will attack President Biden for his recently-enacted Title IX rules that extend safeguards to LGBTQ students.

The group refused to divulge their funding source for the new campaign to the AP, with Descovich only saying “investors” want to see the group “grow in specific states.” (As my colleague Kiera Butler has reported, Moms for Liberty has acknowledged that they have worked with the well-funded conservative groups the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute.)

A spokesperson for the group did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones.

The announcement comes as Moms for Liberty’s latest effort to soften their image and make inroads in blue and purple states. As Kiera has reported, the group has recently shifted its focus from book bans and pronoun panic to literacy issues, essentially alleging that schools are too “woke” to teach reading correctly. Earlier this year, I attended Moms for Liberty’s town hall in New York City, where they trotted out their new talking points about literacy issues, along with their go-to culture war screeds against alleged indoctrination of students by social justice-oriented teachers and mandatory masking in schools during the pandemic. Backlash to that event was swift, from both local politicians and protesters. Last year, they held their national conference—which Kiera attended—in Philadelphia, where several of the then-Republican candidates for president attended; a few hundred protesters were also present.

The Moms have recently attracted a swell of bad press, thanks to a disastrous 60 Minutes interview in which the co-founders struggled to defend their stances; a chapter leading quoting Hitler in a newsletter last year; some members’ close ties to the Proud Boys; and, perhaps most notably, the group’s national co-founder Bridget Ziegler becoming embroiled in a sex scandal after it came out that she and her husband, Florida GOP chair Christian Ziegler, were involved in a three-way sexual relationship with a woman—even though Bridget Ziegler played a key role in the passage of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which forbade discussion of LGBTQ issues in many school settings. (Christian Ziegler was accused of rape by the other woman in the encounter—an allegation he denied, and which authorities ultimately declined to prosecute—and was booted from his post within the state Republican party earlier this year.)

Descovich insisted to the AP that the negative press has not hurt the group: “No one reached out to me and said, ‘We’re not going to donate to you anymore because of these stories,’” she said. “Everybody understands that the work we’re doing is going to be under intense attacks and scrutiny.”

An unanswered question, though, remains: Who is the deep-pocketed donor, or donors, paying for their election-year ad buys in swing states?

As the group’s arch nemesis, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told the AP, there’s likely a few reasons they’re not revealing that.

“Given the timing of their new push and given that they will not reveal their investors, they’re telling you two things,” Weingarten said. “One, they’re telling you it’s not grassroots. And two, they’re telling you that they’re operatives for somebody else.”

Covid-19 continues to kill people in the United States, with at least 20,000 confirmed deaths linked to Covid infections since the start of 2024. Millions more are developing Long Covid, the risk of which increases with every subsequent infection. Immunocompromised patients are at particular risk of death: besides their underlying conditions, immunocompromising medications can reduce the efficiency of Covid vaccines and boosters. Masks, specifically N95 and KN95s, are very effective in stopping its spread, and wearing one in a crowd can allow immunocompromised people like recent transplant recipients to participate in civic life and political action. Mask-wearing is more effective in stopping transmission in crowds when more people do it. 

“These patients have active reasons to want extra layers of protection,” Dr. Cameron R. Wolfe, an infectious disease specialist with Duke University Health System in North Carolina, told Mother Jones. “If my lung transplant recipient wants to be able to keep him or herself protected in the act of a protest, they must be allowed the freedom to do that.”

Lucky Tran, a science communicator with Columbia University and health equity organizer, said that folks encouraging others to wear masks that protect against the spread of Covid-19 is good community care.

“By providing and encouraging people to wear masks at protests, activists are demonstrating community care and public health leadership, which by contrast, most governments and institutions are failing to do,” Tran said.

Most transplant recipients are advised to wear masks, guidance that predates the Covid pandemic. Research has shown that even the common cold can be dangerous or deadly for transplant recipients. Not being able to wear a mask in public could limit their participation in society—from participating in protest to going to the grocery store. The CDC also reports that getting an infection during chemotherapy for cancer can also lead to hospitalization.

At a hearing on the legislation, Democratic State Sen. Sydney Batch, a cancer survivor, said the bill goes too far: “There are people that are walking around every single day that are immunocompromised…It is meaningful to them. They could die.” 

Dr. Diana Cejas, a University of North Carolina pediatric neurologist who survived cancer and a stroke, told Mother Jones that “it has been an incredibly difficult time to be a North Carolinian who actually cares about public health and safety.” Cejas asserts that it is her “right to protect myself” against Covid by wearing a mask—and her duty to protect the medically complex, vulnerable children she works with every day. 

Cejas is also doubtful of claims from some North Carolina Republican officials that people won’t be arrested for wearing a mask in their daily lives for health concerns. 

“Some of our legislators have made the argument that this ban won’t apply to those of us who mask for medical reasons, but I think that we all know that won’t be true,” Cejas said. “We already face scrutiny and outright harassment at times for the ‘crime’ of trying to protect ourselves from illness, particularly us disabled and chronically ill people of color and those with other marginalized identities.”

North Carolina is not the only state to move to crack down on protestors wearing masks. Earlier this month, Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said that pro-Palestinian student protestors wearing masks could face felony charges under a law that was originally created to go after the Ku Klux Klan. 

Though villainized and potentially criminalized, masks continue to be an effective way to limit the spread of infections. “We would see a lot less disease if masks were accepted as a socially reasonable thing to wear in public for at-risk individuals,” Wolfe said, “or anyone worried about illness.”

“For the sake of families,” the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development wrote in his book, The Perilous Fight, released Tuesday, “we should enact legislation to remove or radically reduce incidences of no-fault divorce.” 

Over the past year, I have been tracking the rise of men on the right, both elected and civilian, who think it ought to be harder to get divorced in this country. These men often cite family values, their religious beliefs, or women’s changing desires to justify rolling back the current no-fault system that exists in all 50 states.  

Since 1969, when then–California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce law—granting couples a separation without having to prove that one side had committed wrongdoing—these statutes have provided a way out of both banal and toxic relationships. Though Reagan, per his son, would later call backing no-fault divorce his “greatest regret” in life, these laws have had a positive impact on women’s lives and autonomy. A 2003 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that when states allowed one partner alone to push for divorce, there was a 20 percent decline in female suicide. As I have reported previously, no-fault divorce laws are often essential to those attempting to escape domestic violence. 

While some people have been clamoring about rolling back no-fault divorce laws for decades—read Sen. Tom Cotton’s 1997 article in the Harvard Crimson for his thoughts on the matter—there has been a marked increase in disdain both online and in places of power, about states’ current divorce laws. These men—Johnson, failed Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Oklahoma State Sen. Dusty Deevers, Sen. J.D. Vance, right-wing activist and influencer Steven Crowder, and PragerU host Michael Knowles, to name a few—are normalizing attacks on whether and how people should be able to separate.

“The reason this matters is that no-fault divorce legally allows marriages to end much more quickly than in previous decades,” Carson wrote in the book.  

Should Carson be chosen as Donald Trump’s running mate, and should he further become second in line for the presidency come November, it’s unclear if and how he’d attempt to limit access to divorce. These kinds of laws are handled state-by-state, and an overwhelming majority of Americans think that divorce is “morally acceptable.” 

This isn’t the first time Carson has written about divorce, either.

Throughout Carson’s books, he references difficulties from his childhood. He details growing up in Detroit, speaking fondly of the rug he sat on in kindergarten to learn new songs. “I was an average student, and life was peaceful,” Carson wrote in his 2011 book America the Beautiful.

That changed when he turned eight years old and his parents divorced. According to Carson, “it wasn’t his job that had kept my father away from our family. He had been living a double life for years—complete with a second wife and another set of children.” 

He, his mom, and his brother moved to Massachusetts. “There were four grades in each classroom, and all eight grades were taught by only two teachers,” Carson wrote. “By the time … I moved back to Detroit, I had essentially lost a year of school while in Boston, my academic performance lagging far behind that of my new classmates.”  

Carson laments seeing his mother Sonya go through this time in his 2007 book Take the Risk. “She suddenly found herself all alone in the world, devastated and disillusioned by the end of her marriage,” he wrote. In a section of his 1992 book Think Big dedicated to his mother, she described the financial difficulties that arose after the divorce. “At one point we did get food stamps, but only for a few months. I wanted to be independent and pay my own way. According to the divorce decree, Mr. Carson was supposed to support our sons, but he provided very little money.”  

Fast forward to Carson’s book released this week, in which he writes, “When there are relatively few legal or financial consequences connected with divorce, it’s natural for people to gravitate toward that option when their marriage hits a rough patch.”

“What those people often don’t consider, however,” he goes on, “is the harm—both present and future—inflicted on their children once a divorce is finalized.”

Rep. Carol Miller trounced “J6 prisoner” Derrick Evans by almost 30 points, in the race to represent West Virginia’s first district. She will likely win the general election in November. The campaign has been viewed as something of a litmus test of how voters view the January 6 insurrection three years later.

Evans had just been elected to the state legislature when he livestreamed himself breaching the US Capitol along with the angry mob. He announced his candidacy for Congress soon after leaving prison, where he had served a 90-day sentence after pleading guilty to a felony for obstructing law enforcement during civil disorder. He made his January 6 conviction a centerpiece of his energetic campaign. He was endorsed by the House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), and former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn appeared with him in Charleston last week, saying, “I want people of high moral character, people who are incorruptible, who are willing to lead our country forward against this tyrannical overreaching political establishment that we have.”

Miller mostly ignored Evans throughout his long campaign. She refused to debate him this weekend, leaving Evans to talk to an empty chair. And when USA Today recently asked Miller what she thought about whether he should be on the ballot given his felony conviction, she replied, “I don’t think about him at all.”

Carol Miller (WV) refused to show up to the debate tonight. With her voting record, I don’t blame her. pic.twitter.com/Mdv9vwRBM1

— Derrick Evans (@DerrickEvans4WV) May 12, 2024

But in the past month, as his campaign gained traction, she clearly started to think about him a little more. In early April, for the first time, campaign finance records show she spent $40,000 on polling. During the last quarter, her fundraising shot up by $370,000, fueled by lots of donations not from West Virginia voters but from inside the Beltway lobbyists happy to ante up for a member of the powerful House Ways and Means committee.

On April 11, Miller’s campaign spent $313,580 on an ad buy, the first she’d done since kicking off her reelection campaign. Until then, her largest expenditures had been donations to the National Republican Campaign Committee and $36,000 for an event last year during the LIV golf tournament at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia.

Despite having abundant material with which to attack Evans—whose felony conviction prevents him from voting until he’s completed three years of probation—Miller’s ads targeted Evans for having once been a Democrat. It looked like pretty weak sauce in a state where the current governor, Jim Justice, who just won the GOP primary to fill the seat of retiring Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, also used to be a Democrat.

But the ads reflected the fine line Miller had to walk in trying to campaign against a January 6 rioter and MAGA die-hard in a state where, as Evans’ campaign consultant Noel Fritsch, told me recently, “Eighty percent of the voting electorate thinks that whatever happened on January 6 was warranted and 70 percent think the Feds did it.” (Polls back him up on some of this.)

Democracy advocates had argued that Evans should not even have been allowed on the ballot to begin with because the Constitution bars former elected officials who participated in an insurrection from holding federal office. An Evans victory would have put Congress in the very awkward position of having to decide whether to enforce the Constitution or respect the will of West Virginia voters. As I wrote recently:

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a Reconstruction-era provision, prohibits anyone who took an oath to uphold the Constitution, such as state legislators like Evans, from serving in federal office if they “engaged in insurrection.” Donald Sherman, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), says the state should not have allowed Evans on the ballot at all, but no one filed a legal challenge. “I think he didn’t look like a contender a year ago when he announced,” Sherman said. “He might have flown under the radar for some folks.”

Now, only Congress can decide whether Evans could join their ranks, thanks to the March US Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Anderson, which held that Colorado could not take Trump off the ballot because of his involvement in January 6. The court said that the states cannot enforce Section 3 against federal candidates; only Congress can. “There are not that many people with a stronger case for disqualification under Section 3 than Mr. Evans,” Sherman said. “I think ultimately if he prevails it will come down to whether Congress will enforce the provision of the Constitution against an insurrectionist.”

Most political observers thought it would have been highly unlikely that Congress would have tried to prevent Evans from taking his seat if he’d won. Miller’s victory leaves that hypothetical untested. She issued a bland statement after the race was called Tuesday night that reflected her anodyne campaign and her intention to continue ignoring her opponent, whom she didn’t mention.

“It has been the honor of my life to represent West Virginia in Congress, and I am grateful to have won the Republican primary in West Virginia’s First Congressional District tonight. Over the past few years, I have ensured that the Mountain Valley Pipeline will be completed, worked on legislation that will lower taxes for West Virginians, and held the Biden Administration accountable,” Miller said. “While the Republican House Majority has accomplished great work, we still have more to deliver for the American people. I’m thankful to represent my wild and wonderful state in Washington, and I will continue to work to make West Virginia the best place to live, work, and raise a family.”

Evans waited until Wednesday morning to publicly concede the race. “The sun came up, God is still good, & I’m blessed with a beautiful & healthy family,” he tweeted. “Congrats to Carol on the win. I hope you realize 38k people in your district do not feel represented by you, & you start to vote more conservative. To the swamp. We are still coming for you.”

May 15: This story has been updated to include Evans’ concession.

Ahead of the publication of her new book last week, No Going Back, the South Dakota Republican has been on a clean-up tour after it emerged that she included an anecdote about killing her own puppy and another that falsely boasted of meeting North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. In interviews promoting the book, Noem snapped at reporters who asked about the inconsistencies and suggested President Biden’s dog should also be killed.

This weekend, new challenges emerged for Noem closer to home. As of Friday, six of South Dakota’s nine tribes have voted to ban her from their lands, according to the Associated Press, which reports that the off-limits area amounts to 20 percent of the state. Members of the Yankton Sioux Tribe unanimously voted to bar Noem on Friday, citing comments she made earlier this year alleging, without evidence, that “some tribal leaders…are personally benefiting from the cartels being there,” and that Native “kids don’t have any hope” and “don’t have parents who show up and help them.” 

Earlier this week, the Sisseton Wahpeton Sioux Tribe banned Noem. The Oglala, Rosebud, Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes previously enacted bans, according to the South Dakota Searchlight. 

“How dare the Governor allege that Sioux Tribal Councils do not care about their communities or their children, and, worse, that they are involved in nefarious activities?” Oglala Sioux tribe President Frank Star Comes Out said last month.

Noem also angered tribal leaders by showing up uninvited to an April meeting between the tribes and the federal government, an appearance one tribal leader blasted as a “publicity stunt,” the Searchlight reported. 

A spokesperson for Noem did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones on Sunday. But as political scientist Cal Jillson told the AP, the latest feud may be to Noem’s benefit.

“I’m sure that Gov. Noem doesn’t mind a focus on tensions with the Native Americans in South Dakota,” Jillson said, “because if we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about her shooting the dog.” 

The most infamous example is in Texas. In 2023, lawmakers passed SB 4, which makes it a state crime to cross the border into Texas between ports of entry. The law allows police officers to detain people suspected of entering the state illegally and empowers state judges to order deportations. (Initial punishment for a misdemeanor would carry jail time and repeat offenders could face felony charges and up to 20 years in prison.) Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), has called the measure “the most extreme anti-immigrant state law in the last 50 years, bar none.”

And this extreme law is spreading, with copycat anti-immigration bills cropping up in Republican-led states across the country. At least nine states have considered bills mirroring SB 4 so far this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In March, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds approved legislation, to go into effect in July, criminalizing “illegal re-entry.” Just last month, Louisiana lawmakers pushed through a bill allowing local law enforcement to enforce immigration law.

These anti-immigration laws raise the spectrum of an infamous measure adopted by Arizona in the not-so-distant past. In 2010, Arizona enacted SB 1070, a “show me your papers” law that, among other things, required state law enforcement to determine the immigration status of people under “reasonable suspicion” of being in the country without legal authorization. Following legal challenges, the United States Supreme Court struck down several provisions of the discriminatory law—with the exception of the mandate that authorities routinely ask for proof of legal status.

Crucially, the justices concluded in Arizona v. United States that “federal power to determine immigration policy is well settled.” But Texas, and other states, are hoping to challenge the current legal framework and, if it topples, have laws ready to go to police immigration.

Oklahoma’s legislation makes it a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail or a maximum fine of $500 “if the person is an alien and willfully and without permission enters and remains in the State of Oklahoma without having first obtained legal authorization to enter the United States.” (It also requires them to leave the state within 72 hours of being convicted or released from custody.)

Stitt said upon signing the bill that the measure would not give “law enforcement the authority to profile individuals.” But opponents say the new legislation is one of the most extreme anti-immigrant laws in all of the United States—weaponizing state authorities against communities of color and potentially leading to racial profiling. “Local law enforcement lacks the expertise and the constitutional authority to interpret and enforce immigration law,” the ACLU of Oklahoma said in a press release critical of the legislation.

In both Texas and Oklahoma, Republican governors have called the laws necessary amid inaction from a Democratic administration at the federal level. But the bills represent a challenge to both well-established law and constitutional provisions.

SB 4 has been embroiled in a back-and-forth legal battle. The US Department of Justice, El Paso county, and two nonprofit groups have sued the state of Texas challenging SB 4 as unconstitutional because it violates the Supremacy Clause establishing that federal laws take precedent over state acts that conflict with the exercise of federal power. SB 4, the Biden administration argued, also ignores US Supreme Court’s precedents reaffirming federal authority to regulate immigration. “SB 4 impedes the federal government’s ability to enforce entry and removal provisions of federal law and interferes with its conduct of foreign relations,” according to the DOJ.

In February, a federal judge blocked SB 4 from going into effect, ruling that the law “threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice.” Texas appealed and the conservative Fifth Circuit granted an administrative stay suspending the lower court’s decision. The Supreme Court later allowed Texas to enforce the law pending ongoing litigation over its legality. But then a Fifth Circuit panel placed the implementation of SB 4 on temporary hold. “For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has held that the power to control immigration—the entry, admission, and removal of noncitizens—is exclusively a federal power,” the court wrote.

If SB 4 prevails, immigrant rights advocates worry it could present the conservative supermajority on the US Supreme Court with an opportunity to reverse its own previous ruling. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, whose power grab aspirations knows few boundaries, suggested as much to CNN, saying the state would “welcome a Supreme Court decision that would overturn the precedent set in the Arizona case.” He has argued that the enforcement of SB 4 is supported by Scalia’s dissent in the 2012 case, where the late justice wrote that Arizona was entitled to “its own immigration policy” as long as it didn’t conflict with federal law and found no reason why the state couldn’t make it a state crime to deport people. (Both Justice Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented in part with the majority, with Thomas’ opinion indicating he would have upheld all provisions of SB 1070.)

SB 4, Kate Melloy Goettel, senior legal director at the American Immigration Council, stated, “sets a disastrous precedent” for other states across the country to enact bills that could “result in significant civil rights abuses, leading to widespread arrests and deportations by state actors without key federal protections.”