Elections, Attorneys General

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      George P. Bush, Jeb's Son, Runs For Texas Attorney General

      by

      George P. Bush — son of Jeb Bush, nephew of George W. Bush and grandson of George H.W. Bush — is running for attorney general in Texas, and away from the legacy of antipathy to former President Donald J. Trump embodied by his own last name.The new campaign beer cozies handed out to supporters this week featured the Lone Star flag on the front, and, on the flip side, a quote from Mr. Trump — who relentlessly mocked Mr. Bush’s father in 2016 — that read:“This is the only Bush that likes me! This is the Bush that got it right. I like him.”The younger Mr. Bush, who currently serves as commissioner of the Texas land office, a statewide post with a wide range of development and education functions, is taking on Ken Paxton, the ferociously pro-Trump incumbent who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit contesting election results in four states that the former president lost last November.The Bush swag tells the story of a Republican primary challenger treading a narrow and perhaps unforgiving path between Mr. Trump and a center-right family philosophy now far out of step with the party’s base.The primary takes place in March, followed by the general election in November. Two Democrats — Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney from Dallas, and Joe Jaworski, the former mayor of Galveston — have said they will run. In 2018, Mr. Paxton defeated the Democrat Justin Nelson by around three points.At his Wednesday kickoff at a beer garden in Austin, Mr. Bush accused Mr. Paxton of corruption while emphasizing his own support for Mr. Trump. The attorney general was indicted on securities fraud charges five years ago; he has repeatedly denied the charges and claimed the case is politically motivated.In a follow-up interview with Fox News on Thursday, Mr. Bush praised “the Trump days,” and criticized President Biden for reversing many of the previous administration’s policies at the border. He went out of his way to describe the details of a chat he initiated with Mr. Trump, seeking his support.“We had a great conversation a few days ago, he sent me his best — he had great words of encouragement,” Mr. Bush said of the man who delighted in taunting his father as “low energy.” Mr. Trump, who commands the overwhelming support of Republicans in Texas but who won the state by only five points, has basked in the empowering glow of the candidates’ praise. “I like them both very much,” he told CNN earlier this week. “I’ll be making my endorsement and recommendation to the great people of Texas in the not-so-distant future.”The low-key Mr. Bush, a Florida native whose mother is Mexican-American, has also been adopting an increasingly confrontational posture with local Democrats.Last week, Mr. Bush’s land office — which has broad discretion in doling out federal aid to localities — denied disaster mitigation aid to several cities with large minority populations, including Houston. He reversed course a few days later under pressure from the state’s congressional delegation, announcing he would release about $750 million in funds allocated in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      A Stanford Student Mocked the Federalist Society. It Jeopardized His Graduation.

      by

      The Stanford student sent a satirical flier that drew a complaint from the conservative group. The university then placed a hold on his diploma.It was the final day of classes at Stanford Law School, May 27, when Nicholas Wallace said he was blindsided by a message from one of the deans informing him that his graduation was in jeopardy for potential misconduct.His offense: sending an email flier to fellow law students in January that he pretended was from the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative and libertarian group with a chapter at the law school.The satirical flier promoted a discussion about the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, featuring Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, and the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton. The title of the mock event: “The Originalist Case for Inciting Insurrection.”The chapter’s leaders were not amused. They filed a complaint on March 27 with the university, which said in a message to Mr. Wallace that it wasn’t until May 22 that the complainants had asked the administration to pursue the matter.“I was astounded,” Mr. Wallace, 32, said in an interview on Wednesday. “I couldn’t believe that without any more than this letter of concern they placed my graduation and everything I’ve worked for for the last three years, they’ve placed that under threat.”Mr. Wallace’s predicament drew national attention from both free speech groups and conservatives. It served as another example of the intense debate over political speech on college campuses in America.In response to questions on Wednesday, a spokesman for Stanford University said in an email that Mr. Wallace would be allowed to graduate after all after administrators consulted with the university’s legal counsel, who concluded the matter involved issues of protected speech.“In cases where the complaint is filed in proximity to graduation, our normal procedure includes placing a graduation diploma hold on the respondent,” said the spokesman, E.J. Miranda. “The complaint was resolved as expeditiously as possible, and the respondent and complainant have been informed that case law supports that the email is protected speech.”Mr. Miranda said that the university would also review its procedures for placing holds on student diplomas in judicial cases close to graduation.The president of the campus chapter of the Federalist Society did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday night.Mr. Hawley, who received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University, was widely criticized for objecting to the certification of the presidential election results. Mr. Paxton has drawn scrutiny for his appearance at a rally in support of Donald J. Trump in Washington on the day of the siege.Representatives for Mr. Hawley and Mr. Paxton did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday night.Grabbing attention itself was Mr. Wallace’s satirical flier, which he said he had emailed to a Listserv forum for law school students on Jan. 25, nearly three weeks after the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.The flier said that the event was being presented by the Federalist Society on Jan. 6.“Riot information will be emailed the morning of the event,” the flier said, offering Grubhub coupons to the first 30 students who R.S.V.P.’d for the fictitious program. “Although widely believed to conflict in every way with the rule of law, violent insurrection can be an effective approach to upholding the principle of limited government.”Two days after the satirical flier was sent by Mr. Wallace, it was the focus of a fact check article by USA Today, which reported that the email was a form of satire.In a complaint to the university, unidentified officers of the Federalist Society chapter said that Mr. Wallace’s email had caused significant harm and had led other organizations to cancel their events with the group.“Wallace defamed the student group, its officers, Senator Josh Hawley, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton,” the complaint said. “Wallace, impersonating the Stanford Federalist Society, wrote on the flyer that ‘Riot information will be emailed the morning of the event,’ insinuating that the student group was encouraging and hosting a riot. He also wrote that Attorney General Paxton advocates for ‘overturn[ing] the results of a free and fair election’ by ‘calling on a violent mob to storm the Capitol.’ And he wrote that Senator Hawley believes that violent insurrections are justified.”The names of the complainants were redacted from the complaint, which was posted online on Monday by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group working to defend free speech on college campuses. Mr. Wallace had sought the group’s help.“By instituting an investigation and placing a hold on Wallace’s degree days before his graduation, Stanford betrays its legal and moral commitments to respect its students’ expressive rights,” the group said in a letter on Tuesday to one of the law school’s deans.The flap drew the notice of Slate magazine. The writer of that article, Mark Joseph Stern, was the featured speaker in a conversation about the Federalist Society that Mr. Wallace said he had organized about a month after he sent the satirical email.Mr. Wallace’s cause was also taken up by Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor emeritus at Harvard University.“Mocking an ideologically-based group can’t be made a basis for denying academic privileges in any open society worthy of respect,” Mr. Tribe wrote on Twitter. “If accurate, this report shows Stanford Law School to be unworthy of treatment as an academic institution.”George T. Conway III, one of the founders of the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project, also rallied behind Mr. Wallace.“As someone who been involved with the Federalist Society for over 35 years, I agree that this is totally ridiculous,” Mr. Conway said on Twitter, responding to Mr. Tribe.Mr. Wallace, who is from Ann Arbor, Mich., and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in Seattle, said that he is supposed to take the bar exam this summer in his home state and then start a job with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C.He said that he would not have been able to take the bar exam without his law school diploma, which he will receive on June 12. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Oklahoma A.G. Mike Hunter Resigns, Citing ‘Personal Matters’

      by

      Attorney General Mike Hunter announced his resignation one day after The Oklahoman said it had sent him questions about an extramarital affair.Attorney General Mike Hunter of Oklahoma announced his resignation on Wednesday, a day after a local newspaper said it had questioned him about an extramarital affair.“Regrettably, certain personal matters that are becoming public will become a distraction for this office,” Mr. Hunter said in a statement on Wednesday. “I cannot allow a personal issue to overshadow the vital work the attorneys, agents and support staff do on behalf of Oklahomans.”He said he would officially step down on Tuesday.His abrupt announcement came after The Oklahoman said it had sent him questions on Tuesday night about an extramarital affair that it said it had confirmed through people familiar with the situation.Mr. Hunter, a Republican, filed for divorce on Friday from Cheryl Hunter, his wife of 39 years, the newspaper reported. The Oklahoman reported that, according to the people it had spoken with, the affair had been with an employee of the state Insurance Department who had filed for divorce in April from her husband of 25 years.Under the state Constitution, Gov. Kevin Stitt, a fellow Republican, can appoint Mr. Hunter’s replacement to serve until the next election in 2022, Mr. Stitt’s spokeswoman, Carly Atchison, said.“The Attorney General informed me of his resignation this morning and I respect his decision to do what he thinks is best for his office and the State of Oklahoma,” Mr. Stitt said in a statement on Wednesday. “I know he is going through a difficult time and I wish him, his family, and the employees of his office well.”Ms. Hunter declined to comment on Wednesday. She told The Oklahoman on Tuesday that “I am heartbroken and my priorities are to take care of my sons, my daughter-in-law, my grandson and my parents.”Gov. Mary Fallin had appointed Mr. Hunter to serve as attorney general in February 2017 after Scott Pruitt, the previous attorney general, resigned to become administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Hunter had previously served as first assistant attorney general under Mr. Pruitt before Ms. Fallin named him secretary of state and special legal counsel.From 2010 to 2015, Mr. Hunter was the chief operating officer of the American Bankers Association, and from 2002 to 2009, he was executive vice president and chief operating officer of the American Council of Life Insurers, Ms. Fallin’s office said when she announced his appointment as attorney general.Mr. Hunter also served six years in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, representing District 85 in Oklahoma City, according to his office.In 2018, he was elected to a full four-year term as attorney general after he defeated a Democratic candidate in the November general election and a Republican challenger in the primary.As attorney general, Mr. Hunter was one of a number of Republicans who joined in support of a lawsuit filed by the Texas attorney general that challenged the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, four states that Mr. Trump had lost to President Biden. The Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit in December.Mr. Hunter had also made fighting the opioid crisis a top priority.In 2019, he led the state’s case in the first civil trial against an opioid manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, the New Jersey-based medical giant, which produced a fentanyl patch. In August of that year, a judge in Oklahoma ruled that Johnson & Johnson had intentionally played down the dangers and oversold the benefits of opioids and ordered the company to pay the state $572 million.Mr. Hunter said the ruling was the first in the country to find an opioid manufacturer liable for the harm caused by the opioid crisis in the United States. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      The ‘Trump Won’ Farce Isn’t Funny Anymore

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe ‘Trump Won’ Farce Isn’t Funny AnymoreRepublicans are now seriously arguing that elections are legitimate only when their side wins.Opinion ColumnistDec. 11, 2020Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo tell a joke to a crowd is to learn a little something about the people who laugh.For our purposes, the “joke” is President Trump’s ongoing fight to overturn the election results and hold on to power against the wishes of most Americans, including those in enough states to equal far more than the 270 electoral votes required to win the White House.“#OVERTURN,” he said on Twitter this week, adding in a separate post that “If somebody cheated in the Election, which the Democrats did, why wouldn’t the Election be immediately overturned? How can a Country be run like this?”Unfortunately for Trump, and fortunately for the country, he has not been able to bend reality to his desires. Key election officials and federal judges have refused his call to throw out votes, create chaos and clear a path for the autogolpe he hopes to accomplish. The military has also made clear where it stands. “We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a speech not long after the election.But there are others who — out of partisanship, opportunism or a simple taste for mayhem — have chosen to support the president’s attack on American democracy. They refuse to acknowledge the president’s defeat, back lawsuits to throw out the results, and spread lies about voter fraud and election malfeasance to Republican voters. They are laughing at Trump’s joke, not realizing (or not caring) that their laughter is infectious.What was a legal effort by the Trump campaign, for instance, is now one by the state of Texas, which has petitioned the Supreme Court to scrap election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, depriving Biden of his victory. Filed by Ken Paxton, Texas’s attorney general, the suit says it would be a violation of due process to accept the outcome in those states, on account of “election irregularities” and “interstate differences in the treatment of voters” that disadvantage Republican voters in areas with stricter voting rules.This lawsuit rests on the novel argument that the Constitution gives exclusive and unquestioned authority to state legislatures to appoint presidential electors as they see fit and renders any action to expand voting without direct legislative consent unconstitutional. The Supreme Court already rejected that argument once this week when it turned away a similar lawsuit by the Trump campaign to overturn the results in Pennsylvania.Regardless, on Wednesday, 17 Republican attorneys general filed a brief in support of Texas, urging the court, in essence, to cancel the election and hand power back to Trump. “Encroachments on the authority of state Legislatures by other state actors violate the separation of powers and threaten individual liberty,” reads the brief, which also claims that “States have a strong interest in ensuring that the votes of their own citizens are not diluted by the unconstitutional administration of elections in other States.” The next day, more than 100 Republican members of Congress filed a brief in support of this lawsuit, in effect declaring allegiance to Trump over the Constitution and urging the court to end self-government in the name of “the Framers.”Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesThere’s a paradox here. This sloppy, harebrained lawsuit has no serious chance of success. Granting Texas (and, by extension Trump, who joined the lawsuit) its relief would plunge the country into abject chaos, with violence sure to follow. That this quest is quixotic is, in all likelihood, one reason it has so much support. It is only with the knowledge of certain defeat that Republican officeholders feel comfortable plowing forward with an effort that would tear the United States apart if it succeeded. They can play politics with constitutional government (Paxton, for instance, hopes to succeed Greg Abbott as governor of Texas) knowing that the Supreme Court isn’t going to risk it all for Donald Trump.Then again, it was only two weeks before Election Day that four of the court’s conservatives announced their potential willingness to throw out votes on the basis of this theory of state legislative supremacy over electoral votes. It is very easy to imagine a world in which the election was a little closer, where the outcome came down to one state instead of three or four, and the court’s conservatives could use the conflict over a narrow margin to hand the president a second term.With no evidence that Republicans have really thought about the implications of a victory in the courts, I think we can say that these briefs and lawsuits are part of a performance, where the game is not to break kayfabe (the conceit, in professional wrestling, that what is fake is real). Still, we’ve learned something from this game, in the same way we learn something about an audience when it laughs.We have learned that the Republican Party, or much of it, has abandoned whatever commitment to electoral democracy it had to begin with. That it views defeat on its face as illegitimate, a product of fraud concocted by opponents who don’t deserve to hold power. That it is fully the party of minority rule, committed to the idea that a vote doesn’t count if it isn’t for its candidates, and that if democracy won’t serve its partisan and ideological interests, then so much for democracy.None of this is new — there is a whole tradition of reactionary, counter-majoritarian thought in American politics to which the conservative movement is heir — but it is the first time since the 1850s that these ideas have nearly captured an entire political party. And while the future is unwritten, the events of the past month make me worry that we’re following a script the climax of which requires a disaster.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More