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    South Carolina mulls mystery $1.8bn in account: ‘We don’t know why it’s there’

    To put it mildly, the South Carolina state government faces an unusual problem: what to do about $1.8bn found in a state bank account when no one knows how it got there, how it should be spent or even whether it really exists.Discussing the problem, the Republican governor, Henry McMaster, made a play for political understatement of the year.“There’s something wrong somewhere,” McMaster told reporters, adding: “We don’t know why it’s there, what it’s supposed to be used for, how long it’s been there – that’s a problem.”Last year, the state comptroller resigned after the discovery of a 10-year, $3.5bn accounting error. State lawmakers say the $1.8bn sum could be related to that scandal, the New York Times reported. Or it may not be. No one knows.Working out the truth is not proving easy, particularly because the new comptroller, Brian Gaines, a Democrat, is fighting with the state treasurer, Curtis Loftis Jr, a Republican, over where the $1.8bn came from and what to do about it.State officials say the sum was discovered last October – though the state auditor, George Kennedy III, recently told a hearing he knew about it in 2017 but presumed it was in the account temporarily, the Times said.This week, Larry Grooms, a state senator, told News19, a CBS affiliate in Columbia: “The governor appointed a new comptroller. The new comptroller trying to close the books alerted us to what appeared to be something wrong with one account within our state’s finances.“Out of thousands of thousands of accounts, here’s one account with $1.8bn associated with it.“Having $1.8bn in an account that’s supposed to be zero tells us that something is clearly wrong with our state’s accounting and the problems aren’t solved.“The state treasurer’s office operates a bank. He’s like our state’s chief banker. The comptroller general is our state’s chief accountant. Right now we know the bank has so much money in it. No one disputes how much cash we have. But what’s in dispute is what accounts those monies belong [to].”On Wednesday, at a public hearing, Loftis said the problem “got dumped on us because of the failure of [the comptroller’s] office. We are reconstructing the books as best we can over the last seven years, and nobody will give us information.”But Gaines told News19 it was the treasurer’s responsibility to track balances in government accounts, then told the Times: “The treasurer believes his own PR, which flies in the face of evidence. Every treasurer for 80 years or more has been able to reconcile cash, including Treasurer Loftis until 2016.”The Wednesday hearing produced exchanges that, as the Times said, verged on the existential. A senator, Tom Young Jr, asked Loftis if he was “sure [the $1.8bn] exists?”Loftis said: “We believe that to be the case.”Grooms said: “We believe that it is real cash, but we have not been able to prove that it is real cash … That’s a real problem if your banker can’t certify if you have $1.8bn or not. It’s a problem if the banker can’t tell you whose money it is.”Nonetheless, Grooms said, “Everyone wants a piece” of the possibly phantom $1.8bn.“You’ll have the house and senate fighting over how to appropriate it,” Grooms said, whether for “taxpayer rebates, highway construction, new school construction” or other uses.In his session with reporters last week, McMaster counseled caution on spending the money – if it actually exists – too soon.The situation “does not inspire confidence”, the governor said, “but the good news is no money was lost. No money was stolen. The question is, what to do with it …“One thing I would say is, ‘Let’s don’t rush out and spend that money, there is a lot of money, there’s no need to hurry up and try to spend money. We don’t know where it was supposed to go, what [its] purpose was supposed to be, anything else at this point. I think we need to find that out. But it’s a blow to confidence. But we get better after things like this.”Asked about the feud between the treasurer and the comptroller, McMaster said: “I recommend a cup of coffee. That always seems to do the trick. I think these are grown men and they have staffs. This is a serious question for all the people.” More

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    New Biden rule aims to protect US federal employees if Trump is elected

    Joe Biden’s administration issued a new rule on Thursday making it harder to fire thousands of federal employees, hoping to head off the risk that if Donald Trump wins back the White House in November he won’t be able to bully and decimate the workforce as he imposes the radical ideologies he’s been pushing on the campaign trail, escalating what he did while in office.New regulations coming out of the government’s chief human resources agency, the Office of Personnel Management, will bar career civil servants from being reclassified as political appointees or as other at-will workers – who are more easily dismissed from their jobs.The move comes in response to so-called “Schedule F”, an executive order Trump issued in 2020 that sought to allow for reclassifying tens of thousands of the 2.2m federal employees and thus reduce their job security protections.Biden nullified Schedule F upon taking office. But if Trump were to win the election for the Republicans and revive it during a second administration, he could dramatically increase number of federal employees – about 4,000 – who are considered political appointees and typically change with each new president.In a statement issued Thursday, Biden called the rule a “step toward combatting corruption and partisan interference to ensure civil servants are able to focus on the most important task at hand: delivering for the American people”.The potential effects of the change are wide-reaching because the number of federal employees who might have been affected by Schedule F under Trump is unclear.The National Treasury Employee Union used freedom of information requests to obtain documents suggesting that workers such as office managers and specialists in human resources and cybersecurity might have been among those subject to reclassification.The Biden administration’s new rule moves to counter a future Schedule F order by spelling out procedural requirements for reclassifying federal employees and clarifying that civil service protections accrued by employees can’t be taken away, regardless of job type. It also makes clear that policymaking classifications apply to noncareer, political appointments.“It will now be much harder for any president to arbitrarily remove the nonpartisan professionals who staff our federal agencies just to make room for hand-picked partisan loyalists,” said Doreen Greenwald, president of National Treasury Employees Union, in a statement.Groups advocating for ethical government, and liberal think tanks and activists, praise the rule. They viewed cementing federal worker protections as a top priority given that replacing existing government employees with new, more conservative alternatives is key to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s nearly 1,000-page playbook known as Project 2025.That plan calls for vetting and potentially firing scores of federal workers and recruiting conservative replacements to wipe out what leading Republicans have long decried as the “deep state” governmental bureaucracy that allegedly worked against Trump from the inside. This is a debunked concept that even Trump acolyte Steve Bannon has dismissed as untrue despite being part of the hard right movement that first aggressively promoted the idea and continues to market it.Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which has led a coalition of nearly 30 advocacy organizations supporting the rule, called it “extraordinarily strong” and said it can effectively counter the “highly resourced, anti-democratic groups” behind Project 2025.“This is not a wonky issue, even though it may be billed that way at times,” Perryman said. “This is really foundational to how we can ensure that the government delivers for people and, for us, that’s what a democracy is about.”The final rule, which runs to 237 pages, is being published in the federal registry and set to formally take effect next month.Trump as president could direct the Office of Personnel Management to draft new rules, although those would face legal challenges.Rob Shriver, deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management, said the new rule ensures the protections “cannot be erased by a technical, HR process” that “Schedule F sought to do”.“This rule is about making sure the American public can continue to count on federal workers to apply their skills and expertise in carrying out their jobs, no matter their personal political beliefs,” Shriver said on a call with reporters.The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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    If cover-up is the real crime, Trump’s hush-money charges have a Nixonian ring | Sidney Blumenthal

    Of all of Donald Trump’s charged crimes, spelled out in 88 felony counts – from plotting to overthrow the government of the United States to stealing national security secrets, and obstruction of justice along the way – there is one case that most closely parallels the greatest political crime in American history: his trial in New York, scheduled to begin 15 April, for falsifying business records.Yet against the enormity of the former president’s transgressions, that case’s gravitas has been diminished by some legal pundits as the “runt of the litter” and “probably the least serious of the crimes he’s been charged with”. This case, brought by the Manhattan district attorney, however, reveals Trump as having essentially the same purpose as Richard Nixon in Watergate, hiding the truth through fraud and bribery in order to manipulate the outcome of a presidential election.From the beginning, Nixon tried to persuade the public that Watergate was much ado about nothing. On 17 June 1972, five men of the White House “plumbers” unit were arrested in a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. The next day, the White House press secretary, Ron Ziegler, trotted out to minimize the incident as a “third-rate burglary attempt”. He was following Nixon’s directive to downplay the affair as meaningless. “It’s going to be forgotten,” Nixon said on 20 June. The next day, in one of the first meetings in which he orchestrated the cover-up, he said: “I think the country doesn’t give much of a shit about it … And the answer, of course, is that most people around the country probably think this is routine, that everybody’s bugging everybody else, it’s politics.”But Nixon’s attempt to bury the break-in spread into an elaborate effort to contain and conceal the scandal in order to protect his campaign for re-election. His White House counsel, John Dean, told him there was “a cancer on the presidency”. But Nixon’s cover-up grew: from obstructing the FBI investigation, to misleading the public, to discrediting the investigative reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, who were virtually alone in pursuing the story for months, to paying hush money to the burglars.“Goddamn hush money”, Nixon called it. “We could get that,” he told Dean. “On the money, if you need the money you could get that. You could get a million dollars. You could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten. It is not easy, but it could be done. But the question is who the hell would handle it? Any ideas on that?”On 1 March 1974, the Department of Justice Watergate special prosecution force’s Watergate road map, officially titled the Grand Jury Report and Recommendation Concerning Transmission of Evidence to the House of Representatives, was delivered under seal to chief judge John Sirica of the US district court in the District of Columbia. He then provided it to the House judiciary committee, which launched its impeachment inquiry. This document was not publicly released by the National Archives until 2018 – about one month before Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in prison for arranging hush-money payments on his client’s behalf.Nixon’s and Trump’s motives run starkly parallel. “The President was well aware, as tapes and transcripts demonstrate,” the Watergate road map stated, “that the primary purpose of the conspiracy prior to the election (the ‘containment theory’) was to protect the President’s own political future.”The road map also laid out the potential consequences for Nixon if his cover-up had been exposed after his re-election: “If the cover-up and obstruction of justice that had already occurred came to light in the spring of 1973, not only would all the President’s close advisors be subject to criminal liability but the President himself would have had to shoulder ultimate responsibility (moral, if not legal) for their actions. The President could well expect that the failure of the conspiracy at that stage (at least at its center) would jeopardize his ability to continue successfully in office and to remain an effective political force in the country and Republican Party.”Echoing Nixon, Trump in his 2016 campaign conspired to exchange hush money for silence about certain of his actions that he believed would cost him the election if the public knew about them. As in Watergate, his crimes involved bribery, illegal campaign contributions and tax fraud. Trump directed his cover-up when he was a candidate, when he was the president-elect, and, in one instance, when he was president.Every one of the 34 felony counts in Trump’s indictment begins with a citation of the same New York State criminal statute, §175.10, on falsifying business records in the first degree, which requires a mens rea – a state of mind – that “includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof”. Essentially, Trump has been indicted on what the Watergate prosecutors in the road map called the “concealment theory” that was at the heart of Nixon’s cover-up. In short, both Trump and Nixon committed business crimes to further their political crimes.The New York indictment alleges that Trump falsified his business records, committing tax fraud and violating campaign finance law, to prevent the voters from learning that he had paid bribes. “From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects,” reads the statement of facts connected to the indictment.Like Nixon, Trump conspired with others to achieve his ends. Several of his co-conspirators have already “admitted to committing illegal conduct in connection with the scheme”, according to the statement of facts. In 2018, Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, named as “Lawyer A” in the indictment, was prosecuted by the US attorney of the southern district of New York and found guilty of two crimes of illegal campaign contributions. He has since served a three-year prison term.David Pecker, the chairman and CEO of American Media, Inc, which owned the National Enquirer and other tabloids, entered into a plea agreement for non-prosecution with the southern district in exchange for his confession that he engaged in a “catch and kill scheme” to discover and pay sources so they “did not publicize damaging allegations” about Trump “before the 2016 presidential election and thereby influence that election”. Pecker had known Trump since 1998, when as a publisher he produced a quarterly magazine called Trump Style for Trump to distribute at his golf clubs, casinos and hotels.Per the indictment, the conspiracy began at a meeting in August 2015 at Trump Tower of Trump, Cohen and Pecker. Trump had announced his candidacy two months earlier. Pecker pledged to be his “eyes and ears”, on the lookout “for negative stories about the Defendant and alerting Lawyer A [Cohen] before the stories were published”.The first payment went to a former Trump Tower doorman named Dino Sajudin, who had bruited about the rumor that Trump had an illegitimate child with a housekeeper. He said he was repeating a story he had heard from Trump’s head of security, Matthew Calamari. Although Sajudin passed a lie-detector test administered by a private detective hired by the National Enquirer, the Enquirer’s reporters could find no evidence to back up his the claim, nor could Ronan Farrow of the New Yorker when he investigated. Nonetheless, the Enquirer paid the loose-lipped doorman $30,000 to zip it.Pecker “directed that the deal take place because of his agreement with the Defendant and Lawyer A [Cohen]”, and “falsely characterized this payment in AMI’s books and records, including in its general ledger”, according to the statement of facts. After determining that the story was false, Pecker wanted to release Sajudin from his non-disclosure agreement, but Cohen told him to wait “until after the presidential election”.The next payment went to “Woman 1”, Karen McDougal, the 1998 Playmate of the Year, whom Trump had met at a pool party at the Playboy Mansion in June 2006, three months after his wife Melania had given birth to their son. Trump and McDougal had an affair that lasted for 10 months. Ronan Farrow of the New Yorker reported her note on that initial encounter: “We talked for a couple hours – then, it was ‘ON’! We got naked + had sex. He offered me money. I looked at him (+ felt sad) + said, ‘No thanks–I’m not ‘that girl.’ I slept w/you because I like you–NOT for money’–He told me ‘you are special.’”Trump, Cohen and Pecker held “a series of discussions about who should pay off Woman 1 to secure her silence”, according to the statement of facts. Pecker agreed to cover the payment if he were reimbursed. “So what do we got to pay for this? One fifty?” Trump asked Cohen in an audio recording. Trump suggested an untraceable cash payment. Cohen created a shell company, Resolution Consultants, LLC, to pay McDougal by check, but, in the end, Pecker made the whole payment himself.On 7 October 2016, the 2005 Access Hollywood tape of Trump’s lascivious boasting broke: “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” Three days later, in full damage-control mode, Pecker’s AMI editor connected Cohen with the lawyer of a new danger, “Woman 2”, “to secure Woman 2’s silence and prevent disclosure of the damaging information in the final weeks before the presidential election”.The recipient of the third payment, Woman 2, was the adult film actor Stephanie Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels. Trump and Daniels had a sexual encounter in July 2006, at a golf tournament at Lake Tahoe to which Trump had also brought McDougal (“Woman 1”). (He and McDougal had begun their affair just a month earlier.) That same weekend, Ronan Farrow has reported, Trump invited four other adult film actors to his hotel room for sex, offering one of them $10,000, but that they rejected him.Cohen and Pecker’s lawyer struck a deal to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 to “prevent disclosure of the damaging information in the final weeks before the presidential election”, per the indictment. But Trump resisted paying, calculating that “if they could delay the payment until after the election, they could avoid paying altogether, because at that point it would not matter if the story became public”. In the end, Cohen paid himself through the shell company after Trump agreed he would pay him back personally.On 14 February 2017, Valentine’s Day, Cohen submitted fraudulent invoices for a fraudulent retainer for fraudulent services rendered that then president Trump paid with two checks from his trust, fraudulently recording them as retainers and stapled to the fraudulent invoices.During the presidential transition, Trump invited Pecker to Trump Tower to thank him “for handling the stories of the Doorman and Woman 1 [McDougal]”, and invited him to the inauguration and to a White House dinner. He was grateful to Pecker for more than the “catch and kill” operation. Throughout the campaign, Pecker had also conducted the systematic smearing of Trump’s opponents from both parties as part of the deal. While the hush money was secret, wild stories about his rivals were blazoned on Pecker’s tabloids displayed at every supermarket counter.The Enquirer and AMI’s even more down-market Globe headlined stories of his Republican rivals: Ted Cruz’s father was linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of John F Kennedy; Cruz was covering up his numerous extramarital affairs; Carly Fiorina was “a homewrecker”; John Kasich was a closeted homosexual. On Hillary Clinton, the papers screamed “Six Months To Live!” She was a money launderer who “will face prison”. She was gay. Bill Clinton was a cocaine addict who was not Chelsea Clinton’s father.“You can’t knock the National Enquirer,” Trump said, defending the tabloid libels, while falsely disclaiming any responsibility of his own for them. “I’m just referring to an article that appeared. It has nothing to do with me.”Many if not most of the fabricated stories originated with Roger Stone, a former Nixon Committee To Re-Elect operative and a link between the “ratfucking” dirty tricks of the Nixon underworld and Trump’s. Trump reviewed the smears before they appeared, and Cohen gave them a final stamp of approval.In 2018, federal prosecutors granted Pecker immunity for his testimony on the “catch and kill” scheme in the Michael Cohen case that led to his conviction. In 2019, Pecker sold AMI to an equity firm, and a year later he was removed as CEO.Now, with Trump’s chief media co-conspirator taking the non-prosecution deal, Trump has substituted his Truth Social site for the National Enquirer. He cannot rely on Pecker and the Enquirer to do his smearing for him. His previous “containment strategy” having failed, he has been forced to run a campaign of obfuscation, obstruction and intimidation openly by himself. His tweets attacking the judges presiding over his cases, their relatives and court clerks have filled the vacuum left by the Enquirer.“It is no longer just a mere possibility or a reasonable likelihood that there exists a threat to the integrity of the judicial proceedings. The threat is very real,” stated Judge Juan Merchan of the New York court in his second gag order. Trump’s “recent attacks”, he said, constitute “a direct attack on the Rule of Law itself”.Trump’s targeted assaults on the justice system are intended to instill fear while at the same time he depicts himself as the victim. They are also an extension of his cover-up. It is fundamental to both his defense and political strategy. If he could, he would engage in a “Saturday Night Massacre” like Nixon, who ordered the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, and deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, to fire the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, which they refused to do and instead resigned. Nixon finally got the solicitor general, Robert Bork, to do his dirty work.But Nixon’s desperate act could not stop the wheels of justice from grinding. A new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, sought the release of Nixon’s White House tapes. In his January 6 coup, as if imitating Nixon, Trump demanded the resignation of his previously compliant attorney general, William Barr, when he declined to become involved in the patently illegal fake elector scheme, and tried to replace him with lackeys.Trump’s last-minute attempt to short-circuit his New York trial by invoking presidential immunity was denied on 3 April. In the case over whether Nixon was required to turn over his White House tapes, United States v Nixon, Nixon’s attempt to secure immunity was denied. The US supreme court decided unanimously that his limited privilege in military and diplomatic affairs did not cover and must yield to “the fundamental demands of due process of law in the fair administration of justice”. That decision against Nixon stands as an obstacle to Trump’s claim of total immunity now.The salaciousness of Trump’s crimes in the New York case may distract from the basic reality that the means of his cover-up strongly resemble those employed by Nixon for the same end of influencing a presidential election. For that very reason, Trump’s hush-money case is on a continuum with his other high crimes of subversion.The revelation that Trump conspired to eliminate his Democratic opponent Joe Biden by withholding defensive weapons from Ukraine in exchange for bogus political dirt – which, we now know from the recent congressional testimony of one of the key co-conspirators, Lev Parnas, was fabricated by Russian intelligence – led to Trump’s first impeachment. His conspiracy to stage a coup to prevent the Congress from ratifying the electoral college vote in the 2020 election led to his second.But if Trump is convicted of any of the felony counts in his New York trial his fate will diverge from Nixon’s. When the “smoking gun” tape exposing Nixon’s role in the cover-up was released, Nixon resigned. He was never impeached. He was never officially charged with his crimes. He never faced trial. President Gerald Ford pardoned him. Nixon accepted the pardon, an implicit acceptance of his guilt.If Trump seeks a pardon, he must throw himself on the mercy of the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul. On 1 April, he tweeted on his Truth Social account that she was “asked to leave” the wake of a slain New York City police officer, which she rebutted as a falsehood.Trump’s New York case is, at last, the first time a cover-up to steal the presidency through bribery is on trial. Only superficially is it about Trump’s tawdry and pathetic sex life. The true subject of abuse at the center of the trial is the constitution, his ultimate victim.
    Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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    Almost 50,000 Wisconsin voters just told Biden to stop the Gaza war. Will he listen? | Malaika Jabali

    This Tuesday, more than 48,000 people defied cold, rainy weather to register protest votes in the Wisconsin Democratic primary against the Biden administration’s unrelenting support for Israel’s war on Gaza.In 2020, Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by an excruciatingly narrow margin of victory of about 21,000 votes. As of Wednesday afternoon, Wisconsin’s “uninstructed” vote tally – the equivalent of the “uncommitted” campaign that Arab Americans launched in Michigan – was 48,093 votes, more than twice Biden’s 2020 win margin.The protest vote in Wisconsin has made clear that this campaign is bigger than Biden. The many people calling for a ceasefire aren’t merely swing voters or bitter castoffs who have long left the party. Many involved in the uncommitted campaigns have, until now, been committed Democrats. But they fear a critical mass of voters may permanently leave the Democratic party if Biden and other leaders don’t implement a ceasefire in Gaza, and quickly. For some voters, even that may be too little, too late.Francesca Hong worked in hospitality before she became a Wisconsin state representative in 2020. “I’ve always voted for Democrats, since I was eligible to vote when I was 18,” she told me a day after the Wisconsin primary.Hong was one of the first elected officials to endorse the “uninstructed” campaign and has been critical of Biden financing the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians. Although the president has promised humanitarian aid to Gaza – including in a statement on Tuesday in the wake of an Israeli strike that killed seven aid workers – he continues to fund Israel’s weapons. At least twice, Biden has bypassed Congress to do so, while nearly 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in just six months in Israel’s relentless attacks.Hong, a woman of color from a working-class, immigrant family with no political background, rose through the ranks in the restaurant industry to become an executive chef. A materialized version of the American dream, she is precisely the sort of person that the Democratic party purports to represent. Yet she said she sometimes feels betrayed and “dismissed” by the party: “This administration is prioritizing some lives over others, and leaders of color are having to go back to their communities with the ‘lesser of two evils’, again.”People “seeing a genocide unfold on social media on their phones has made them even more disillusioned about the political process”, Hong said. “I think that in turn makes them less likely to vote for Democrats.” They feel “betrayed by a party and an administration that they thought was supposed to stand for something different, was supposed to stand for democracy and justice,” she added.Hong, the only Asian American in the Wisconsin state legislature, hopes that Tuesday’s results will get state Democratic leaders to listen to their party’s progressive faction, as party leaders throughout the country continue to appeal to conservatives.Wisconsin state representatives like Ryan Clancy expressed frustration that the party continues to “court imaginary voters”, referencing the conservative voters Democratic leaders believe they can win over.The party’s strategy seems to be that if it is “just moderate enough or timid enough, that somehow, magically, these largely nonexistent Republican [swing] voters will cross over the aisle and vote with them”, Clancy told me a day before the primary.While insurgent campaigns against the Democratic “establishment” are getting less attention this election season, a tectonic shift appears to be happening whether the party wants to acknowledge it or not. The anti-war vote, and an inadequate response to that movement at multiple levels of government beyond the White House, could permanently drive away some of the party’s base: progressive and younger voters. Many progressive voters have no interest in showing up purely to vote against Trump; unless they have a Democrat they really believe in, they’ll simply stay home.Clancy has been loyal to the Democratic party since 2011 when he got involved in politics as a Democratic delegate. He has noticed a shift in voters from younger generations, who largely voted for Biden in 2020 before becoming more repelled by the Democratic party’s politics. “I’m hearing [from] a ton of people, especially younger folks – I’m a father of five, three of my kids are now at voting age – [who] cannot imagine bringing themselves to vote for somebody who is complicit in genocide,” he said.Clancy thinks that Biden is “way out of step with both his own party and Americans generally”. Sixty-eight percent of likely voters under 45, regardless of party, said they support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, while 77% of Democrats support it, according to a February survey by Data for Progress. Even a majority of Republicans favor a ceasefire, according to an Institute for Social Policy and Understanding poll of religious groups in February.Democrats, according to Gallup, are “in a weaker position than they have been in any recent election year”, as independents continue to outnumber those who consider themselves either Democrats or Republicans. While the party may scoff at progressives, they can’t afford to lose any more of those votes, especially in critical swing states where victories can be decided by a fraction of a percent.“Nobody wants fascism in November,” Hong shared. And that’s precisely why Democrats in swing states urge Biden to shift course in Gaza if they want any chance to win the White House, this election season and beyond.
    Malaika Jabali is a 2024 New America fellow, journalist and author of It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why It’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On More

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    Trump classified documents case faces delays amid argument over ‘flawed legal premise’

    In a court filing, the special counsel Jack Smith said that the judge in Donald Trump’s criminal case over his retention of classified information was relying on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” when asking lawyers to consider whether the former president can claim immunity under federal records law.Smith also said that if the judge, Aileen Cannon, ruled Trump can indeed cite the Presidential Records Act (PRA) in his defence, he would appeal to a higher court, seeking an order for her to apply the law correctly and, implicitly, her removal from the case.It all raised the possibility of the trial being pushed back even further, beyond the November election in which Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.Trump faces 40 charges arising from his retention of classified information after leaving the White House and alleged obstruction of attempts to recover such records. He has pleaded not guilty.Cannon, a Trump appointee who has moved slowly on the case, recently asked lawyers to consider two scenarios in which jurors might be told Trump can, as his lawyers claim, invoke the PRA in his defence.Smith’s late-Tuesday filing said: “Both scenarios rest on an unstated and fundamentally flawed legal premise – namely, that the PRA, and in particular its distinction between ‘personal’ and ‘presidential’ records, determines whether a former president is ‘authorized’ under the Espionage Act [Section 793] to possess highly classified documents and store them in an un-secure facility, despite contrary rules in executive order 13526, which governs the possession and storage of classified information.“That legal premise is wrong, and a jury instruction for Section 793 that reflects that premise would distort the trial. The PRA’s distinction between personal and presidential records has no bearing on whether a former president’s possession of documents containing national defense information is authorised under the Espionage Act, and the PRA should play no role in the jury instructions on the elements of Section 793. Indeed, based on the current record, the PRA should not play any role at trial at all.”In their own filing, lawyers for Trump restated their case, saying: “Based on the PRA, it is simply not the case – as a matter of law – that President Trump was ‘unauthorised’ to possess the documents in question under” Section 793 of the Espionage Act.The Florida-based classified information trial is not Trump’s only source of legal jeopardy.Quite apart from civil tax fraud and defamation cases in which he has struggled to pay multimillion-dollar bonds, Trump faces 48 other criminal charges: 34 over hush-money payments in New York, 10 in Georgia over election subversion, and four federal election subversion charges also brought by Smith.In each case Trump’s lawyers have pursued delaying tactics, seeking to put off trials until after the election or avoid them altogether.In the New York case, trial is due to begin on 15 April.If re-elected president, Trump could have the federal charges dismissed or award himself a pardon. He could not have the state charges dismissed or pardoned.Smith’s filing also said that if Cannon does decide Trump can cite the PRA in his defence, Smith would be empowered in his appeal to a higher court to seek a writ of mandamus.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Legal Information Institute at Cornell University defines mandamus as “an order from a court to an inferior government official ordering the government official to properly fulfill their official duties or correct an abuse of discretion.“According to the US Department of Justice, ‘Mandamus is an extraordinary remedy, which should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance.’”In effect, the former White House counsel John W Dean noted, Smith had shown readiness to “remove Cannon if she gets this wrong”.Writing for CNN, the former White House ethics chief Norm Eisen and two co-authors agreed with Dean.If Cannon “clings to even a few of these wrong decisions”, the piece said, “Smith would be entitled to seek the review he threatens by the circuit and her removal.“Ejecting her from the case would be extremely unusual and Smith does not mention seeking it in his papers. But neither does he rule it out, and Cannon’s reasoning … is lawless enough that, unless she reverses course, he may have no other choice.” More

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    Trump documents case faces further delay due to special counsel confrontation with Florida judge – live

    A confrontation between special counsel Jack Smith and judge Aileen Cannon could further delay Donald Trump’s trial in Florida on charges related to unlawfully possessing classified documents, the Washington Post reports.At issue is the possibility that Cannon, who Trump appointed to the federal bench in 2020 and who has been criticized for decisions that have slowed down the progress of the case, agrees that the former president is immune from prosecution, under a federal law dealing with presidential records.Late yesterday, Smith signaled in a filing his strong disagreement with the argument, and that he would appeal to a higher court if necessary. That could further delay the start of the trial, potentially pushing it past the November presidential election.Here’s more on that, from the Post:
    Special counsel Jack Smith warned the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case that she is pursuing a legal premise that “is wrong” and said he would probably appeal to a higher court if she rules that a federal records law can protect the former president from prosecution.
    In a near-midnight legal filing, Smith’s office pushed back hard against an unusual instruction from U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon — one that veteran national security lawyers and former judges have said badly misinterprets the Presidential Records Act and laws related to classified documents.
    Smith’s filing represents the most stark and high-stakes confrontation yet between the judge and the prosecutor, illustrating the extent to which a ruling by Cannon that legitimizes the PRA as a defense could eviscerate the historic case. It sets up the possibility that a government appeal of such a ruling could delay the trial well beyond November’s presidential election, in which Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee.
    Last month, Cannon ordered defense lawyers and prosecutors in the case to submit hypothetical jury instructions based on two different, and very much contested, readings of the PRA.
    In response, Smith said Cannon was pursuing a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” that the law somehow overrides Section 793 of the Espionage Act, which Trump is accused of violating by stashing hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club, after his presidency ended.
    “That legal premise is wrong, and a jury instruction for Section 793 that reflects that premise would distort the trial,” Smith wrote. The Presidential Records Act, he said, “should not play any role at trial at all.”
    Joe Biden spent the past month barnstorming swing states, while his campaign was busy staffing up, opening offices and reaching out to voters. Was it enough to boost his stubbornly low approval ratings, or help him overtake Donald Trump in the polls? A Wall Street Journal survey released today indicates it is not, with the president trailing his Republican challenger in six of the seven states seen as likely deciding the election – similar to other surveys taken in recent months showing Biden faring poorly against the candidate he bested in 2020. Perhaps more interesting is the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released today, which finds Americans largely agree on values, even if they are deeply divided over who they want as their leader.Here’s what else happened:
    Jack Smith reportedly strongly objected to arguments judge Aileen Cannon is entertaining that Trump is immune from prosecution in the classified documents case, which potentially delay his trial.
    Trump held a rally in Michigan yesterday, where he told the crowd he had spoken to the family of a woman allegedly murdered by a man in the US illegally. But her relatives reportedly say none of them have talked to the former president.
    Robert F Kennedy, the anti-vaccine activist and independent presidential candidate, walked back a recent comment, where he said Biden was more of a threat to democracy than Trump.
    Taiwan is recovering from the strongest earthquake to strike the island in 25 years, with the death toll climbing to nine. Follow our live blog for more on this developing story.
    Two brothers pleaded guilty to an insider trading charge connected to Trump’s media company.
    Donald Trump and the Republican Party say they raised more than $65.6m in March, the AP reports.Trump and the Republican National Committee closed out the month with $93.1m in their campaign accounts. That’s a significant increase as they try to catch up to the fundraising of Joe Biden and the Democrats.Biden and the Democratic National Committee haven’t released their fundraising numbers for March. But their political operation said they brought in $53m in February and closed that month with $155m cash on hand.Earlier today, Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a press release: “Our campaign is making early investments to connect directly with voters on the issues that will define this election and to build the infrastructure we need to win.“The difference between our ground game and Donald Trump’s nonexistent presence in the battleground states couldn’t be more clear – and the failing Trump campaign and the RNC can’t get this time back.”A confrontation between special counsel Jack Smith and judge Aileen Cannon could further delay Donald Trump’s trial in Florida on charges related to unlawfully possessing classified documents, the Washington Post reports.At issue is the possibility that Cannon, who Trump appointed to the federal bench in 2020 and who has been criticized for decisions that have slowed down the progress of the case, agrees that the former president is immune from prosecution, under a federal law dealing with presidential records.Late yesterday, Smith signaled in a filing his strong disagreement with the argument, and that he would appeal to a higher court if necessary. That could further delay the start of the trial, potentially pushing it past the November presidential election.Here’s more on that, from the Post:
    Special counsel Jack Smith warned the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case that she is pursuing a legal premise that “is wrong” and said he would probably appeal to a higher court if she rules that a federal records law can protect the former president from prosecution.
    In a near-midnight legal filing, Smith’s office pushed back hard against an unusual instruction from U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon — one that veteran national security lawyers and former judges have said badly misinterprets the Presidential Records Act and laws related to classified documents.
    Smith’s filing represents the most stark and high-stakes confrontation yet between the judge and the prosecutor, illustrating the extent to which a ruling by Cannon that legitimizes the PRA as a defense could eviscerate the historic case. It sets up the possibility that a government appeal of such a ruling could delay the trial well beyond November’s presidential election, in which Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee.
    Last month, Cannon ordered defense lawyers and prosecutors in the case to submit hypothetical jury instructions based on two different, and very much contested, readings of the PRA.
    In response, Smith said Cannon was pursuing a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” that the law somehow overrides Section 793 of the Espionage Act, which Trump is accused of violating by stashing hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club, after his presidency ended.
    “That legal premise is wrong, and a jury instruction for Section 793 that reflects that premise would distort the trial,” Smith wrote. The Presidential Records Act, he said, “should not play any role at trial at all.”
    Donald Trump is well on his way to winning the Republican presidential nomination, after last night’s victories in four states’ primaries. The same can be said for Joe Biden, though the president is also dealing with a rebellion from groups upset at his support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Here’s more about what yesterday’s primary results tell us about the contours of the presidential race, from the Guardian’s Joan E Greve and Léonie Chao-Fong:Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump won primary elections in four states, including the crucial battleground state of Wisconsin.Hundreds of delegates were up for grabs in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Wisconsin on Tuesday, and Biden and Trump have already amassed enough delegates to win their respective nominations. But the turnout could provide more clues about the general election in November.Voters also had a chance to register their discontent with the nominees. Connecticut and Rhode Island gave voters the opportunity to vote “uncommitted” in the primary, while Wisconsin offered a similar option of “uninstructed delegation”. Wisconsin Democrats will be closely watching the turnout for “uninstructed delegation” after progressive activists launched a campaign encouraging voters to withhold support from the US president to protest against his handling of the war in Gaza.The Listen to Wisconsin campaign, based on similar efforts in states like Michigan and Minnesota, has attracted support from some rank-and-file union members as well as an influential group of low-wage and immigrant workers in the state.There’s quite the swirl of legal entanglements surrounding Donald Trump’s foray into the media world. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that the former president has sued two former contestants from The Apprentice who became co-founders of Trump Media:Donald Trump sued two former contestants on The Apprentice, his hit NBC reality show, who became co-founders of Trump Media and Technology Group, claiming they failed to set up the venture properly and should not get promised stock worth more than $400m.Trump fronted The Apprentice, in which contestants competed for a job at the Trump Organization, from 2004 to 2015. The show coined Trump’s catchphrase, “You’re fired!”, though he ended up fired himself, after entering Republican presidential politics and making racist comments about Mexicans.Wesley Moss and Andrew Litinsky met as Apprentice contestants in 2004. In 2021, after Trump was thrown off major social media platforms for inciting the January 6 Capitol attack, as he sought to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, the two men pitched Trump on starting his own platform, which became Truth Social.“This was a phenomenal opportunity for Moss and Litinsky,” said the suit filed by Trump in Florida in late March and first reported by Bloomberg News on Tuesday.Though the two men were “riding President Trump’s coattails”, the suit said, “all [they] needed to do was diligently, faithfully and loyally execute on a short-term plan: get TMTG’s corporate governance established, get Truth Social ready to launch, and find a suitable special purpose acquisition company to take the new company public and access capital to advance TMTG’s business plan”.Reuters reports that two men have entered guilty pleas today to an insider trading scheme connected to Donald Trump’s media company.Here’s more, from Reuters:
    Two men pleaded guilty on Wednesday to insider trading in securities in the company that ultimately took Donald Trump’s media business public.
    Michael Shvartsman, 53, head of Miami-based venture capital firm Rocket One Capital, and his brother Gerald Shvartsman, 46, each pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud before Lewis Liman, the US district judge, in Manhattan.
    Rocket One’s chief investment officer, Bruce Garelick, is scheduled to face trial on related charges on 29 April.
    Prosecutors charged the trio last year with illegally trading on inside information about Trump Media & Technology Group’s (TMTG) plan to go public through a merger with a blank-check company. TMTG operates Truth Social, Trump’s main social media platform.
    Prosecutors said the trio signed confidentiality agreements in June 2021 when they were approached to become early investors in Digital World Acquisition, the blank-check company. The agreements required them to keep information they learned confidential and not trade the company’s securities in the open market, prosecutors said.
    After hearing the company was in merger talks with TMTG, prosecutors said the trio tipped others and bought Digital World securities, selling them after the deal was announced on 20 October 2021, to make a total of $22m in illegal profit.
    Speaking of Democrats and the Senate, the party is already expected to have a difficult time keeping their majority in Congress’s upper chamber in the November elections.But one prominent political forecaster thinks the job is even more difficult than it appears. The Cook Political Report has moved the Nevada Senate seat represented by Jacky Rosen into its “toss up” column, from “lean Democratic”.“We are moving this race because of the unique forces at play in Nevada. A combination of a newer electorate that Rosen must win over, Biden’s lagging numbers and the unique post-COVID economic hangover in Nevada make this race a Toss Up,” said Jessica Taylor, Cook’s Senate and governors editor.Besides Nevada, which has voted Democratic in recent presidential elections but has seen the GOP make inroads lately, Democrats are defending Senate seats representing Ohio and Montana, both red states. The outcome of those races will likely decide Senate control, in addition to whether or not Joe Biden wins re-election.Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee, did not quite tell NBC they agreed with growing calls for the supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire, so Joe Biden can nominate a younger liberal replacement. But they nearly did.“I’m very respectful of Justice Sotomayor,” Blumenthal said. “I have great admiration for her. But I think she really has to weigh the competing factors. We should learn a lesson. And it’s not like there’s any mystery here about what the lesson should be. The old saying – graveyards are full of indispensable people, ourselves in this body included.”That lesson – a harsh one for anyone to contemplate – springs from the case of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the great liberal justice who declined to retire in 2014, when she was 81 and when Democrats held the White House and the Senate, then died in September 2020, at 87 and with Republicans in control.That allowed Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell to ram through a hardline replacement, Amy Coney Barrett, and tilt the court firmly right, 6-3.That court has issued major rulings including removing the federal right to abortion, striking down race-based affirmative action in college admissions and loosening gun rights. Progressives fear more such rulings to come.Sotomayor is 69 and suffers from diabetes. She recently remarked on feeling “tired” while “working harder than I ever had”.Blumenthal said Sotomayor was “a highly accomplished and, obviously, fully functioning justice right now. Justices have to make their personal decisions about their health, and their level of energy, but also to keep in mind the larger national and public interest in making sure that the court looks and thinks like America.”Whitehouse said he was “not joining any calls” for Sotomayor to step down. But he also offered a stark warning: “Run it to 7-2 and you go from a captured court to a full Maga court. Certainly I think if Justice Ginsburg had it to do over again, she might have re-thought her confidence in her own health.”Sotomayor did not comment. Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, told NBC: “President Biden believes that decisions to retire from the supreme court should be made by the justices themselves and no one else.”Voters in Oklahoma have kicked out a local official who has ties to white nationalist groups.The Guardian’s Ed Helmore reports:Voters in Enid, Oklahoma, have decisively kicked out a city council member with a history of ties to white nationalist groups from the elected body almost a year after he was admitted.Judd Blevins lost his position as Enid’s ward 1 council member, according to Oklahoma’s state election board. The move comes months after Blevin was shown to have attended a deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and was later shown to have led an Oklahoma chapter of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa.Blevins denied he was or ever had been a white supremacist, and said he was motivated by “the same issues that got Donald Trump elected in 2016”.A small group of 36 Blevins supporters had won him election last year, but he lost Tuesday’s vote to fellow Republican candidate Cheryl Patterson who had campaigned on a platform of returning Enid to “normalcy” and appears to have defeated Blevins by a 20-point margin, or 268 votes.For the full story, click here:In a new interview on Jimmy Fallon, Hillary Clinton told voters who are upset over Joe Biden and Donald Trump being the two presidential choices to “get over yourself”.Clinton, who ran against Trump in 2016, said:
    “It’s kind of like, one is old and effective and compassionate, has a heart and really cares about people. And one is old and has been charged with 91 felonies.”
    She went on to add:
    “I don’t understand why this is even a hard choice. Really, I don’t understand it … Hopefully, people will realize what’s at stake because it’s an existential question. What kind of country we’re going to have? What kind of democracy we’re going to have. People who blow that off are not paying attention because it’s not like Trump, his enablers, his empowerers, his allies are not telling us what they want to do. I mean, they’re pretty clear about what kind of country they want.”
    Sherrod Brown’s campaign is celebrating a strong fundraising display, as the leftwing Democrat gears up for his Ohio re-election fight with the Trump-endorsed Republican Bernie Moreno, one of a number of contests expected to decide control of the Senate later this year.Friends of Sherrod Brown, the three-term senator’s principal campaign committee, says it raised more than $12m in the first quarter of the year.Rachel Petri, campaign manager for the group, said: “While Sherrod’s opponent makes it clear he’s only out for himself and is using his millions to try to buy Ohio’s Senate seat, Sherrod has unprecedented grassroots support behind his reelection campaign.“Sherrod and Connie [Schultz, the senator’s wife] are thankful to every member of this movement working to send Sherrod back to the Senate to continue fighting for Ohioans and the dignity of work.”Moreno made his millions in cars, then made his bones in Donald Trump’s Republican party by moving from the establishment to the populist right. His victory in the primary was not without its surprises. His campaign trail rhetoric is not without its questionable claims. Some further reading follows…Joe Biden spent the past month barnstorming swing states, while his campaign was busy staffing up, opening offices and reaching out to voters. Was it enough to boost his stubbornly low approval ratings, or help him overtake Donald Trump in the polls? A Wall Street Journal survey released today indicates it is not, with the president trailing his Republican challenger in six of the seven states seen as deciding the election – similar to other surveys taken in recent months showing Biden faring poorly against the candidate he bested in 2020. Perhaps more interesting is the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released today, which finds Americans largely agree on values, even if they are deeply divided over who they want as their leader.Here’s what else is going on:
    Trump held a rally in Michigan yesterday, where he told the crowd he had spoken to the family of a woman allegedly murdered by a man in the US illegally. But her relatives reportedly say none of them have spoken to the former president.
    Robert F Kennedy, the anti-vaccine activist and independent presidential candidate, walked back a recent comment, where he said Biden was more of a threat to democracy than Trump.
    Taiwan is recovering from the strongest earthquake to strike the island in 25 years, with the death toll climbing to nine. Follow our live blog for more on this developing story. More

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    Man with megaphone who led Capitol rioters gets more than seven years in prison

    A Washington state man who used a megaphone to orchestrate a mob’s attack on police officers guarding the US Capitol was sentenced on Wednesday to more than seven years in prison.Royce Lamberth, the US district judge, said videos captured Taylor James Johnatakis playing a leadership role during the January 6 riot.Johnatakis led other rioters on a charge against a police line, “barked commands” over his megaphone and shouted step-by-step directions for overpowering officers, the judge said.“In any angry mob, there are leaders and there are followers. Mr Johnatakis was a leader. He knew what he was doing that day,” the judge said before sentencing him to seven years and three months behind bars.Johnatakis, who represented himself, with an attorney on standby, has repeatedly expressed rhetoric that appears to be inspired by the anti-government “sovereign citizen” movement. He asked the judge questions at his sentencing, including: “Does the record reflect that I repent in my sins?”Lamberth, who referred to some of Johnatakis’ words as “gobbledygook,” said: “I’m not answering questions here.”Prosecutors recommended a nine-year prison sentence for Johnatakis, a self-employed installer of septic systems.“Johnatakis was not just any rioter; he led, organized, and encouraged the assault of officers at the US Capitol on January 6,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.A jury convicted him of felony charges after a trial last year in Washington DC.Johnatakis, 40, of Kingston, Washington, had a megaphone strapped to his back when he marched to the Capitol from Donald Trump’s so-called Stop the Steal rally near the White House on January 6, when he was claiming not to have lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.“It’s over,” he shouted at the crowd of Trump supporters. “Michael Pence has voted against the president. We are down to the nuclear option.”Johnatakis was one of the first to chase a group of police officers who were retreating up stairs outside the Capitol. He shouted and gestured for other rioters to prepare to attack.Johnatakis shouted “Go!” before he and others shoved a metal barricade into a line of police officers. He also grabbed an officer’s arm.“The crime is complete,” Johnatakis posted on social media several hours after he left the Capitol. He was arrested in February 2021. Jurors convicted him last November of seven counts, including obstruction of the January 6 joint session of Congress that belatedly certified Joe Biden’s electoral victory. The jury also convicted him of assault and civil disorder charges.Approximately 1,350 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 800 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds getting terms of imprisonment ranging from several days to 22 years. More

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    Far-right podcaster prompts Nebraska move to change electoral system

    The power of the far-right commentator Charlie Kirk was illustrated when his tweet prompted the governor of Nebraska to support a bill to change the state’s system for presidential elections in order to deny Democrats a single electoral vote that could decide the presidency later this year.“Nebraskans should call their legislators and their governor to demand their state stop pointlessly giving strength to their political enemies,” Kirk wrote.Jim Pillen acted soon after.Nebraska has five electoral college votes. Since 1991, it has split them. Two go to the candidate with most votes statewide, the others to the winners of three electoral districts. Though the state skews heavily Republican, it gave Democrats one electoral vote in 2008 and 2020.This year, Joe Biden could lose Arizona, Georgia and Nevada to Donald Trump but win the electoral college 270-268 if he won Nebraska’s second district again. All five Nebraska votes going to Trump would produce a 269-269 tie, throwing the election to the US House, where Republicans control more state delegations and would thus pick the winner.On Tuesday, Kirk posited that scenario and said: “Despite [Nebraska] being one of the most Republican states … thanks to this system, Omaha’s electoral vote leans blue … [and Biden is] likely to win it again this year.“California would never do this. New York would never do this. And as long as that’s the case, neither should we. This is completely fixable. Nebraska’s legislature can act to make sure their state’s electoral votes go towards electing the candidate the VAST majority of Nebraskans prefer.“There’s already a bill ready to go – LB764. All Nebraska has to do is put it up for a vote. As I write this, the Nebraska legislature is still in session … call @TeamPillen and let him know you want this fixed.”Kirk included a phone number. As noted by Semafor, a little over five hours later the Nebraska governor issued a statement “in response to a callout for his support”.“I am a strong supporter of Senator [Loren] Lippincott’s winner-takes-all bill and have been from the start,” Pillen said. “It would bring Nebraska into line with 48 of our fellow states, better reflect the founders’ intent, and ensure our state speaks with one unified voice in presidential elections.”The only other state to allow for split electoral college votes is Maine.Pillen said: “I call upon fellow Republicans in the legislature to pass this bill to my desk so I can sign it into law.”Not long after that, Donald Trump saluted what he called “a very smart letter”.The Nebraska legislative session ends this month. Democrats said they were ready to block attempts to pass LB764.“The Nebraska Democratic party is watching this bill closely and still believes we have the votes to stop the Republicans from removing a fair electoral system that represents voters,” Jane Kleeb, the Democratic state chair, told Semafor.“The only reason Governor Pillen sent a release today is the extremist Charlie Kirk sent a tweet that, of course, our governor jumped up to respond to.”Kirk, 30, is a co-founder of Turning Point USA, a youth-oriented fundraising juggernaut, and an influential rightwing podcaster. A dedicated controversialist, he recently made waves by claiming “birth control really screws up female brains”.On Wednesday, Kirk tweeted footage of pundits discussing his Nebraska gambit, writing: “MSNBC is panicking about Nebraska. BOOM!” More