We have been here before. Our predecessors dug in and took it one topic, one government failure and one election at a time. We should, too.

If a California lawmaker has his way, registered voters in the state will be required to participate in every election.On Tuesday, Assemblyman Marc Levine (D) introduced Assembly Bill 2070, making voting mandatory. "Democracy is not a spectator sport — it requires the active participation of all its citizens," Levine said in a statement. "California is a national leader on expanding voting rights to its citizens. Those rights come with a responsibility by registered voters to cast their ballot and make sure that their voice is heard by their government."Under the measure, which isn't expected to be considered until the spring, the secretary of state would determine the penalty for not voting. This is an unprecedented bill, and should it go into law, it would likely be challenged in court, the Los Angeles Times says. California's latest statewide report on elections found that there are more than 20.3 million registered voters in the state, with nearly two million more eligible to vote, but not registered. In recent years, voters have been coming out to the polls in higher numbers, with 64.5 percent of California's registered voters participating in the November 2018 election. This year, the state's primary was moved up to March 3, in order to encourage even more people to vote.More stories from theweek.com How Trump's New York trusted traveler ban will punish the most conservative parts of the state How history will view Trump's impeachment Fox News' Brian Kilmeade is really mad that Romney would 'bring religion' into his impeachment decision

The Roman senator Marcus Brutus literally stabbed his friend Julius Caesar in the back. You could look at this as a great betrayal, as Lou Dobbs did on Fox Business show Wednesday night when he savaged Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) for voting to convict President Trump of abuse of power in Trump's impeachment trial. "Romney is going to be associated with Judas, Brutus, Benedict Arnold forever, when he is not even a footnote in a footnote otherwise, because of his betrayal," Dobbs said.> Lou Dobbs: "Romney is going to be associated with Judas, Brutus, Benedict Arnold forever" pic.twitter.com/JS3m3LEdNC> > — Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) February 6, 2020But Brutus, according to Shakespeare and contemporaneous accounts, was motivated to take part in Caesar's assassination because Caesar's increasingly monarchical and authoritarian behavior threatened to destroy the Roman Republic. The phrase he is purported to have said while stabbing Caesar, "Sic semper tyrannis!" — or "Thus, always, to tyrants!" — is now Virginia's official motto. On the other hand, Dante places both Brutus and Judas Iscariot in the lowest circle of hell, so it's complicated.In any case, Caesar died and Trump was acquitted with all but one Republican voting against conviction and every Democrats voting in favor. And despite Brutus' desperate bid to save the republic, it soon fell to a Roman Empire led by Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, renamed Augustus. Brutus, like Judas, killed himself in despair. Romney, according to former adviser Stuart Stevens, "will sleep very well tonight."More stories from theweek.com Trump just won the Iowa Democratic caucuses Should financial markets be freaked out by coronavirus? America is doing so much better than you think

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) didn't give the White House or the Republican National Committee, run by a niece, advance warning that he would announce his vote to convict President Trump for abuse of power on Wednesday, but he knew the blowback was coming. And it came quickly. Donald Trump Jr. was the first Trump to attack Romney, saying the Senate GOP should expel Romney — which won't happen — and mocking him for wearing "mom jeans."The president, who hates defections and had wanted to poach at least one Senate Democrat for acquittal (he got none), held his fire for a few hours. Then on Wednesday evening he posted an attack video in which the narrator says Romney, a lifetime Republican and the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, is "posing as a Republican" and was "exposed by news reports as a Democrat secret asset." The ad also contrasts Trump's 2016 victory with Romney's 2012 loss. It doesn't mention impeachment."Whether the thirst for vengeance against Romney is sustained will hinge on Trump, who has long smarted from the Utah Republican's criticism of him and takes pride in hitting back at perceived and real enemies," The Washington Post reports. "Party and campaign officials said privately that they hoped Trump wouldn't obsess over the lone defection and move on from impeachment," and "a senior Trump campaign official said the longer the Romney news cycle drags on, the worse it is for the president, because it focuses attention on his impeachment."Senate Republicans shrugged off Don Jr.'s call to cancel Romney, but Romney's eight-minute floor speech announcing his decision did not paint his GOP colleagues in a flattering light, either."The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did," Romney told a nearly empty Senate chamber. "The president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.""I am aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters, I will be vehemently denounced," Romney added. "I am sure to hear abuse from the president and his supporters. Does anyone seriously believe I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?"More stories from theweek.com Trump just won the Iowa Democratic caucuses Should financial markets be freaked out by coronavirus? America is doing so much better than you think

Thousands of demonstrators attended "Reject the Cover-Up" protests across the United States on Wednesday evening, after the Senate impeachment trial ended with President Trump's acquittal.Trump was impeached by the House in December on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.Hundreds gathered outside of the Capitol, where Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) declared, "I will focus my ire on Senate Republicans. Shame on you, Mitch McConnell." About 50 people held a sit-in inside the building, chanting, "Trump is guilty!" One demonstrator, Sara Anzalone, told USA Today she believes "getting a foreign power to interfere with our country is just completely against the Constitution and completely out of his power. And I really think that he should be held responsible, and it really kind of makes me pissed off that he could have been held accountable today."In Boston, protesters praised Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the former governor of Massachusetts. He was the only Republican to vote "guilty" on the abuse of power charge, and one protester carried a sign that read, "Thanks, Mitt! Now let's censure."More stories from theweek.com Trump just won the Iowa Democratic caucuses Should financial markets be freaked out by coronavirus? America is doing so much better than you think

The finale of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial brought joy to Republicans and frustration to Democrats. In Kyiv, there was another sentiment: relief. “We are glad it’s done,” said Igor Novikov, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “If we could choose, this thing wouldn’t have happened. It would have been building the relationship rather than trying to save it from something very political, very loud.”“It’s a really strange thing,” he added. “It all happened so quickly.”Novikov spoke by phone shortly after the Senate voted along party lines (except for Sen. Mitt Romney) to acquit the president. In a wide-ranging conversation, he discussed the head-spinning experience of a young government finding itself in the middle of the biggest story in the world. And he didn’t rule out the possibility that someday, Kyiv could still cooperate with an official U.S. request to investigate a company linked to the Biden family. “It definitely was stressful,” Novikov said. “It was literally 24/7 of reading the news, analyzing the news, talking to people, and strategic sessions in the middle of the night. The key to this—and I think we succeeded—was to be on top of the situation.”The process brought near-disasters and surreal moments. Before Trump’s now-infamous July 25 call with Zelensky, Novikov said one member of Zelensky’s team urged him to offer Trump the opportunity to build a Trump Tower in Kyiv. A similar effort by Russian nationals during the 2016 campaign became a key focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian influence on that race. “Imagine if that were also part of that call,” Novikov said of a Trump Tower Kyiv pitch. “Can you just imagine how that would have played out?”“We had plenty of stupid, hilarious, scary, and stressful situations that we had to deal with,” he added. One particularly jarring moment came when Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, tweeted a screenshot that included the cellphone number of Andriy Yermak, a Zelensky adviser. “I saw that tweet, I wrote to Yermak, and told him to change his number,” Novikov said. “Then I stayed on Twitter for like 30 minutes just watching people exchange messages saying, ‘Ooh I just sent him a message, ooh I tried calling him, ooh he picked up.”On the July 25 call, Trump asked Zelensky to speak with Giuliani about the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating a company linked to former Vice President Joe Biden. That same month, Trump ordered subordinates to withhold military aid that Congress had promised to send Ukraine. An intelligence community whistleblower then filed a report alleging Trump held up the aid in an extortion attempt designed to win political goodies. And Trump’s ambassador to the European Union testified to impeachment investigators that the president demanded a quid pro quo from Kyiv through Giuliani.Gordon Sondland Suddenly Recalls the Ukraine Quid Pro Quo He DeniedDespite repeated demands from Trump’s allies, Zelensky never publicly announced an investigation of the Biden-linked company Burisma Holdings. Ukraine eventually got most of the military aid after news broke of the whistleblower report. But an arguably greater prize—a White House visit for Zelensky—has yet to materialize. Novikov said Kyiv is still optimistic about such a visit. He pointed to a meeting between the two heads of state at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, shortly after the impeachment story began to unfold. The two men had a productive conversation, Novikov said, and Trump encouraged Zelensky to engage with Russia. “It was definitely a good warm-up for the Oval Office meeting that will eventually happen, I’m sure of that,” he said. Zelensky inherited a messy relationship with the U.S., Novikov added. At the time of Trump’s election, the country’s leaders—and many of its people—had an overwhelmingly negative view of him. The country’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time, Valeriy Chaly, went public with that sentiment in an op-ed for The Hill criticizing then-candidate Trump for comments on the Russian occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. In the years since, Republicans have pointed to the op-ed to buttress arguments that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 elections. In Ukraine, deep-seated concern about Trump was no anomaly. “It was always, ‘Trump is connected with Russia, so Trump hates Ukraine,’ and so on and so forth,” Novikov said. “Everyone got caught up in that and nobody ever highlighted the other side of the argument: that Trump could be good news for Ukraine, that he could be not about surrender but about peace, and those are two different things.”Some of that hostility seems to have persisted. Novikov said one of the biggest challenges Zelensky’s advisers faced during the impeachment process was leaks about Trump and Ukraine, which Zelensky's team viewed as irrelevant and intended to distort the public's understanding of the story.“Correct me if I’m wrong, but the vast majority of leaks that happened were anti-Trump,” he said. The leaks complicated the Zelensky team’s efforts to stay neutral on the American political fight—a stance that was vital to save their bipartisan congressional support, Novikov said.“I’m biased, I’m his adviser, but I have to stress the point that he did incredibly well,” he said. “He resisted temptations and sometimes even advice to get involved in this.”And when it comes to Burisma, Novikov said Kyiv’s position hasn’t changed. “We won’t do anything unofficially,” he said. “We won’t meddle in your domestic politics. In order for the president to make his mind up on any particular issue, he needs to be formally approached… Any formal request from an ally and our main partner and our most respected friend would definitely not be ignored.”“There are only two ways to bury the hatchet on this issue: to at least look into the facts, or to forget and move on,” he added. He said Zelensky’s administration also hasn’t foreclosed cooperating with the congressional investigation into Burisma helmed by Republican Sens. Ron Johnson (WI) and Chuck Grassley (IA).“The same thing goes,” Novikov said. “The key word here isn’t Democrat or Republican, the key word is official.”With impeachment finished, the American political focus on Ukraine will abate. But it won’t disappear. Moments after the acquittal vote, Johnson and Grassley asked the Secret Service for Hunter Biden’s travel records. Novikov said he’s still optimistic about the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. “We will come out—and we have come out—stronger from this whole situation,” he said.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Trump was just acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial, but two Republican senators are still looking into Hunter Biden's Ukraine business dealings.

In 2019, more than 14 million Americans paid for tax preparation software that should have been free, ProPublica reports. The IRS has partnered with H&R Block and Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, to offer Free File, and an audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that few people took advantage of the program because it is "fraught with complexity and confusion." As a result, tax software companies steered taxpayers away from this free program for their paid services, and ended up making about a billion dollars in revenue, ProPublica reports.In December, the IRS prohibited tax preparation companies from hiding their free products from search engines and lifted the restriction that kept the IRS from creating its own free online filing system.More stories from theweek.com How history will view Trump's impeachment Republican senator follows Trump's acquittal with a new Hillary Clinton email probe DNC chair calls for Iowa recanvass as analysis finds results are 'riddled with inconsistencies'

Trump has hijacked the GOP and remade it in his value-less image. We can't end the cowardice of cultish Republicans, but we can end their careers.

President Donald Trump celebrated his acquittal on two articles of impeachment by taunting Democrats with a video on Twitter.