Via WI Examiner:

The Wisconsin landscape has been looking pretty bleak lately, and not just because of the late April snow. The Supreme Court’s late Friday decision to reverse course, approving the voting map drawn by Republican legislators it had previously rejected, creates an even bigger gerrymander than our already heavily lopsided map, locking in large Republican majorities in the state Legislature for the next 10 years.

Meanwhile, Republican politics are getting more toxic by the minute. April’s nonpartisan elections featured campaigns so divisive that the school board president in Eau Claire received death threats and other school board members stepped down, unwilling to keep serving their communities after being targeted for attacks of the same type Republicans stirred up against local elections officials.

The Big Lie contingent has taken over the state Republican Party, with party leaders who used to know better declaring there was “widespread fraud” in the 2020 election, and competing to outdo each other by cozying up to conspiracy theorists.

Tommy Thompson — the revered relic of a kinder, gentler era in Republican politics — announced on Monday that he won’t run for governor again after all, at age 80. Tommy’s bipartisan boosterism for Wisconsin doesn’t fit with the current Republican political brand. He leaves a slate of extreme GOP candidates focused on bringing Texas-style abortion bounty-hunters to Wisconsin  and stamping out school curriculum that covers the historical legacy of racism.

But don’t despair. If April is the cruelest month, there are still several good reasons to feel hopeful this spring: