Trump Indicted: Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on charges related to his handling of classified documents following his departure from the White House, making the self-proclaimed president of superlatives the first former president to face federal criminal charges.

  He is expected to surrender in Florida on Tuesday. This comes two month after Trump was indicted in New York on charges related to the hush money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

 The seven count federal indictment includes conspiracy to obstruct, willful retention of defense documents, and false statements. The charges include willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Trump took top secret documents with him to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida then stonewalled efforts by the National Archives to retrieve them.

  Trump posted online that the indictment is politically motivated, saying that, “The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been indicted.” In a video released on his Truth Social website ,Trump declared, “I’m an innocent man. I’m an innocent person.”

  Republican leaders, even those who want to defeat him for the Republican 2024 nomination, are lining up to defend him. Florida Gov Ron DeSantis  said, “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society.”

 Trump is still being investigated by the federal special prosecutor regarding his attempt to hold power after losing the 2020 election and his connection to the January 6^th insurrection.  A prosecutor in Georgia is examining his attempt to sway the vote count in that state.

  It appears that there’s nothing to prevent Trump from running for president or even being president while under indictment. It’s also untested whether he could serve as president after conviction.

Majority Rule:  The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Alabama watered down the voting power of Black voters by drawing a congressional voting map with just one district in which they made up a majority. The decision came as a surprise to voting rights advocates who had feared that the Voting Rights Act would be diminished.  

  Chief Justice John Roberts  wrote the 5-to-4 majority opinion, with fellow conservative  Brett Kavanaugh joining the court’s three liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

  The decision came as part of a national fight over redistricting, which often results in minority voters left with less political power than their numbers should provide. Republicans say race should be less of a factor in drawing districts, but they frequently draw districts designed to diminish the power of Black voters.

 Roberts wrote that there were legitimate concerns that the Voting Rights Act “may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power within the states.” But, he said, “Our opinion today does not diminish or disregard these concerns. It simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here.”

  Alabama’s voting age population is 27 percent Black. A Federal District Court in Birmingham had previously ruled that the Republican legislature should have drawn a second district “in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.”

Breathing Trouble: That smoky Canadian air is slowly blowing out over the Atlantic. This morning, the cities with the worst air quality are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Richmond, Virginia. There’s still a swath from Minnesota southeast to Georgia with moderately bad air.

The War Room: With fighting intensified in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia, the US says  the main thrust of a long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive against its Russian occupiers appears to have begun.

  The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had repelled a Ukrainian attack in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. The Ukrainians have remained silent, declining for reasons of operational security to say what they are doing and where.

  It’s expected that the counter offensive would punch at several areas in the Russian lines, looking for weak spots. Former Russian paramilitary commander Igor Girkin wrote on Telegram yesterday that, “After a day of continuous fighting, there’s indirect information about insignificant puncturing of defenses, there are no breakthroughs.” 

  At the same time, Ukraine is dealing with flooding from the ruptured Kakhovka hydroelectric dam. Nearly 2,000 people have been evacuated and the city of Kherson is inundated. Ukraine says the Russians are shooting rescuers.

The Obit Page: Televangelist Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and a seminal figure in the politics of faith, has died at age 93.

  The Baptist minister with a beatific smile built a  religious empire including a university, a law school, and a cable television channel. He ran for  the Republican presidential nomination in 1988 and his Christian Coalition was instrumental in electing a Republican Congress in 1994.

  It’s fair to say he was also a religious nut job. He suggested that the sinfulness of America had brought on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010 was divine retribution for a Haitian promise to serve the Devil in return for his help securing the country’s independence from France in 1804.

  Robertson said that liberal Protestants embodied  “ the spirit of the Antichrist and that feminism drove women to witchcraft.  He was also a supporter of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and declared that “God himself” would intervene.

The Obit Page: James Watt, the Interior Secretary under President Ronald Reagan who said that  policies had swung too far toward conservation under the influence of “environmental extremists” and pushed for commercial exploitation of public lands, has died at age 85. 

The Spin Rack: Pope Francis is recovering from a three-hour abdominal surgery. He’s 86. 

Below the Fold: Andy Borowitz writes for The New Yorker about Mike Pence’s bid for the presidency that “political insiders are questioning whether he has more to offer the nation than unbridled sexual magnetism.”

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