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      The unprecedented situation at the US-Mexico border – visualized

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      Record levels of migration are straining an immigration system left nearly broken by decades of congressional inaction.Republicans have spent years amplifying scenes of turmoil and tragedy at the southern border, but Democratic leaders are also worried now, particularly big-city mayors and blue state governors who are demanding more federal resources to shelter and feed an influx of migrants.With many voters now saying immigration is a top priority, what exactly is happening at the US border to make so many people concerned?There has been a surge of encounters at the US borderSince the pandemic there has been a spike in global migration, coinciding with Joe Biden’s presidency. Across the globe, people are fleeing war, political insecurity, violence, poverty and natural disasters. Many of those in Latin America, in particular, travel to the US in search of safety.View image in fullscreenIn the last three years, the number of people attempting to cross the US’s southern border into the country has risen to unprecedented levels.In the month of December 2023 alone, border patrol agents recorded 302,000 encounters (these include apprehensions and immediate expulsions), a new high. The monthly average from 2013 to 2019 was 39,000.Arrivals are coming from more countriesThe collapse of Venezuela, political instability in Haiti, violence in Ecuador, a crackdown in Nicaragua, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, repression in China and other conflicts have fueled a historic shift in migration patterns.Mexico was the single most common origin country for US border encounters in 2023, but Mexican nationals made up less than 30% of the total share, compared with more than 60% a decade ago.Their journey is more perilousNearly 9,000 people attempting to reach the US from the south have been recorded missing or dead in the Americas in the past 10 years, according to the Missing Migrants Project.Some never make it through the notorious Darién Gap at the southern end of Central America, where a US deal with Panama and Colombia to stop migrants in their tracks has caused an outcry.The vast majority of recorded fatalities (5,145), however, occur at the US-Mexico border crossing, according to the project’s data.Many of the deaths occurred in southern Arizona when people attempted to cross open desert, miles from any roads.Fatalities are also concentrated along the treacherous stretch of south-western Texas where the Rio Grande river becomes the borderline. Further inland, hundreds of deaths have been recorded in the sparse, humid scrubland around Falfurrias.View image in fullscreenTheir cases languish in courtsThe border rules are complicated: some people apprehended at the border will face expedited deportation, but others will enter formal deportation proceedings and qualify for temporary release into the US, with a date to appear before a judge.Resolving those immigration cases and asylum claims can take years. The backlog of immigration cases has grown steadily – there were an astounding 3.3m cases pending as of December 2023, but just 682 immigration judges. That means the average caseload is more than 4,500 per judge.In the meantime …People arriving often find themselves in unofficial camps all along the US border. Some are waiting to cross, others have been met by US border patrol, yet others have been turned away. Some border states such as Texas have put tens of thousands of people awaiting their asylum claims on buses and sent them to other states, including California and New York, without their knowledge or permission.As for Congress, it continues to argue over clamping down on unlawful border crossings and alleviating the deepening humanitarian crisis – an increasingly irreconcilable divide between those who want to expand the immigration system and those who want to restrict it.View image in fullscreen More

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      Arizona Republican says state lawmakers, not voters, should pick president

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      A proposal from an Arizona lawmaker calls for the state legislature to decide on presidential electors instead of adhering to a popular vote.The state senator Anthony Kern, a Republican, served as a fake elector in 2020, falsely asserting that Donald Trump won the state. Those involved in the fake electors schemes in several states have been charged. In Arizona, the fake electors are under investigation by the Democratic attorney general, her office has confirmed. Kern also attended the 6 January 2021 rally at the US Capitol.The senate concurrent resolution says that the “sole authority to appoint presidential electors” should fall to the legislature. It calls on the legislature to stay in session during presidential election years for this purpose. As a concurrent resolution, the proposal does not require the governor’s signature and does not have the force of law; it functions more to state the legislative body’s position on an issue.Such a change would be a dramatic departure from today’s democratic process, where voters elect a candidate for president and states allocate electors according to whoever won the popular vote in their state as part of the electoral college process.As a key swing state, Arizona’s elections will again take center stage in 2024. The state’s Republicans have remained gripped by election fervor, with prominent lawmakers and candidates insisting the 2020 election was stolen and seeking changes to laws that could limit voters’ power. More

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      Chair of Arizona Republican party resigns after leak reveals alleged bribe

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      The leader of Arizona’s Republican party resigned on Wednesday after leaked audio of him surfaced, appearing to show him offering a bribe to the Republican candidate Kari Lake by asking if there were a dollar amount she would take to stay out of the US Senate race there.Jeff DeWit, the chair of the state party, was captured in audio secretly recorded by Lake telling her “there are very powerful people who want to keep you out” of the Senate race and that “they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is, in a big way”.DeWit said that rather than fight to keep his job, he was stepping down because Lake’s team threatened to release more secret recordings unless he resigned: “I am resigning as Lake requested, in the hope that she will honor her commitment to cease her attacks.” (Lake’s team has denied this, saying no one on her campaign threatened or blackmailed DeWit.)Lake, a Trump ally who has been campaigning for the former president, previously lost the race for governor to the Democratic candidate, Katie Hobbs, and is now running for the Senate against the Democrat Ruben Gallego and, possibly, the incumbent independent, Kyrsten Sinema.In the audio, obtained by the Daily Mail, Lake objects to the idea that she can be “bought” and rejects any attempt at a bribe. DeWit repeatedly asks Lake not to tell anyone about the conversation.“They should want me. I’m a great candidate, people love me. These people are corrupt,” Lake said in the leaked audio.The secret recording fiasco highlights the schism among Arizona Republicans over the party’s direction during an election year in which Arizona will again be a close swing state. In recent years, the state party moved further to the right and embraced Trumpism at a time when the state itself moved more toward the center. Many Republicans there have continued to insist the 2020 election was stolen, a frequent refrain Lake has made on the campaign trail.In a statement on Wednesday, DeWit called the audio “selectively edited” and a “deceptive tactic” and said that Lake was actually employed by his private company at the time the conversation took place 10 months ago, raising legal questions. Lake, a former television anchor, often wears a microphone to record footage that gets used to boost her brand online.While Lake and her allies have cast DeWit’s comments as an attempt to bribe her, DeWit characterized the conversation as “offering a helpful perspective to someone I considered a friend”.The party’s far right wanted DeWit out of his role before the audio was leaked, though the leak came out just before Trump was scheduled to return to Arizona for a visit later this week, followed by the state party’s annual meeting. More

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      Capitol rioter falsely accused of being double agent sentenced to probation

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      A man targeted by rightwing conspiracy theories about the US Capitol riot was sentenced on Tuesday to a year of probation for joining the January 6 attack by a mob of fellow Donald Trump supporters.Ray Epps, a former Arizona resident who was driven into hiding by death threats, pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge. He received no jail time, and there were no restrictions placed on his travel during his probation, but he will have to serve 100 hours of community service.He appeared remotely by video conference and was not in the Washington courtroom when chief judge James Boasberg sentenced him. Prosecutors had recommended a six-month term of imprisonment for Epps.Epps’s sentencing took place in the same building where Trump was attending an appeals court hearing as the Republican former president’s lawyers argued he is immune from prosecution on charges he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost.The Fox News Channel and other rightwing media outlets amplified conspiracy theories that Epps, 62, was an undercover government agent who helped incite the Capitol attack to entrap Trump supporters.Epps filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News last year, saying the network was to blame for spreading baseless claims about him.Epps told the judge that he now knows that he never should have believed the lies about a stolen election that Trump and his allies told and that Fox News broadcast.“I have learned that truth is not always found in the places that I used to trust,” said Epps, who asked for mercy before learning his sentence.The judge noted that many conspiracy theorists still refuse to believe that the Capitol riot was an insurrection carried out by Trump supporters. The judge said he hopes that the threats against Epps and his wife subside so they can move on with their lives.“You were hounded out of your home,” the judge said. “You were hounded out of your town.”Federal prosecutors have backed up Epps’s vehement denials that he was a government plant or FBI operative. They say Epps has never been a government employee or agent beyond serving in the US marines from 1979 to 1983.The ordeal has forced Epps and his wife to sell their property and businesses and flee their home in Queen Creek, Arizona, according to his lawyer.“He enjoys no golf, tennis, travel, or other trappings of retirement. They live in a trailer in the woods, away from their family, friends, and community,” attorney Edward Ungvarsky wrote in a court filing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe internet-fueled accusations that upended Epps’s life have persisted even after the justice department charged him with participating in the January 6 siege.“Fear of demented extremists has no apparent end in sight so long as those who spread hate and lies about Mr Epps don’t speak loudly and publicly to correct the messaging they delivered,” Epps’s lawyer wrote.Epps pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on restricted grounds, a charge punishable by a maximum of one year behind bars. Prosecutors say Epps encouraged the mob to storm the Capitol, helped other rioters push a large metal-framed sign into a group of officers and participated in “a rugby scrum-like group effort” to push past a line of police officers.A prosecutor, Michael Gordon, said Epps does not deserve to be inundated with death threats but should serve jail time for his conduct on 6 January 2021.“He didn’t start the riot,” Gordon told the judge. “He made it worse.”Epps’s lawyer sought six months of probation without any jail time. Ungvarsky said his client went to Washington on 6 January 2021 to peacefully protest against the certification of the electoral college vote for Joe Biden over Trump. More

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      Arizona Democrats’ No 1 message: ‘Republicans want to destroy our democracy’

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      Few states will have more influence over the country’s political future than Arizona. Once a ruby-red Republican stronghold, it is now a south-western battleground and the stakes couldn’t be higher for Arizonans – or Americans.In 2020, Joe Biden carried Arizona by just over 10,000 votes, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state in nearly a quarter-century. Two years later, Democrats won statewide races for governor, secretary of state and attorney general and re-elected the Democratic senator Mark Kelly to a full six-year term.Now, Arizona is at the center of the battle for the White House and for control of Congress, with a marquee Senate race and a pair of closely contested House races. At the state level, Democrats are attempting to wrest control of the Arizona legislature for the first time in decades. Republicans presently hold one-seat majorities in both the state senate and the state house.To win in Arizona, Democrats say they must reassemble the coalition of moderate Republicans, suburban women, Latinos and young people who powered nail-biting victories for the party in recent election cycles. They also must confront widespread economic discontent in a state that saw some of the worst levels of inflation in the country last year. Frustration over high prices and housing affordability has hurt Biden’s standing in Arizona, where he trails Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, in a number of swing state polls.As Democrats attempt a repeat of their successes in Arizona next year, Yolanda Bejarano, the state party chair, will play a crucial role in turning out the vote in what is expected to be another closely fought election.In an interview, Bejarano, a longtime union organizer and Arizona native, previewed Democrats’ strategy for winning her state. The Guardian’s interview with Bejarano has been edited for clarity and length:Tell us how you got involved in politics.I was a union organizer for 18 years and I got involved in politics after Arizona passed SB 1070, which was the racial profiling bill. I started volunteering for candidates that I believed in and I thought would make a difference in making sure that racial profiling was not something that we were OK with. I became vice-chair of the state party a couple years ago and then our chair [Raquel Terán] finished her term and then I decided to run.Recent polling shows Joe Biden struggling in Arizona, with voters unhappy over his handling of the economy and immigration. What can Biden do to improve his standing in the state?The best predictor of how voters are feeling is how voters are voting. And we saw in the 2022 and 2023 elections when the Democratic party puts in the time, money and resources behind the president’s agenda, it really is a winning message. President Biden is creating more jobs more quickly than the rest of the world. He’s providing relief in Arizonans’ pockets and it’s our job to continue to do what we do best and to communicate that widely across the state – to communicate President Biden’s accomplishments from bringing back good union jobs like manufacturing jobs, decreasing inflation, expanding broadband, lowering the cost of internet and lowering the cost of prescription drug prices. Folks care about these issues, these kitchen table issues and we’re going to continue to communicate that across the state.Democrats may find themselves in a three-way race for Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate seat. Sinema was elected to the seat in 2018 as a Democrat but left the party to become an independent after the 2022 midterms. She has not decided whether to seek re-election. The Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego launched his campaign for the seat last year and Kari Lake, the former local TV anchor who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022, is likely to be the Republican nominee.In 2022, Democrats portrayed Lake as a threat to American democracy. In a three-way race, could Arizona end up electing a Senator Lake?When we talk about Kari Lake and just everything she stands for – she calls abortion the “ultimate sin” – she’s dangerous for our state, dangerous for Arizonans. Now she’s trying to rebrand herself, trying to appeal to moderate Republicans and it’s just not working. She’s just a failed candidate. She kept saying she was the governor even though she’s running for Senate. Arizonans don’t like her and we’re going to make sure she doesn’t win.What’s your best guess: does Sinema run for re-election?I don’t know if she runs again. I haven’t spoken to her in years. Who knows what she’s going to do. We are laser-focused on making sure that our Democratic nominee wins in November 2024.The state is roughly evenly divided between Democratic, Republican and independent voters. What is Democrats’ message to moderate Republicans, independent and swing voters who they will need to persuade in order to win in 2024?The number one thing is making the persuasive argument that Democrats want to protect our democracy; Republicans want to destroy our democracy. Democrats are helping working families bringing back jobs, Democrats are supporting small businesses, Democrats are bringing back manufacturing jobs, fixing our infrastructure, lowering the price of prescription drug prices that affects everybody, regardless of party affiliation. So I think it’s that we Democrats believe in our democracy, Democrats believe in protecting our institutions and Republicans are trying to tear down everything and privatize things and it’s just not good for our state.Arizona is a border state and immigration is top of mind for voters. How are Arizona Democrats navigating concerns over border security with the concerns of immigrant communities?I grew up near a border town in a place called Roll, Arizona. It’s in Yuma county. My dad was a farm worker. We were pretty poor. We didn’t have healthcare so we would drive across the border to San Luis Río Colorado and go to the doctor, see the dentist. Americans would go there for the pharmacies or to go eat. Mexicans would come across the border to work. It was like an exchange of commerce and people.That being said, I 100% agree that the border needs to be a safe, secure and welcoming place. Our Arizona Democrats from Governor [Katie] Hobbs to our congressional delegation, they’re multi-focused on this issue. It’s a complicated issue. And Democrats are working towards a solution that prioritizes the economics, the safety, the humanity, treating people humanely, people who are suffering and trying to find a better life.Democrats are trying to find a solution while Republicans are weaponizing the border and they’ll continue to weaponize the border. I truly do not believe that they want a solution because they will use the border to dehumanize people, to scare people.It appears likely that a measure enshrining abortion rights into the state’s constitution will appear on the ballot next year. At the same time, the state’s supreme court is considering the legality of a territory-era ban that could effectively outlaw the procedure in the state. How are Democrats working to leverage the issue in next year’s election?This is a mobilizing issue for us. When abortion is on the ballot, like we saw in Kansas, we saw it in Ohio, what happened in Virginia, people do not want the government interfering with their decisions to grow or start a family. People in Arizona and across the country believe that everyone should be free to decide how and when to start and grow a family free from political interference. This is a big issue. It’s going to get on the ballot and we’re going make sure that a woman’s right to an abortion is enshrined in our constitution.How central is abortion to Democrats’ campaign message?In 2022, we elected pro-choice Democrats up and down the ticket: our attorney general, our secretary of state, our governor. They were talking about abortion and it is what got them across the finish line. So it’s huge.The economy and inflation are top of mind for voters in Arizona and across the country. How are your candidates confronting frustration over the economy and Biden’s handling of it?We are starting to see the economic progress made with Bidenomics. In our wallets we’re seeing decreased energy prices, and there’s a consistent drop in inflation. And it wasn’t just the United States that had an inflation problem. It was something across the entire world.So what we’re doing is letting folks know that the reason why they’re seeing their energy bills decreasing is because of our Democratic policies. The cap on insulin at $35 a month for Medicare recipients, that’s because of Democratic policies. Our infrastructure, our improved roads are thanks to a Democratic policies. So we’re messaging that to Arizonans across the state.In 2020 Arizona became “ground zero” for Donald Trump’s stolen election lies. Though Arizona voters largely rejected election-denying candidates in 2022, two Republican officials were recently indicted on charges of conspiring to delay the election. How is the party confronting pervasive and ongoing election denialism in the state? Arizona is a testing ground for Republican election conspiracy theories. We saw in 2022 militia men hanging outside of ballot drop boxes with their rifles to try to intimidate people. We saw Maga mobs showing up to our county recorders’ offices when they were counting ballots in a very transparent manner. People can see how they were counting the ballots but we have mobs outside.Our state where Democrats have been working diligently to protect our democracy, making it clear that if you hold up a certification of our elections, you will be indicted. That just happened to two Cochise county board of supervisors. Our statewide Democrats are laser-focused on making sure that our everybody’s fundamental right to vote is protected. We are prepared to communicate clearly about what’s at stake in this upcoming election.I think this is something that crosses party lines. People need that assurance, that stability, that when you vote that your elections are fair and they are transparent and that is what is happening. And we have people on the Republican side that are still perpetuating this “big lie” and the election conspiracy theories that hurt our democracy and hurt our democracy.Several recent polls show Donald Trump ahead in Arizona. With the caveat that much can change in a year, why do you think Trump is winning over some of the Arizonans who turned against him in 2020?People know that Trump’s judgment is totally compromised. He is not someone who Arizonans will support. Ah. What can I say about Donald Trump? He is dangerous. Arizonans will want progress over chaos, they want stability, and they don’t get that with Donald Trump. They get more chaos.So you don’t think the polls capture where Arizona voters will be come election day 2024?I do not think the polling captures where people will be in a year, correct. More

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      Kenneth Chesebro Is a Key Witness as ‘Fake Electors’ Face Charges

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      Kenneth Chesebro, an architect of the plan to deploy people claiming to be Trump electors in states won by President Biden, is cooperating with inquiries in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.Twenty-four of the so-called fake Trump electors now face criminal charges in three different states, and one of the legal architects of the plan to deploy them, Kenneth Chesebro, has emerged as a witness in all of the cases.Mr. Chesebro, a Harvard-trained lawyer, helped develop the plan to have Republicans in battleground states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 present themselves as Trump electors. The scheme was part of an effort to have Congress block or delay certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory on Jan. 6, 2021.Earlier this week, a Nevada grand jury indicted six former Trump electors, including top leaders of the state’s Republican Party, on charges of forging and submitting fraudulent documents.In August, a grand jury in Atlanta returned an indictment against former president Donald J. Trump and 18 allies, including three who were fake electors in Georgia. And in July, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel brought charges against all 16 Republicans who acted as Trump electors in her state. (In October, she dropped charges against one of them, James Renner, in exchange for his cooperation.)Interest in Mr. Chesebro intensified after he pleaded guilty in October to a single felony charge of conspiracy in Georgia and was sentenced to five years’ probation. He had originally been charged with seven felonies, including one charge under the state racketeering law.“Everything happened after the plea in Georgia,” said Manny Arora, one of Mr. Chesebro’s lawyers in Georgia. “Everyone wants to talk about the memos and who he communicated with.”The lawyer was referring to memos written by Mr. Chesebro after the 2020 election that outlined what he himself called “a bold, controversial strategy” that was likely to be rejected by the Supreme Court. Since his plea agreement in Georgia, Mr. Arora said, Mr. Chesebro was interviewed in Detroit by Ms. Nessel’s office, and he was also listed as a witness this week in the Nevada indictment.Asked if Mr. Chesebro had agreements in place to avoid prosecution in the various jurisdictions, another one of his lawyers, Robert Langford, said “that would be a prudent criminal defense, that’s typically what you do,” adding that he did not “want to comment on anything happening in any of the states.”Mr. Chesebro is also expected in Arizona next week, where the state’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, has been conducting her own inquiry into the electors plot for several months, people with knowledge of that inquiry said. (Mr. Chesebro’s Michigan and Arizona appearances were reported earlier by CNN and The Washington Post.)Mr. Chesebro worked for Vice President Al Gore during the presidential election recount battle of 2000 but later came to back Mr. Trump. He and another lawyer, John Eastman, are seen as the key legal architects of the plan to use bogus electors in swing states lost by Mr. Trump, a development that left some of his old colleagues scratching their heads.“When the world turned and Donald Trump became president, I stopped hearing from him,” Lawrence Tribe, who was Mr. Gore’s chief legal counsel and a Chesebro mentor, recently said.Mr. Chesebro’s lawyers continue to generally defend his conduct, saying he was simply an attorney offering legal advice during the 2020 election. But Mr. Arora said that the legal team in Georgia decided to take a plea agreement because the document that was signed by the fake electors in Georgia did not include language explaining that what they were signing was a contingency plan, pending litigation.“They didn’t do that in Georgia,” he explained. “Because he was involved in it and that language wasn’t in there, we decided to plead to that count. It wasn’t because the whole thing was fraudulent or that this was a scam.”The three state electors investigations have taken very different approaches.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., brought a broad racketeering case that includes Mr. Trump and top aides like Rudolph W. Giuliani, his former personal lawyer, and Mark Meadows, who served as White House chief of staff. Ms. Willis reached cooperation agreements with most of the fake electors before charges were brought.The Michigan and Nevada cases center on the electors themselves, rather than those who aided their actions, though Ms. Nessel has said that her inquiry remains open.Underlying claims of widespread election fraud that propelled the alleged fake electors scheme have never been substantiated. New legal filings this week from Jack Smith, the special counsel in the Justice Department who has charged Mr. Trump in his own federal election inquiry, underscore the illegitimacy of Mr. Trump’s chronic claims of election fraud, highlighting that as far back as 2012 he was making baseless contentions about President Barack Obama’s defeat of Mitt Romney.Mr. Trump made similar statements after his 2016 loss in the Iowa caucus, when he claimed that Senator Ted Cruz “didn’t win Iowa, he illegally stole it,” and after he lost the popular vote in the general election to Hillary Clinton, which he said he won “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” More

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      I Clerked for Justice O’Connor. She Was My Hero, but I Worry About Her Legacy.

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      When I learned that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor had died, I felt not just the loss of a world historical figure but also the loss of someone who formed a part of my identity.As a young woman, I was in awe of Justice O’Connor. Her presence on the Supreme Court offered an answer to any doubts I had that I belonged in the law. As a young lawyer, I was lucky enough to work for a year as her law clerk.While clerking for her, I came to understand and appreciate not only her place in history but also her vision of the law. She refused opportunities to issue sweeping opinions that would substitute her ideals for the democratic process. This made it all the more tragic that toward the end of her career, she joined in a decision — Bush v. Gore — that represented a rejection of her cautious approach in favor of a starkly political one.For me, she stands as a shining example of how women — everyone, really — can approach life and work. I witnessed her warmth, humor and humanity while experiencing the gift of learning and seeing the law through her eyes. Those personal and legal impressions have left an enduring mark on me as a person and as a lawyer.At the time Justice O’Connor became a lawyer, women in that role were rare. As has now become familiar lore, after she graduated near the top of her class from Stanford Law School in 1952, she was unable to find work as a lawyer. As a justice, she made sure that opportunities denied to her were available to others. Shortly after I graduated from law school, I joined two other women and one man in her chambers, making a rare majority-woman chamber when just over a third of the clerks for Supreme Court justices were women.I always found it remarkable that I never heard Justice O’Connor talk with any bitterness of the barriers she faced pursuing her career. Instead, she worked hard and without drama to overcome them. Remarkably, that experience did not harden her.She had a wicked sense of humor. The door to our clerks’ office held a photocopied image of her hand with the words “For a pat on the back, lean here.” Her face transformed in an almost girlish way when she laughed, which she did often.When she met with the clerks on Saturday to discuss upcoming cases, she brought us a home-cooked lunch — often something inspired by her Western roots. (One memorable example was tortillas and a cheesy chicken filling, to make a kind of cross between a burrito and a chicken quesadilla. It was a bit of a mess to eat but delicious.) She insisted that we get out of the courthouse and walk with her to see the cherry blossoms, and she took us to one of her favorite museums; once we visited the National Arboretum and lingered at the bonsai exhibit. She believed firmly in the benefits of exercise, and she invited us to join daily aerobics sessions with a group of her friends early in the morning in the basketball court above the Supreme Court chamber, which she delighted in calling the “highest court in the land.”She was also a hopeless romantic, and she was well known for trying to find partners for her single clerks. She met her husband, John, in law school, and they married shortly after graduation. He had received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis when I clerked for her, though that knowledge was not yet public. He often came by her chambers as she worked to maintain a sense of normalcy. She retired in 2006 largely because of his progressing dementia. In a powerful lesson of what it is to love, she was happy for him when he struck up a romance with a fellow Alzheimer’s patient. It was devastating to learn that she was subsequently diagnosed with dementia herself.When I clerked for her in 1998 and ’99, she was at the height of her powers. She was the unquestioned swing justice, and some called her the most powerful woman in the world.But she approached the role with humility. Considered a minimalist, she worked to devise opinions that decided the case and usually little more. She was sometimes criticized for that approach. Justice Antonin Scalia made no secret of his frustration. When she refused to overturn Roe v. Wade, in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, he snarlingly referred to the opinion as a “jurisprudence of confusion.” She was criticized by many academics for failing to articulate a grand vision of the law.What they missed was that this was her grand vision of the law — or at least of the Supreme Court. She had spent the formative part of her career before she entered the court as a member of the Arizona State Legislature, where she rose to become the first female majority leader of a State Senate.She believed that the most important decisions about how to govern the country belonged to the political branches and to state legislatures, not to a court sitting in Washington. Seeing the law through her eyes during the year I worked for her, I realized that she was not looking for a sweeping theory that would change the face of the law. She wanted to decide the case before her and provide a bit of guidance to the lower courts as necessary but leave the rest to the democratic process.In December 2000, this made reading the opinion she joined in Bush v. Gore all the more heartbreaking. Her vote made a 5-to-4 majority for the decision to halt the recount in Florida rather than allow that process to play out, throwing the election to George W. Bush, who became the first president since 1888 to be elected without winning the popular vote. The decision, widely criticized for its shoddy reasoning, was the opposite of the careful, modest decisions she had spent her career crafting. It disenfranchised voters whose ballots had been rejected by ballot-counting machines in the interests of finality — in the process substituting the judgment of the court for the expressed will of the people.The court showed that it could — and would — behave in nakedly political ways. It had given into the temptation to engage in ends-driven reasoning that was utterly unpersuasive to those who did not already share its view of the right result. In doing so, the court might have opened the door to what has now become something of a habit.Justice O’Connor retired just over five years later, and she was replaced by Samuel Alito. It has been painful to watch as, in decision after decision, he has voted to undo much of the legacy she so carefully constructed. The blunt politics of Bush v. Gore now look less like an embarrassing outlier and more like a turning point toward a court that has cast aside Justice O’Connor’s cautious minimalism for a robustly unapologetic political view of the law. Unsurprisingly, public opinion of the court has fallen to a near historic low.Justice O’Connor remains a transformative figure in the law, a woman who charted a path that I and so many others have followed. If the court is to regain the public trust, it should look, once again, to her shining example, which embodied a powerful ideal: the court is not a body meant to enact the justices’ vision of what the law should be. Its role is, instead, to encourage our imperfect democracy to find its way forward on its own.Oona A. Hathaway is a professor of law and political science at Yale University and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘The poison continues to spread’: legal losses fail to quell election denial hotbed

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      In the year since two elected officials in rural Arizona tried to hand-count ballots then refused to certify an election, the consequences have started to trickle in.Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, the two Republican supervisors in Cochise county who led these efforts, were recently subpoenaed as part of an investigation by the state’s attorney general.The Republican-led county on the US-Mexico border has had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and settlements for the lawsuits it faced in the wake of Crosby and Judd’s decisions. They have lost in court multiple times in their quest to prevent machine counting – part of an ongoing rightwing effort to switch to hand counts – and stall election results.The elections department has had four different leaders in the past year. A longtime elections director left because of a hostile work environment, followed by the county’s recorder taking over her duties. The county then hired a director who had questioned election results in the past, only to see that director leave quickly to return to the previous county he worked in, which he called a “welcoming home”. The current director, Tim Mattix, has been on the job since October.To settle a lawsuit from the former director Lisa Marra, who left because of a toxic work environment caused by the two supervisors, the county’s insurance paid out $130,000. Other legal fees, primarily in the form of paying the costs of the other side’s attorneys in losses, have totaled nearly $170,000.Still, the costs and consequences so far haven’t quelled election denialism in the county. An effort to recall Crosby fell short of its signature goal in May, and the former supervisor is now crowdfunding for legal help to continue his crusade. (Crosby and Judd did not respond to requests for interviews.)The rural, red county has became a microcosm of far-right election fervor that’s featured a host of conspiracies and attempts to curtail voting access. Proponents have pushed the county to hand-count all ballots, get rid of any machines involved in the voting process, end voting by mail and vote solely on one day. They have rarely pointed to any specific claims of fraud in Cochise’s elections, but instead called out problems in other places or cited potential issues.Cochise itself is not a swing county – it is reliably Republican. Arizona overall, though, has grown more purple in recent years, resulting in a backlash from the right over the state’s direction.The topic has gripped the county’s meetings, with regular appearances from people speaking in favor of hand counts and against voting by mail or machine counting. Even during meetings where election considerations aren’t on the agenda, several speakers will focus on the topic during public comment periods. In response, a group of people who support the way elections have run there and opposed the hand count and certification delay have routinely spoken up at supervisors’ meetings.Tricia Gerrodette, an unaffiliated voter who lives in Crosby’s district, started speaking up at meetings again after a decade or so off from the practice. She helped the effort that sought to recall Crosby. She doesn’t think her comments will sway the two supervisors at this point, but she has a broader mission.“It’s more letting the general public, the population, know that there are other voices that do trust the elections, so we’re not drowned out by the deniers,” she said.Despite the recall’s failure, its proponents say they found a broad array of voters from all political backgrounds who were sick of the election denial sideshow. They also informed many voters who weren’t aware of what supervisors do or what had happened with the election. Crosby now faces a Republican primary challenger in his re-election bid.Some in the county wanted the state’s attorney general, Democrat Kris Mayes, to launch an investigation into the supervisors’ actions. It appears Mayes is doing just that. Crosby and Judd were summoned to a grand jury proceeding this month, and the Democratic supervisor, Ann English, told Votebeat that investigators asked her about the hand count and certification issues. (Mayes’s office would only confirm an active investigation into open meetings law violations.)In a post on the rightwing crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, Crosby sought donations to defend himself. He has raised nearly $3,000 with a goal of $100,000.“I have been an elections integrity proponent since before it became popular,” he wrote. “I have heard that a grand jury subpeona [sic] is almost a guaranteed indictment. If that is the case, I would expect to go to trial, and be stuck with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars of court costs and legal fees. If my legal adversary is successful in defeating me, it will intimidate other AZ County Supervisors into falling in line with the globalist plans of compromised elections, and forced use of voting machines.”In a board meeting this month, after hearing from people commenting on elections issues, Crosby foreshadowed that “election integrity issues are not going to go away heading into a presidential election year.”As for Judd, who once said she was prepared to go to jail for her vote in favor of a full hand count, she told Votebeat that she felt “used” by outside attorneys who advised her on the issue and that she wouldn’t vote similarly this election.Cochise’s troubles have so far deterred other Arizona counties from following suit. Mohave county, a Republican-led county, has twice rejected attempts to hand-count ballots, despite heavy lobbying efforts from state lawmakers and some local residents. The costs and potential legal consequences, highlighted by the county’s attorney and elections director, have kept Mohave from moving ahead with a hand count for 2024’s elections there. In advance of a second vote on a hand count earlier this week, Mayes’s office sent a letter to Mohave’s supervisors reminding them that undertaking a hand count would be illegal, and they would be sued for it.While the hand count and certification issues already worked their way through the courts, an investigation into the issue takes time. In the meantime, the local Democratic party chair, Elisabeth Tyndall, said, “the poison continues to spread.”All elections now are under intense scrutiny. A local all-mail election to fund jails snagged a lawsuit that sought to nullify the results and claimed the votes were all illegal. It was dismissed. When the board met to accept the results of the jail district election, Crosby abstained from the vote.“It’s this cascading effect of creating distrust and creating chaos around basic maintenance elections, things that shouldn’t be controversial. It’s a yes or no vote,” Tyndall said. “It shouldn’t be a knockdown, dragout about whether mail-in elections are valid.”The Mayes investigation came as welcome news to those who have been sounding the alarm about democracy issues in Cochise county, though there is also a concern that any criminal charges stemming from the hand count and certification issues could backfire, especially during a high-profile presidential election year in a swing state.“I’m concerned that a felony charge … would really galvanize the opposition,” Gerrodette said. “And I’m just not sure what direction that might go. There’s some really angry people out there who really believe that their votes aren’t being counted, I guess.”
      This article was amended on 25 November 2023 to correct the spelling of Tim Mattix’s name. More