Good morning,

We live in an era when it’s particularly important to recognize defenders of democracy in real time. In that light we open today’s newsletter with a tip of our hat to Tanya Chutkan.

Who is she? She’s the federal judge who ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump’s executive privilege claims around any January 6 documents he is sitting on were bogus. Trump had a right to make such an assertion, she ruled, but the sitting administration was really the controlling authority here. This line from her ruling sums it all up nicely: “Presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president.” 

Chutkan was born in Jamaica in 1962. She had a distinguished career in Washington law firms until Barack Obama nominated her to the bench in 2014. She was confirmed 95–0. She’s the judge who sentenced Russian agent and NRA infiltrator-booster Maria Butina to 18 months. And she’s been clear in recent weeks about the stakes regarding January 6, saying of one defendant: “There have to be consequences for participating in an attempted violent overthrow of the government, beyond sitting at home. The country is watching.… If Mr Mazzocco walks away with probation and a slap on the wrist, that’s not going to deter anyone from trying what he did again.”

As for the consequences of the ruling, well … the National Archives is in possession of the relevant documents, and NPR reported Wednesday morning that they could be released as early as this week. Trump’s lawyers will of course appeal. The whole plan of the Trump team is to stall until after the midterms, when they hope the GOP takes the House and kills the commission—and, by the way, finds some flimsy excuse to start impeaching Joe Biden, which they will most certainly do.

The noted economist Dean Baker has spent years trying to tell people why our patent and copyright laws help concentrate wealth and worsen economic inequality. Wednesday, Baker’s concern became big news as The New York Times reports on the bitter struggle between the government and Moderna over who should hold the patent on the company’s coronavirus vaccine. Aside from the fact that three National Institutes of Health scientists worked with Moderna scientists on sequencing that led to the vaccine, there’s also the little fact that Moderna was paid by the federal government $1.4 billion to develop the vaccine and $8.1 billion for the doses so far distributed. This is a fascinating story that has vast ramifications for patent law, the broader U.S. economy, and the future distribution domestically and internationally of the vaccine.

In more straight-on political news, New Hampshire Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan got a break yesterday when the state’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, said he’d be running for reelection. Sununu’s statement was interesting. He basically said, I’m having fun as governor and actually getting things done. Why the fuck would I want to go to that dysfunctional place? To drive the point home, he apparently didn’t even tell Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott, who heads the GOP senate campaign arm, that he was making the announcement. 

Sununu was leading Hassan in the polls. She may still have a close race, but now her victory prospects are a lot brighter, and therefore so are her party’s, to an extent. The other key incumbents who need to win are Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, Arizona’s Mark Kelly, and Georgia’s Raphael Warnock, who looks like he’s going to be running against former how-’bout-them-Dawgs star Herschel Walker.

At NewRepublic.com, Grace Segers takes us inside the aforementioned Sununu announcement; Molly Osberg gives us a smart reminder that just as these recent months have been exciting for organized labor, they’ve also lit a fire under our nation’s union-busting companies and law firms; and Tim Noah wonders why America’s corporations are so dead set against their employees getting vaccinated. (Hint: The answer has to do with the political party that thinks tweeting something about killing a member of the House of Representatives is just a little joke.)

Solidarity,

Michael Tomasky, editor

Yesterday’s pop culture question: Rapper Travis Scott is under scrutiny for not stopping that concert the other night where eight people were killed in crowd mayhem. It’s the second-worst tragedy along these lines that I can think of. In a 1979 concert, more people were killed in a festival-seating stampede at a rock show. Who was the band, what was the city, and how many died?

Answer: The Who, Cincinnati, 1979, 11 deaths. Point of personal privilege: I saw them the night before in Pittsburgh. My friends and I were so jacked when we got back in our car after the show that for about 20 minutes, we pretty seriously considered just driving straight to Cincy.

Today’s political history question: The Whig Party, of course, was powerful in American politics for about two decades in the early to mid-1800s. How many Whigs became president, either (hint hint!) by being elected or by other means? Bonus question: How many former Whigs later became president under the banner of another party?