Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet. We begin today with María Antonia Sánchez-Vallejo of El País in English describing the first day of the unprecedented criminal trial of a former president of the United States. Of the four criminal proceedings he is facing, this is the case Trump dislikes the most, as it mixes personal dirty laundry; the recording of the $130,000 payment as “legal expenses” to hide its dubious nature and, even worse, an alleged violation of campaign finance rules, as the alleged bribe to buy Daniels’ silence had the sole objective of preventing the affair from coming to light in the final stretch of the campaign that ultimately brought him to the White House in 2016. Presided over by Judge Juan Merchan, the trial has begun with jury selection. The questionnaire for the potential candidates—a hundred on Monday, out of a total of 500—has been made public, and it is expected that in the process those who do not respond adequately will be automatically excluded, according to the scale of prosecutors and defense. The fact that all the candidates are residents of Manhattan, an eminently Democratic district, may be a factor that leads to numerous disqualifications by Trump’s lawyers. [...] Before jury selection began, Judge Merchan spent over an hour on preliminary, or procedural, matters in discussions with the prosecution team and defense counsel. One of the main issues concerned permission to show the transcript of the Access Hollywood tape — an embarrassing audio recorded in 2005 in which Trump denigrated women — at trial. Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who brought the case, had wanted the tape itself to be one of the main exhibits, but on Monday Judge Merchan ruled that only the transcript, not the recording, could be used. He has also refused to incorporate subsequent revealing — and damning — evidence of Trump’s customary treatment of women. In theory, Merchan’s decision is a victory for the defense.

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The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team. Subscribe to The Downballot, our weekly podcast x Embedded Content Leading Off ● WA-04: Donald Trump on Friday endorsed former NASCAR driver Jerrod Sessler's intra-party bid against Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse, who is one of the two remaining House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 riot. Trump's backing makes Sessler, who waged an unheralded campaign two years ago, Newhouse's only notable foe in what had been a quiet Aug. 6 top-two primary for Washington's conservative 4th District. However, it remains to be seen whether Democrats will once again consolidate behind a single candidate as they did in 2022, a development that could make it tougher for one of the two Republicans to reach the November general election.

Talking about tax policy is one of the best ways for President Joe Biden to create a contrast with Donald Trump on who will fight for average Americans. As Trump told a group of wealthy campaign donors earlier this month, one of his signature issues if elected president in November will be extending the tax cuts Republicans enacted during his term in 2017—which overwhelmingly benefited wealthy Americans. There's no audio of the statement, but it echoes comments Trump made last year during a private fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago for North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, an extremist Republican who is running for governor. Addressing the audience, Trump called some attendees “rich as hell” before promising, “We’re gonna give you tax cuts!” The Biden campaign spliced that proclamation into an ad where the president is joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.  “When he thinks the cameras aren't on,” Biden says, “he tells his rich friends, ‘We're going to give you tax cuts.’”

Donald Trump has arrived at the Manhattan courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan for the second day of his criminal trial over falsifying business records connected to hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. On Monday, Merchan ruled on several motions from each side and set a hearing date of April 23 for the issue of whether Trump is in violation of his gag order. Merchan kept up a brisk pace in the afternoon, bringing in the first 96 potential jurors before dismissing more than half of them with a single question over their ability to be fair and impartial in this case. The afternoon ended with the first 18 of the remaining potential jurors answering preliminary questions.  Merchan is expected to try to keep Tuesday centered on juror selection. With a reported 500 potential jurors to process, there should be no problem finding enough to fill the jury box, but just getting through them all is going to be an effort.

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, the right-wing fraudsters who orchestrated a robocall campaign targeting Black voters in seven states during the 2020 election, have agreed to pay $1.25 million in a settlement with New York Attorney General Letitia James.  “The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it belongs to everyone. We will not allow anyone to threaten that right,” James said in a statement on the settlement. “Wohl and Burkman orchestrated a depraved and disinformation-ridden campaign to intimidate Black voters in an attempt to sway the election in favor of their preferred candidate.”  The pair was found liable by a federal judge in New York in 2023 for the robocalling scheme. According to a consent decree the two signed, Wohl and Burkman must “refrain from knowingly creating, sponsoring, or transmitting any robocall or other Mass Communication that would intimidate or deter voters from voting by any method in any election.” The decree remains in place for eight years.

Arizona Republicans got just what they wanted Tuesday when the state’s Supreme Court upheld a 160-year-old abortion ban—enacted before the state was even a state—that criminalizes abortions and mandates prison sentences for providers. That ruling cements the state as a battleground in the 2024 election and is making life a lot tougher for the Republican candidates who made their careers in part by carrying water for the anti-abortion movement. Rep. David Schweikert is one of the most vulnerable, up for reelection in a district that narrowly voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. Schweikert is a six-time co-sponsor of the radical Life at Conception Act. That’s the legislation that would ban all abortions and does not exclude IVF treatments in defining a “person” as “each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization.”  In 2022, Schweikert applauded the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, saying he was «pleased» that the decision “reaffirms the right to life.” He’s not so pleased now. 

Cartoon by Pedro Molina. Campaign Action

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene welcomed Republicans back to work Tuesday with a five-page broadside attack on Speaker Mike Johnson, making sure everyone knows that she’s serious about her threat to try to oust him. Greene’s trying to foment more anger and division, and in one sense it’s working. The problem for her is that she’s made herself the target, as House members are sick of her constant political stunts. Johnson has presided over “a complete and total surrender to, if not complete and total lockstep with, the Democrats’ agenda that has angered our Republican base so much and given them very little reason to vote for a Republican House majority” Greene wrote. “As a matter of fact, if we win the House this fall, it will only be because President Trump is on the ballot, not because we have earned it.” Plenty of Republicans, however, aren’t buying it.

A GOP minority outreach center in suburban Atlanta that was once devoted to artificially creating buzz, giving people the shaft, and taking an unusually keen interest in what happens in other people’s bedrooms is now a sex shop. In other words, the building is chock-full of phony penises—much as it was when its previous tenants occupied the space. According to a new report in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Republicans opened the center with high hopes, knowing they needed to shore up their support in Georgia, a formerly ruby-red state that President Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020. But they’ve given up trying to reason with people and have now simply ceded the space to dicks—just as the rest of the Republican Party has done over the past eight years or so.

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet. We begin today with Rex Huppke of USA Today asserting that the shoe salesman cares about nothing and no one but himself. Let’s be clear about several things. Trump doesn’t care about the U.S.-Mexico border or immigrants in general. He doesn’t care about [murder victim Ruby] Garcia or her family in Michigan. And he definitely doesn’t care about you. (Yes, even you, MAGA fans. You're his marks, not his friends.) Donald Trump cares about Donald Trump, and that is all. If claiming he had spoken with a grieving family helps Trump spook voters into thinking he alone can protect them from an imagined wave of criminal immigrants, then that’s good for Trump, and quite literally nothing else matters. [...] I didn’t hear Trump, between his xenophobic rants, saying he would address the ease with which violent men can obtain firearms. I didn’t hear him mention how, according to the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety, an average of 70 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner each month. Trump was silent on the fact that, according to the Emory University School of Medicine, 5.3 million women are victims of intimate-partner violence each year. He didn’t mention those things because he doesn’t care about them, and he doesn’t care about them because those issues don’t help him.

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The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team. Subscribe to The Downballot, our weekly podcast x Embedded Content Leading Off ● NV-Sen: Republican Jeff Gunter, who served as Donald Trump's ambassador to Iceland, announced Tuesday evening that he was launching a $3.3 million advertising campaign in his quest to upset Army veteran Sam Brown in Nevada's June 11 GOP primary. The NRSC-backed Brown has been the frontrunner to take on Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen ever since launching his campaign last summer, but both Gunter and Democrats are hoping this new offensive will complicate Brown's path to the nomination. The GOP primary also includes Jim Marchant, an election conspiracy theorist who lost a tight 2022 general election for secretary of state, as well as 10 minor candidates.

As his legal woes have mounted, Donald Trump has taken to casting himself on the campaign trail as a victim of discrimination at the hands of “racist” Black prosecutors engaged in “massive election interference.” Trump has called New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg “a degenerate psychopath.” And he used the word “peekaboo,” which rhymes with a racial slur, in derogatory comments about New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a $464 million judgment against Trump in a business fraud lawsuit. Trump is playing the victim card before his devout followers by claiming he’s facing anti-white discrimination. And the courts have let Trump get away with abuses that would have landed any other defendant, Black or white, in deep trouble for contempt. And yet, Trump and his allies keep seeking new and increasingly egregious ways to push the racist envelope. RELATED STORY: Most voters don't know the stakes of the election. That will change

As recently as two weeks ago, Donald Trump told the conservative radio show “Sid & Friends in the Morning« that he was warming up to the idea of backing a national abortion ban. “The number of weeks, now, people are agreeing on 15, and I’m thinking in terms of that,» he said on March 19, adding that he would announce the particulars of a national ban «at the appropriate time.» But apparently now isn't the appropriate time, despite two bombshell rulings by the Florida Supreme Court effectively allowing a six-week statewide ban to take effect while giving Floridians the chance to vote on an abortion rights ballot measure in November.  As soon as the whipsaw rulings came down Monday, President Joe Biden's campaign pounced, launching a new ad campaign hitting Trump for ending Roe v. Wade, holding a press call, and releasing a strategy memo to reporters on Biden's «opening in Florida.» Trump took the opposite path, one that doesn't come naturally:  He clammed up. On Tuesday, the ever-loquacious candidate, who routinely brags about terminating Roe, said only that he would release a «statement» on Florida's six-week ban next week. Amid the Republican primary race last fall, Trump called Florida’s six-week ban, signed by his rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a «terrible mistake.» Meanwhile, Trump's campaign sought to paint the November ballot measure as being perfectly in line with their candidate’s belief that states should own the issue. “President Trump supports preserving life but has also made clear that he supports states’ rights because he supports the voters’ right to make decisions for themselves,” Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, told Politico.  That message is pretty muddled, given that Trump is promising a big announcement on a national abortion ban—an idea he has reportedly been chewing over for the past several months.  But Democrats aren't just pressing the matter at the top of the ticket.

Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, facing a tough reelection against Republican and former hedge fund manager David McCormick, is signaling to voters that he's on their side in the fight against inflation. Casey's first ad of the cycle centers on «greedlfation,» the concept that the rise in prices squeezing consumers is mainly driven by corporate greed for excessive profits. «I’m taking on big corporations because I’ve had enough of their price gouging. I call it greedflation, and I’m fighting back,» Casey wrote Thursday in a tweet featuring the ad. x x YouTube Video «My plan gives the Federal Trade Commission the power to punish corporate price-gouging. And let’s roll back their huge corporate tax breaks, putting money in your pocket instead,» Casey explains after the spot ticks through a list of reasons the price of common goods have spiraled. Recent Navigator Research polling found that 85% of voters believe corporate greed has contributed to inflation, with 59% calling it a «major» cause factor. Democrats seem keen to make it a part of the 2024 pitch.  President Joe Biden even gave Casey's initiative a shout out during his recent State of the Union address. “Pass Bobby Casey’s bill and stop this,” he said. “I really mean it.” RELATED:  New poll shows it's the greedflation, stupid Campaign Action

If Donald Trump knows how to do anything, it’s destroy a business. And while the Republican National Committee might not be a “business” in the conventional sense, Trump and his family are doing their level best to bring their special magic to the operation. Yup, they’re gonna burn the whole place down. On Tuesday night, The Washington Post broke the news that prospective new RNC hires were being given a new loyalty test. In recent days, Trump advisers have quizzed multiple employees who had worked in key 2024 states—and who are reapplying for jobs—about their views on the last presidential election, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interviews and discussions. The interviews have been conducted mostly virtually, as the applicants are based in key swing states. “Was the 2020 election stolen?” one prospective employee recalled being asked in a room with two top Trump advisers. The 2020 election was not stolen, of course. This lie was propagated by Donald Trump, a collection of now-indicted lawyers, aides, and hangers-on, as well as dozens of Republican members of Congress to delegitimize or even invalidate the election’s results. Through investigations and numerous court filings, we now know who constructed the lies, who spread them, what they were meant to achieve, and how the key players knew there was no damn evidence for any of it. So prospective RNC hires were given this litmus test, according to the Post. It suggests that if the hires won’t parrot pro-sedition propaganda on Dear Leader's behalf, there's no room for them in Republicanism. And despite a bit of generic bluster from an RNC spokesperson, nobody's much denying that.

For the most part, political fundraising pitches skew alarmist, bordering on histrionic. That's true of both major U.S. parties, of course. But only one of those parties is currently led by a black hole of iniquity who, when it comes to donor cash, is like a little kid who licks every kolache in the kitchen so no one else can have any. Coincidentally, that’s the same party whose policies are so deeply unpopular they have to frighten people with imaginary crises and, when that fails, outright attempt to steal elections. So what’s their latest tack? Ah, yes. Acknowledging that you don’t want to come to their kegger because they’re super unpopular now—but could you find it in your heart to show up anyway? And, oh, please bring 16 bottles of margarita mix. The Kirkland stuff should be fine.

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Trump's pretending to be president, with an 'envoy' and everything Trump is conducting shadow diplomacy, and the facts of it are terrifying. The House map was already skewed to the GOP. Now it's even worse Can Democrats reclaim the House against the odds? Some Christians are aghast at Trump's $60 Bible 'hustle' Actual Trump quote: “When I drink my little wine … and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness.” Inside the latest plot to turn a generation against birth control Ban abortion, message against the pill, and turn back the clock on women’s rights a hundred years. Now Biden's dragging Trump's oh-so-busy golf schedule—and it's hilarious Who cares if Biden visited eight swing states in 18 days? Trump won a couple golf tourneys at his own club!