Ron DeSantis teams up with everybody’s favorite billionaire for a 404-error campaign launch … while Donald Trump hunkers down in Mar A Lago waiting for what could be his summer of indictments. In Michigan, politics and government is a little more on track – the Governor signing another major gun safety law, the state’s attorney discipline board takes aim at the lawyers who led the Big Lie lawsuits, and there’s still another money-based scandal brewing as part of the Republican legislative legacy.

And we’re sad to report that neither Jeff nor Mark is on Putin’s list of 500 Americans barred from visiting Russia. Barack Obama and Stephen Colbert made the list — but Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are still welcome. (Also on the list: former Senators John McCain, Harry M. Reid and Orrin G. Hatch — who are all currently dead.)

The calendar may tell us it’s the spring of 2023, but for local election administrators across the state it’s already 2024. The newly enacted voter protection rights approved by voters in 2022, the likelihood of an early presidential primary and continuing right-wing claims of 2020 election fraud, have local clerks in full implementation mode for what could well be a very challenging election cycle. Joining the conversation this week is one of the state’s leading experts on running fair and accurate elections, Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum.

Prior to her election as Ingham County Clerk 10 years ago she served for 6 years in the state Legislature where she was ranking member of the House Elections Committee. She’s a lifelong resident of rural Lansing, and the daughter of Dianne Byrum who was the first woman to lead a party caucus in the state Legislature. Barb Byrum has a bachelor’s degree in agribusiness management, and a law degree from the MSU College of Law. Also in Clerk Byrum’s resume: after the 2014 Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriages she presided over the first gay marriage in Michigan.

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Michigan politics and policy

Voting Rights and Candidates

The GOP Culture Wars