US Politics

Supreme court ruling on Wisconsin maps highlights its hostility to voting rightsIt’s no secret the court has been hostile to voting rights recently – but what has changed is the ‘velocity’ that it is acting with Hello, and Happy Thursday,In the fall of 2017, I was sitting in the cramped press area at the supreme court as a lawyer named Paul Smith urged the justices to strike down the districts for the Wisconsin state assembly. They were so distorted in favor of Republicans, he argued, that they violated the US constitution. As Smith started to lay out his case, Chief Justice John Roberts cut in and laid out what he feared would happen if the supreme court were to step in and start policing electoral maps based on partisanship.Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletter“We will have to decide in every case whether the Democrats win or the Republicans win. So it’s going to be a problem here across the board. And if you’re the intelligent man on the street and the court issues a decision, and let’s say the Democrats win, and that person will say: ‘Well, why did the Democrats win?” Roberts said. “It must be because the supreme court preferred the Democrats over the Republicans. And that’s going to come out one case after another as these cases are brought in every state. And that is going to cause very serious harm to the status and integrity of the decisions of this court in the eyes of the country.”The supreme court eventually upheld the Wisconsin districts on technical grounds. But in 2019, the court removed itself and the entire federal judiciary from policing partisan gerrymandering. “Partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts,” Roberts wrote. He pointed to state courts as one potential forum where litigants could bring claims. Together, those two moments underscore how wary Roberts was of getting the court entangled in redistricting cases, highly politically charged disputes that could pose a serious threat to the court’s apolitical reputation.That’s why it was so stunning to see the supreme court intervene last week over Wisconsin’s new legislative maps. Instead of staying out of a redistricting dispute, the supreme court went out of its way to insert itself into the center of a dispute in one of America’s most politically competitive states.The Wisconsin case that arrived at the supreme court this year was a bit different from the one it considered in 2017. This time around, the state’s Republican legislature was challenging the state legislative districts that the Wisconsin supreme court picked for the state. Even though Republicans would still hold their majority under the new map, lawmakers took issue with the creation of an additional Black-majority district near Milwaukee. They said there wasn’t adequate justification for creating it, and made an emergency request to the supreme court to block the maps.In a seven-page unsigned opinion, the supreme court accepted that request last week. But it went further, using the case as an opportunity to interpret the Voting Rights Act in a narrow way without full briefing or oral argument in the case. Even longtime court observers were baffled.It’s no secret that the supreme court has been extremely hostile to voting rights recently. But what has changed is the “velocity” that the court is acting with, Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, told me.“The supermajority of the conservative justices on the supreme court has become pretty emboldened. They’ve got a narrow vision of the scope of the Voting Rights Act. And they are not being shy about enforcing that as quickly as they can,” he told me. “What’s changed is how much more aggressive they’re willing to be.”That increased aggressiveness may in part be a function of the supreme court’s increased conservative majority. Back in 2017, when the court heard the first Wisconsin case, Anthony Kennedy was the swing justice on a court divided 5-4 between liberals and conservatives. Now, Kennedy is gone and conservatives have increased their majority to 6-3.Experts aren’t just alarmed by what the supreme court has been saying about voting rights, but also the way they have been going about it. The court had embraced an idea recently, called the Purcell principle, that courts should not upset the status quo when an election is near. But the justices have been inconsistent in how exactly it has applied that rule and have not really said how close an election must be before courts can’t intervene.In early February, for example, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito said it was too close to Alabama’s 24 May primary to impose a new congressional map that would have increased Black representation. But in early March, when Kavanaugh made the same argument for upholding North Carolina’s congressional districts ahead of its 17 May primary, Alito, joined by Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, said it was not too close.And in the Wisconsin case, state election officials said any ruling that came after 15 March would “increase the risk of errors” as it prepared for its primary election in August. The supreme court intervened nine days after that deadline.“It is a sign that many of the brakes have come off,” Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas told me. “It’s a sign that the court is increasingly willing to do whatever the court wants to do, procedural constraints and sort of awkward timing nonwithstanding.”Also worth watching …
Anyone who isn’t in jail or prison for a felony can vote, a three-judge panel in North Carolina ruled on Monday. The decision could affect up to 56,000 people in the state, though election officials aren’t letting people with felonies register just yet.
Arizona Republicans passed a law requiring new voters to prove their citizenship to vote in a presidential election, which is probably illegal.
Ohio voting rights groups are fuming after Republicans did a bait-and-switch to try again and get the state supreme court to approve gerrymandered maps.
A committee of Georgia lawmakers stopped a proposal, for now, that would have expanded the Georgia bureau of investigation’s ability to investigate voter fraud, among other measures.
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Hillary Clinton and Democrats settle Steele dossier electoral case for $113,000Federal Election Commission had investigated alleged misreporting of expenditure by campaign during 2016 election Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee have agreed to pay $113,000 to settle a Federal Election Commission investigation into whether they violated campaign finance law by misreporting spending on research that eventually became the infamous Steele dossier.That is according to documents sent on Tuesday to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which had filed an administrative complaint in 2018 accusing the Democrats of misreporting payments made to a law firm during the 2016 campaign to obscure the spending. Trump sues Hillary Clinton, alleging ‘plot’ to rig 2016 election against himRead moreThe Clinton campaign hired Perkins Coie, which then hired Fusion GPS, a research and intelligence firm, to conduct opposition research on Republican candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. But on FEC forms, the Clinton campaign classified the spending as legal services.“By intentionally obscuring their payments through Perkins Coie and failing to publicly disclose the true purpose of those payments” the campaign and DNC “were able to avoid publicly reporting on their statutorily required FEC disclosure forms the fact that they were paying Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump with the intent of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” the initial complaint had read.The Clinton campaign and DNC had argued that the payments had been described accurately, but agreed, according to the documents, to settle without conceding to avoid further legal costs.The Clinton campaign agreed to a civil penalty of $8,000 and the DNC $105,000, according to a pair of conciliatory agreements that were attached to the letter sent to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation.The documents have not yet been made public and an FEC spokeswoman, Judith Ingram, said the FEC had 30 days after parties are notified about enforcement matters to release them.The Steele dossier was a report compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by Democrats that included salacious allegations about Trump’s conduct in Russia and allegations about ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.Documents have shown the FBI invested significant resources attempting to corroborate the dossier and relied substantially on it to obtain surveillance warrants targeting the former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.But since its publication, core aspects of the dossier have been exposed as unsupported and unproven rumors. A special counsel assigned to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation charged one of Steele’s sources with lying to the FBI and charged a cybersecurity lawyer who worked for Clinton’s campaign with lying to the FBI during a 2016 meeting in which he relayed concerns about the Russia-based Alfa Bank.Trump, who has railed against the dossier for years, released a statement celebrating the agreement and once again denouncing the dossier as “a Hoax funded by the DNC and the Clinton Campaign”.Graham Wilson, the lawyer representing the campaign and the DNC, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The letter was first reported by the Washington Examiner. TopicsHillary ClintonDemocratsUS elections 2016US politicsnewsReuse this content More

US trial for member of Islamic State group begins in VirginiaEl Shafee Elsheikh, 33, is accused of kidnap and murders of US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller Prosecutors told a federal jury in Virginia on Wednesday that a British national on trial for terrorist acts that resulted in the gruesome deaths of four American hostages had a reputation for outsize brutality.Opening arguments began in the first trial on US soil of an alleged major figure in the Islamic State (IS) group – an accused member of the kidnap-and-murder cell of four men called the “Beatles” by their hostages.El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, is accused of involvement in the murders of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.Foley’s parents, John and Diane Foley, arrived at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, shortly before the proceedings began at 9am local time, making no comment to reporters outside.Speaking to AFP this week, Diane Foley said the trial had “been a long time coming”.“Accountability is essential if we’re ever going to stop hostage-taking,” she said.Elsheikh and another former British national, Alexanda Amon Kotey, were captured in January 2018 by Kurdish forces in Syria while attempting to flee to Turkey.They were turned over to US forces in Iraq and flown to Virginia in October 2020 to face charges of hostage-taking, conspiracy to murder US citizens and supporting a foreign terrorist organization.Kotey pleaded guilty in September 2021 and is facing life in prison. Under his plea agreement, Kotey will serve 15 years in jail in the US and then be extradited to Britain to face further charges.Elsheikh opted to fight the charges. He faces life imprisonment if convicted.Kotey and Elsheikh’s four-member jihadist cell, called the “Beatles” by their captives because of their British accents, was allegedly involved in the abductions of at least 27 people in Syria from 2012 to 2015.Face to face with ‘the Beatles’, the Isis torture squadRead moreThe hostages, some of whom were released after their governments paid ransoms, were from at least 15 countries, including the United States, Denmark, France, Japan, Norway and Spain.They allegedly tortured and killed their victims and IS released videos of the murders for propaganda purposes.Elsheikh was not a typical IS foot soldier; he was a senior leader who took particular pleasure in mistreating the hostages he held captive, the jury was told.Prosecutor John Gibbs said that Elsheikh played a leadership role and was known by his captives not only for his British accent but for his unusual penchant for brutality, even within a terrorist group known for its cruelty.According to Gibbs, surviving hostages will testify that Elsheikh and two British compatriots were more likely than day-to-day guards to hand out beatings.Even hostages about to be released after paying a ransom were given “going-away beatings” by the British men, Gibbs said.When Elsheikh and friends learned that a European hostage was marking his 25th birthday, they ensured they inflicted exactly 25 blows, Gibbs said.The individuals “were utterly terrifying” to the hostages, Gibbs said. If the Britons came into contact with hostages, they were supposed to kneel down, face the wall and avoid eye contact at all times.“If a hostage looked at any of the three men, they would be beaten,” Gibbs said. “In fact, they did not have to do anything to be beaten.”Waterboarding and other forms of torture were also inflicted on hostages, Gibbs said.Ringleader Mohamed Emwazi, referred to by some as “Jihadi John”, was killed by a US drone in Syria in November 2015. A fourth man, Aine Davis, is imprisoned in Turkey after being convicted on terrorism charges.Defense attorney Edward MacMahon highlighted a discrepancy about the number of so-called Beatles as he argued for his client’s innocence, saying Elsheikh was not part of that “cell” of men but a simple Islamic State foot soldier.MacMahon said surviving hostages have different recollections about each of the “Beatles” and their characteristics, and about whether there were three or four.He noted that the British speakers were careful to always wear masks, making identification difficult.According to the US authorities, Kotey and Elsheikh allegedly supervised detention facilities for hostages and coordinated ransom negotiations.The pair were also accused of engaging in a “prolonged pattern of physical and psychological violence against hostages”.Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, a Spanish photographer held captive for six months in 2014, told AFP that “torture and murder were daily occurrences” in an atmosphere of “sadism”.Several former European hostages are expected to testify at the trial along with a Yazidi woman detained with Mueller, a humanitarian worker who was abducted in Syria in 2013.Mueller’s parents say she was tortured before being handed over to Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who allegedly raped her repeatedly before killing her.According to the indictment, Elsheikh was born in Sudan and moved to Britain when he was a child.After becoming a fundamentalist believing in using extreme violence, he went to Syria in 2012 and joined IS.Britain stripped Kotey and Elsheikh of their UK citizenship but held up their transfer to the US until the American authorities assured London the death penalty would not be sought for the two men.TopicsIslamic StateVirginiaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Revealed: Trump used White House phone for call on January 6 that was not on official logTrump’s call to Republican senator should have been reflected in presidential call log on day of Capitol attack but wasn’t Donald Trump used an official White House phone to place at least one call during the Capitol attack on January 6 last year that should have been reflected in the internal presidential call log from that day but was not, according to two sources familiar with the matter.The former president called the phone of a Republican senator, Mike Lee, with a number recorded as 202-395-0000, a placeholder number that shows up when a call is incoming from a number of White House department phones, the sources said.The number corresponds to an official White House phone and the call was placed by Donald Trump himself, which means the call should have been recorded in the internal presidential call log that was turned over to the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton saysRead moreTrump’s call to Lee was reported at the time, as well as its omission from the call log, by the Washington Post and CBS. But the origin of the call as coming from an official White House phone, which has not been previously reported, raises the prospect of tampering or deletion by Trump White House officials.It also appears to mark perhaps the most serious violation of the Presidential Record Act – the statute that mandates preservation of White House records pertaining to a president’s official duties – by the Trump White House concerning January 6 records to date.A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Trump called Lee at 2.26pm on January 6 through the official 202-395-0000 White House number, according to call detail records reviewed by the Guardian and confirmation by the two sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.The call was notable as Trump mistakenly dialed Lee thinking it was the number for Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville. Lee passed the phone to Tuberville, who told Trump Mike Pence had just been removed from the Senate chamber as rioters stormed the Capitol.But Trump’s call to Lee was not recorded in either the presidential daily diary or the presidential call log – a problem because even though entries in the daily diary are discretionary, according to several current and former White House officials, the call log is not.The presidential daily diary is a retrospective record of the president’s day produced by aides in the Oval Office, who have some sway to determine whether a particular event was significant enough to warrant its inclusion, the officials said.But the presidential call log, typically generated from data recorded when calls are placed by the White House operators, is supposed to be a comprehensive record of all incoming and outgoing calls involving the president through White House channels, the officials said.The fact that Trump’s call to Lee was routed through an official White House phone with a 202-395 prefix – either through a landline in the West Wing, the White House residence or a “work” cellphone – means details of that call should have been on the call log.The only instance where a call might not be reflected on the unclassified presidential call log, the officials said, would be if the call was classified, which would seem to be unlikely in the case of the call to Lee. The absence of Trump’s call to Lee suggests a serious breach in protocol and possible manipulation, the officials said.It was not immediately clear how a Trump White House official might obfuscate or tamper with the presidential call log, or who might have the authority to make such manipulations.Trump’s calls on January 6 might not have been recorded in the presidential call log if he used his personal phone or the cellphones of aides, the officials said, and Trump sometimes called people with the cellphone of his then White House deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino.But multiple current and former White House officials have noted that a copy of the call log – alongside the president’s daily schedule and the presidential line-by-line document – might be provided to Oval Office operations to help compile the presidential daily diary.That could lead to a situation where records are vulnerable to tampering, since the presidential daily diary and call log needs approval by a senior White House official before they can be sent to the White House office of records management, the officials said.And by the time of January 6, two former Trump White House officials said, there was scope for political interference in records preservation, with no White House staff secretary formally appointed after Derek Lyons’ departure on 18 December.The White House Communications Agency has also not been immune to political influence, the select committee revealed last year, when it found evidence the agency produced a letter that was intended to be used to pressure states to decertify Joe Biden’s election win.Trump’s call to Lee was not the only call missing from an unexplained, seven-hour gap in the presidential call log that day. Trump, for instance, also connected with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy as the Capitol attack unfolded.The presidential daily diary and presidential call log were turned over to the select committee by the National Archives after the supreme court refused a last-ditch request from Trump to block the release of White House documents to the panel.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

Ketanji Brown Jackson to receive rare Republican vote as Collins says yesMaine senator says she will vote to confirm Joe Biden’s nominee: ‘There can be no question she is qualified’ The Maine senator Susan Collins will vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US supreme court, giving Joe Biden’s nominee a rare Republican vote as she proceeds towards becoming the first Black woman ever to sit on the nine-judge panel.Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing reveals racist fears of Republicans | Steve PhillipsRead more“I have decided to support the confirmation of Judge Jackson to be a member of the supreme court,” Collins, a Republican moderate, told the New York Times after meeting the nominee a second time.“There can be no question that [Jackson] is qualified to be a supreme court justice.”The confirmation was not in doubt. Democrats need only their own 50 votes in the evenly divided Senate to put Jackson on the court, given the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, had already confirmed his support.But the vice-president’s tie-breaking vote has never been required to confirm a supreme court justice, making Collins’ vote at least symbolically important.Collins’ support also comes at a time of bitter partisan divide that was underscored by hostile and politically loaded questioning of Jackson led by white, hard-line Republican men, prominently including Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley.Ahead of a confirmation vote next week, other Republican moderates could follow Collins and announce support for Jackson. In particular, Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, has said he has not yet decided.Jackson will replace Stephen Breyer when he retires this summer. As Breyer is a member of the outmatched liberal group on the court, his replacement will not alter the 6-3 conservative majority.Republicans including the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have complained that Jackson would not take a position on calls from progressives to expand the court in order to redress its ideological balance, during confirmation hearings last week.Speaking to the Times, Collins said: “In recent years, senators on both sides of the aisle have gotten away from what I perceive to be the appropriate process for evaluating judicial nominees.“In my view, the role under the constitution assigned to the Senate is to look at the credentials, experience and qualifications of the nominee. It is not to assess whether a nominee reflects the individual ideology of a senator or would vote exactly as an individual senator would want.”Supreme court confirmations have become highly political and increasingly rancorous.In 2016, as Senate majority leader, McConnell refused even a hearing for Barack Obama’s final nominee, Merrick Garland, thereby holding a seat open in the hope it would be filled by a Republican president. Collins duly voted to confirm Donald Trump’s first nominee, Neil Gorsuch, the beneficiary of such hardball tactics.Collins also voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second nominee, who vehemently denied accusations of sexual assault.‘You’re my star’: high points of Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearingsRead moreBut Collins voted not to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline conservative installed shortly before the 2020 presidential election in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal lion, in stark contravention of supposed principles about confirmations close to elections laid out by McConnell four years before.During the Democratic primary in 2020, Joe Biden promised to put a Black woman on the supreme court. Some Republicans voiced opposition to such a promise, disregarding precedent including Trump’s vow to name a woman to replace Ginsburg.In 2021, Collins was one of three Republicans who voted to confirm Jackson to a federal appeals court. The other two were Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – a hostile questioner in Jackson’s supreme court hearings – and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Murkowski has not said which way she will vote this time.Explaining her vote to the Times, Collins cited Jackson’s “breadth of experience as a law clerk, attorney in private practice, federal public defender, member of the US Sentencing Commission and district court judge for more than eight years”.In a tweet, the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, said: “Grateful to Senator Collins for giving fair, thoughtful consideration to Judge Jackson – and all of the president’s judicial nominations.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

Facebook owner reportedly paid Republican firm to push message TikTok is ‘the real threat’Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, solicited campaign accusing TikTok of being a danger to American children Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms, is reportedly paying a notable GOP consulting firm to create public distrust around TikTok.The campaign, launched by Republican strategy firm Targeted Victory, placed op-eds and letters to the editor in various publications, accusing TikTok of being a danger to American children, along with other disparaging accusations.The firm wanted to “get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using,” wrote a director for the firm in a February email, part of a trove of emails revealed by the Washington Post.“Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger: how TikTok has become the most harmful social media space for kids,’” another staffer wrote.Campaign operatives promoted stories to local media, including some unsubstantiated claims, that tied TikTok to supposedly dangerous trends popular among teenagers – despite those trends originating on Facebook.Such trends included the viral 2021 “devious lick” trend, where students vandalized school property. Targeted Victory pushed stories on “devious lick” to local publications in Michigan, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Washington DC. But the trend originally spread on Facebook, according to an investigation by Anna Foley with the podcast Reply All.Campaign workers also used anti-TikTok messages to deflect from criticisms that Meta had received for its privacy and antitrust policies.“Bonus point if we can fit this into a broader message that the current bills/proposals aren’t where [state attorneys general] or members of Congress should be focused,” wrote a Targeted Victory staffer.In a comment to the Post, a TikTok representative said that the company was “deeply concerned” about “the stoking of local media reports on alleged trends that have not been found on the platform”.A Meta representative, Andy Stone, defended the campaign to the Washington Post, saying: “We believe all platforms, including TikTok, should face a level of scrutiny consistent with their growing success.”TopicsTikTokRepublicansFacebookMetaSocial networkingUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

The Republican party is obsessed with children – in the creepiest of waysO More