We begin today’s roundup with analysis from Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times on accountability for Donald Trump and why sweeping everything under the rug in the name of “unity” or “moving on” isn’t the right move:

[W]e are already in a place where a substantial portion of the country (although much less than half) has aligned itself against the basic principles of American democracy in favor of Trump. And these 2020 deniers aren’t sitting still, either; as these election results show, they are actively working to undermine democracy for the next time Trump is on the ballot.

This fact, alone, makes a mockery of the idea that the ultimate remedy for Trump is to beat him at the ballot box a second time, as if the same supporters who rejected the last election will change course in the face of another defeat. It also makes clear the other weight-bearing problem with the argument against holding Trump accountable, which is that it treats inaction as an apolitical and stability-enhancing move — something that preserves the status quo as opposed to action, which upends it.

Meanwhile, from Michelle Cottle:

If there’s one thing a top-notch grifter knows how to do, it’s exploit a crisis.

So it is that Donald Trump has transformed the F.B.I.’s search of his Mar-a-Lago home from a potentially debilitating scandal into a political bonanza — one that threatens to further divide a twitchy, polarized nation.

His formula for this alchemy? The usual: playing on pre-existing grievances among his followers — in this case, the right’s bone-deep suspicion and resentment of federal authority. If you thought members of the MAGAverse were jacked up on Deep State conspiracy theories before, just wait until they spend several more weeks consuming the  toxic spinsanity  that Mr. Trump and his enablers have been pushing out like black tar heroin.

George Thomas at The Atlantic focuses on Mike Pence:

On January 6, 2021, from a parking garage under the Capitol Visitor Center, then–Vice President Mike Pence ordered the military to defend the Capitol against a violent insurrection. According to a taped deposition of  General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pence “issued very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders” to him and Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller: “Get the military down here. Get the Guard here. Put down this situation.”

This is a problem—one that has been overshadowed by the larger events of  January 6. The constitutional authority to call out the military to defend the Capitol is vested in the president of the United States, not in the vice president. Why did Pence seize constitutional authority that wasn’t his? The country needs answers to this question, and it needs them from Pence,  not from his chief of staff or his counsel.

And in an interview, Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter says the political environment is turning more favorable to Democrats:

With just 11 weeks until Election Day, Democrats are trying to defy two close-to-ironclad rules of electoral politics: Parties that hold the presidency almost always perform poorly in the midterms, and their performance tracks fairly closely with the president’s approval rating. But while  President Biden  remains unpopular, a confluence of factors has put Democrats in a significantly better position than expected. Can it last? I spoke with Amy Walter, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the venerable  Cook Political Report, to try to divine the answer.

On a final note, this is a great piece from Elie Mystal at The Nation on the impact of Justice Sotomayor:

While the rest of the country was reeling from the Supreme Court’s decision in June to take away the right to abortion, Justice Sonia Maria Sotomayor was working. As her conservative colleagues planned victory tours and  dinners atMorton’s, Sotomayor crafted dissents. She and her team of clerks worked to the last moment of the court’s term, laying out a case against the conservatives’ manipulation of laws and perversion of justice. And she did this despite the fact that the cases on which she was laboring  may never even  make it to the Supreme Court of the United States.