Democracy is coming to the state of Wisconsin
By 
The extreme, unconstitutional-for-multiple reasons partisan gerrymandered legislative maps imposed on the state by Republican legislators have been ruled unconstitutional:
This decision does NOT affect Wisconsin’s congressional maps, i.e., House districts. It involves only the state legislature. Still a really big deal.
Judge Janet Protasiewicz basically ran on delivering this decision to the people. https://t.co/dSNocGKbs3— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) December 22, 2023
Note: State senators hold four-year terms, but the WI SC majority declines to order special elections for the entire state senate in 2024. So half of state senators will run under new maps next year, and the other half will run under new maps in 2026. A big concession.— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) December 22, 2023
The liberal majority says the legislature’s new maps may not constitute an extreme partisan gerrymander—and if the legislature insists on gerrymandering, the court will adopt fair maps itself.
The conservative dissenters dispute the very notion that a map can be “fair.” pic.twitter.com/PNBw48IJmD— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) December 22, 2023
My favorite moment in the light-years-from-hinged dissenting Wall Street Journal editorials is Ziegler’s complaint that “[w]hile a picture may generally be worth a thousand words, pictures do not replace the need to properly conduct the required legal analysis.” Yes, very dirty pool of the majority to include pictures illustrating that the maps the hack Republican majority had deemed “contiguous” were not by any possible meaning of the term. But reading the dissenters complain about “judicial activism” and “undermining democracy” sets some new historical benchmark for “protesting too much.”
Wisconsin Republicans are also a dispositive illustration that Trump is much more symptom than cause. Their defeat today is a major, major victory.