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      in US Politics

      US supreme court backs police officer in workplace sex discrimination lawsuit

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      The US supreme court on Wednesday gave a boost to a St Louis police officer who sued after claiming she was transferred to an undesirable new job because of her sex, in a case testing the scope of federal workplace protections.The 9-0 ruling by the justices threw out a decision by a lower court to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the officer, Jatonya Muldrow, and directed it to reconsider the matter.At issue in the case is whether federal law banning workplace bias requires employees to prove that discrimination caused them tangible harm such as a pay cut, demotion or loss of job.Muldrow has claimed she was transferred out of a police intelligence unit by a new supervisor who wanted a male officer in the position.The city of St Louis, Missouri, has said officers are routinely transferred and that Muldrow’s supervisor transferred more than 20 officers when he took over the intelligence unit.Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars discrimination based on sex, race, religion and other characteristics “with regard to any term, condition, or privilege of employment”.Muldrow was backed by the Biden administration, which had urged the supreme court to endorse a broad application of Title VII. The justice department said that discriminatory transfers always violate the law because they necessarily involve a change in working conditions.Lower courts were divided over whether any workplace bias violates Title VII, or if companies violate the law only when discrimination influences major employment decisions.In Muldrow’s case, the St Louis-based eighth US circuit court of appeals in 2022 decided that her transfer had not negatively affected her working conditions, agreeing with a federal judge’s earlier ruling. The supreme court heard arguments in the case in December. More

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      in Elections

      Voting equipment company Smartmatic settles defamation lawsuit with far-right network

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      The voting equipment company Smartmatic has agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit with the far-right One America News Network (OAN) over lies broadcast on the network about the 2020 election.Erik Connolly, a lawyer for Smartmatic, confirmed the case had been settled, but said the details were confidential. Attorneys for Smartmatic and OAN notified a federal judge in Washington on Tuesday that they were agreeing to dismiss the case, which Smartmatic filed in 2021.Smartmatic sued OAN in November 2021, saying the relatively small company was a victim of OAN’s “decision to increase its viewership and influence by spreading disinformation”. Smartmatic was only involved in the 2020 election in a single US county, Los Angeles, but OAN repeatedly broadcast false claims that its equipment had flipped the election for Biden. Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell played a key role in advancing the outlandish claims.Defamation cases are difficult to win in the US, with plaintiffs having to clear a high bar of showing that defendants knew the information was false and published it anyway. The settlement comes months after OAN lawyers apparently accidentally turned over documents showing that the network had obtained a spreadsheet with Smartmatic employees’ passwords. It’s not clear if the passwords were authentic, but Smartmatic lawyers said in court filings that the network may have committed a crime.The settlement also means that internal documents from OAN showing how the network weighed and evaluated claims about the 2020 election will not become public. Before the voting equipment company Dominion reached a $787.5m settlement with Fox last year, those kinds of internal documents offered smoking gun evidence that key personnel at Fox knew election claims were false.The settlement is the latest development in a series of defamation cases that have sought to hold media outlets accountable for spreading false information about the 2020 election. In 2022, OAN settled a defamation case brought by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Atlanta election workers it falsely claimed were involved in stealing the election. The network issued an on-air report saying there was “no widespread voter fraud” by Georgia election officials and clarifying that Freeman and Moss “did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct”.Smartmatic still has a pending $2.7bn defamation lawsuit against Fox.Earlier this month, a Delaware judge set a September trial date for Smartmatic’s defamation case against Newsmax. Both Smartmatic and Dominion also have ongoing defamation cases against Powell, Giuliani and Mike Lindell.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLegal scholars are carefully watching the cases to see whether defamation law can be an effective tool in curbing misinformation. More

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      US supreme court skeptical of using obstruction law in January 6 cases

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      The US supreme court expressed concern on Tuesday with prosecutors using an obstruction statute to charge hundreds of January 6 Capitol riot defendants, with the justices leaning towards a position that could jeopardize those prosecutions and the criminal case against Donald Trump.The Trump case was not mentioned at the argument. But a decision curtailing the use of the obstruction statute in connection with the Capitol attack could eliminate two of the four charges against the former president.The case, which on its face involves a January 6 riot defendant named Joseph Fischer, became of sudden importance last year after Trump was also charged with obstruction of an official proceeding over his efforts to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.At issue is whether the obstruction statute passed under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 in the wake of the Enron scandal could be used to prosecute general instances of obstruction, or whether it was intended to be used more narrowly for evidence tampering or document destruction.If the supreme court decides that section 1512(c) of title 18 of the US criminal code was being used too broadly, it could cripple part of the case against Trump as the special counsel Jack Smith looks to draw a line at trial from the former president’s January 6 speech to the violence.And if the court moved to strike down the use of the obstruction statute, it could undercut the remaining conspiracy statutes used in the indictment against Trump.The US solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing for the justice department, found herself repeatedly pressed on those points by the justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas – and John Roberts, the chief justice.When Congress passed the obstruction law, it was done in a two-part provision. The first part makes it a crime to corruptly alter, destroy or conceal evidence to frustrate official proceedings. The second part, at issue in Fischer’s case, makes it a crime to “otherwise” obstruct official proceedings.The argument from Prelogar contended that “otherwise” was designed as a catchall for any obstructive conduct that Congress might not have imagined when the law was being drafted. Prelogar’s point was that the theme of the law was outlawing all obstruction.Fischer’s lawyer, Jeffrey Green, argued that was too broad: “otherwise” should be defined as engaging in “similar” conduct as expressed in the first part of the statute – to do with obstructing an investigation or evidence tampering – done in a different way.Alito and Gorsuch appeared deeply skeptical of the justice department’s position. They suggested repeatedly that Prelogar’s reading of the law was overly expansive, peppering her with hypotheticals.Would delaying an official proceeding count as obstruction? How significant did the delay have to be to count as obstruction? Gorsuch asked. Alito added that the statute mentioned obstruction but also mentioned “impeding” proceedings, which, he said, was less serious than obstruction.Prelogar, on the defensive, was eventually pressed into replying that peaceful protests would be a technical violation of the law, even if the justice department was unlikely to prosecute minor disturbances, drawing a contrast to the events of January 6.But that invited Alito to ask how Prelogar would define minor disturbances. Would it be a minor disturbance if people heckled a court hearing, delaying the hearing and causing lawyers to lose their train of thought? Prelogar’s definition would encompass everything and anything in between, Alito suggested.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThomas also appeared concerned with the enforcement history of the obstruction statute. Prelogar took the opportunity to point out that the justice department had previously prosecuted cases of interfering with a grand jury investigation and interfering with federal court proceedings.But in rebuttal, Fischer’s lawyer suggested that her examples supported his position, because both were related to the use of evidence in proceedings.The justice department’s position came under additional fire from Chief Justice Roberts, who noted that the supreme court in the past had eschewed the use of general statutes under the doctrine known as “ejusdem generis”.Roberts suggested he might credit a lower court ruling that found the first part of the statute limited the second part of the statute: if the first part was about tampering with evidence in an investigation, the second part follows with “otherwise” referring to other ways to tamper with evidence.The skepticism from the conservative-leaning justices on the supreme court was not shared by Sonia Sotomayor, the justice who appeared to firmly see the “otherwise” language being used as a reference to any obstructive conduct.Sotomayor separately raised her own hypothetical of rules that prohibited photographing or otherwise disturbing a theatrical performance. If a defendant heckled and disturbed the performance, no one would be surprised if they were ejected, Sotomayor suggested to Fischer’s lawyer. More

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      in Elections

      Trump speaks before historic criminal trial over ‘hush money’– video

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      Donald Trump was seen arriving in court on Monday in his criminal trial involving the adult film actor Stormy Daniels and the former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump, the first former US president to face a criminal trial, is accused of paying Daniels and McDougal to cover up alleged extramarital liaisons that could have damaged his candidacy in the 2016 election. The trial is scheduled to start this morning, with jury selection in Manhattan supreme court More

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      in US Politics

      Trump used to scold felons who wanted to vote. Now he could be in the same spot | Sidney Blumenthal

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      The People of the State of New York v Donald J Trump will conclude, according to long-established court procedure. The former US president’s defense attorney will make a closing argument. He will assert that his client is not guilty of the charges of bribery and business fraud to manipulate the 2016 election. Judge Juan Merchan will issue his instructions to the jurors. They will deliberate. When they emerge, the foreperson will read the verdict in open court. If Trump is found guilty, Merchan will adjourn to a later date for sentencing.If Trump is found guilty on all 34 felony counts, he could theoretically face a maximum of 136 years in prison. Post-conviction, the major question would be whether his sentencing involves actual imprisonment, probation, a fine, or some combination, along with various parole arrangements. To be sure, Trump would then almost certainly file an appeal, but this would not forestall his immediately incurring certain civil disabilities. Above all, he would instantly lose his right to vote.The first former president ever to be convicted of a crime would also be the first disenfranchised felon to be nominated by a major party. In this current electoral cycle, Trump has managed to pass himself off as a normal candidate despite separate juries finding him to be a rapist and a fraudster. But those were civil cases. A criminal verdict may crack Trump’s aura of magical legal invincibility intrinsic to his image as a strongman.In the grand ritual of election day 2024, surrounded by the clicking cameras of the press corps, assuming he is still out on appeal, Trump could tag along with his wife Melania, a naturalized citizen, to the polls in Palm Beach, but he could not enter a voting booth. He could not vote for himself, or anyone else, for any office.“There are a wide range of punishments because the statute doesn’t have any mandatory ones,” Joshua Dratel, the past president of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told me.“He could go to jail. Probation is a possibility. He could get fined. The judge could sentence him to a fine, then put him on supervision – probably not likely. He could get one to three years. He could get four months in jail and a fine. If he got four months, then he’d have a work release application ready to go, then supervised for a few months. There’s no minimum time he’d have to serve. Then he might do a couple of days, a week or two, depending on the application. But that would be after appeal. If he would testify and lie on the stand that would generate a jail term. If he appeals, the judge stays the sentence.”Trump’s appeal of a conviction would likely postpone the imposition of a sentence into 2025. “The likelihood is that he’ll stay out pending appeal,” says Dratel. “In the state system it takes months and months even before a brief is filed – probably 2025. The trial should end by the middle of May. His brief wouldn’t be filed until the election. He might file it just for political purposes. But the action still wouldn’t be before the election. Then he has a second level of appeal to the court of appeals.”At no point, of course, would Trump, if re-elected, have the authority to pardon himself over a conviction in state court.If Trump were ever to serve time at New York’s Rikers Island jail, where the former treasurer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, is currently serving a five-month sentence, there would be a further restriction on his liberty. It would be a bad hair day. The New York state department of corrections states: “No skin tanning or coloring or hair coloring products.” Hairspray (non-aerosol) is permitted only for female inmates.In January, Trump declared that New York state did not “have a case” against him in his civil financial fraud case, in which he was found guilty and fined $454bn, plus interest, and has posted a $175m bond. That bond, apparently from a dubious source, may be disqualified, and is under review by New York attorney general Letitia James. She has scheduled a hearing for 22 April, a week after the New York trial is to start.Trump’s bond may be a flimsy cover for a house of cards. If the bond is rejected, and Trump does not file a new acceptable bond, the attorney general will immediately commence judgment enforcement, including the attachment of all identified Trump brokerage accounts and bank accounts, and issue writs of attachment seizing sums owed to Trump by third parties (his pension as president, for instance, rents owed under rental agreements, sums owed in connection with the Saudi LIV golf tournament, etc).Judgment enforcement actions against one or more Trump properties are also possible, though it is unlikely that these steps would go all the way to foreclosure. The attorney general would also likely begin discovery in support of judgment enforcement, deposing Trump and other senior personnel about the whereabouts of his assets and any encumbrances. Assets taken by the attorney general would be escrowed pending final disposition of any Trump appeal.James may also depose the man who posted the suspicious Trump bond. It was ponied up by Don Hankey, a car loan shark who runs the Knight Specialty Insurance Company, the largest shareholder of the Axos Bank, which has lent Trump more than $500m since he has left the presidency. Now, Hankey has told Reuters that he has no idea of the source for the bond’s collateral. “I don’t know if it came from Donald Trump or from Donald Trump and supporters,” he said. Then who?This further unraveling of Trump’s fraud may go on at the same time as the jury hears the evidence and witnesses in his election interference trial.The only precedent for a convicted felon running for president is a figure who was nothing like Trump. Eugene V Debs, leader of the Socialist party, was jailed for delivering an anti-war speech in 1918 against US involvement in the first world war. He received 1m votes in the 1920 election and was pardoned by its winner, the Republicanpresident Warren G Harding, who greeted the released Debs at the White House the day after Christmas in 1921.Harding extended commutations to 23 other anti-war dissidents who had been jailed. But he also issued a statement drawing a line: “The Department of Justice has given no recommendation in behalf of the advocates of sabotage or the destruction of the government by force, and the President let it be known he would not consider such cases.” Harding’s policy stands as a marker against Trump’s pledge if he has a second term to pardon violent January 6 convicts.Trump, like Debs, would be stripped of his right to vote. After conviction in a New York court, his disenfranchisement would instantly apply under law in Florida, where he is registered, having moved his residence there in September 2019. In Florida, Trump would be considered “convicted” regardless of an appeal, according to the Florida court of appeals in the 1988 case of Burkett v State.According to data from the Sentencing Project, Trump would join the approximately 1.15 million Floridians who cannot vote because of a felony conviction. Under draconian Florida law, 935,000 Floridians have completed their sentences but are still denied the vote because they are unable to afford the court fines and other fees the state requires felons to pay before reinstating their voting rights. In 2020, when Michael Bloomberg contributed to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition to help pay their fines, Trump railed: “It’s a total criminal act. It’s a felony.”In the early days of ramping up his misbegotten presidential primary campaign, Florida governor Ron DeSantis tried in 2023 to manufacture the bogus issue of disenfranchised felons illegally voting. He sent a specially designated task force of “election police” to arrest 20 people, some of whom had been previously informed by the state that their right to vote had already been restored.Fortunately for Trump, unlike the seemingly permanently disenfranchised class of Florida, he would be subject to New York law that would restore his voting rights after he finishes his sentence. He would not have to depend on the kindness of the Florida state board of executive clemency, headed by the man he has mercilessly derided as “Ron DeSanctimonious”.As a felon, Trump could run only for federal office. He would be disqualified to be a candidate for state office in every state but Maine and Vermont. Forty-eight states have laws that prevent a felon from holding elective office until they have been pardoned or receive clemency. Louisiana has a felony disqualification in its state constitution.Criminally convicted, Trump would lose more than his right to vote. In fact, he already has no right to possess a gun. Even before the New York trial, his right to have a firearm had been prohibited for more than a year. No person under felony indictment is permitted to receive a gun transported by interstate or foreign commerce.In September 2023, Trump visited a gun store in South Carolina, where the owner handed him a Glock pistol with his likeness and the words “Trump 45th” embossed on it. Trump admired the gun and said: “I want to buy one.” “President Trump buys a @GLOCKInc in South Carolina!” his spokesperson posted. Two hours later, he put out a new post: “President Trump did not purchase or take possession of the firearm. He simply indicated that he wanted one.”Trump promised the convention of the National Rifle Association in February of this year: “No one will lay a finger on your firearms.” He certainly will not touch one without a severe penalty. The average sentence for someone convicted of buying a firearm while under indictment is five years and four months. If Trump’s posturing as a wise-guy requires legal access to weapons, he has been emasculated since his indictment in March 2023.Criminal Trump, like the indicted Trump, would continue to be forbidden from owning or purchasing a firearm in the state of New York. If he is found guilty of only one felony, he could, after completing his sentence, apply for a Certificate of Relief from Civil Disabilities issued by a court or the New York state department of corrections and community supervision. But if he is found guilty of more than one felony, he would have to apply for a Certificate of Good Conduct. But that certificate usually does not cover restoration of gun rights. In the rare cases where it is granted, the waiting period is five years.That restoration would only apply in New York. As a Florida resident, Trump would have to show his New York certificate to Florida authorities, who would have to determine through their own process whether to recognize New York’s judgment.Criminal Trump’s travel would also be under supervision. How tight it would be would depend on the judge. His schedule could be monitored by a probation officer. “In his instance, his travel would likely not be circumscribed very much,” says Dratel. “The judge could put him on probation. He wouldn’t necessarily have more of a certain set of conditions than he has now. His bail would be continued. He would be released on his own recognizance. That would probably be maintained until his appeal is final.”Criminal Trump’s passport, however, could theoretically be revoked under state department regulations. Per 22 CFR § 51.60, if the state department receives a reference from law enforcement – say, a notice of his conviction by the New York court – that would trigger the process. Trump fits several categories that would almost certainly cause the denial of a passport for almost any other individual.As a convicted felon, he would be forbidden to depart the United States under penalty of a federal warrant of arrest, including a warrant issued under the federal Fugitive Felon Act. In two other outstanding cases – the January 6 insurrection case in Washington DC and the Espionage Act charges in Florida – he is the “subject of a subpoena received from the United States pursuant to 28 USC 1783, in a matter involving Federal prosecution for, or grand jury investigation of, a felony”. In the Georgia racketeering case, he is “the subject of an outstanding state or local warrant of arrest for a felony”.There would be yet another potential legal ground for denying Trump a passport: “The Secretary [of State] determines that the applicant’s activities abroad are causing or are likely to cause serious damage to the national security or the foreign policy of the United States.”Whether Trump’s passport would be revoked or not, his status as a felon who has not completed his sentence would exclude him from entry into most countries. Among them, in a lengthy list, criminal Trump would not be permitted into Britain, Canada, Japan, Israel, China or any European Union nation.If and when Trump eventually were to complete his sentence and have a passport, he could still face difficulty entering many places. As the Canadian government notes: “Even with a valid USA passport, an American with a felony record will often be considered criminally inadmissible to Canada and may be at substantial risk of a border denial.”Beset by indictments, in an April 2023 deposition in his financial fraud case, Trump called his “brand” the “most valuable asset I have”. “I became president because of the brand, OK,” Trump said. “I became president. I think it’s the hottest brand in the world.” Among the branded products he is now selling to meet his astronomical legal expenses are his mug shot from his Georgia case, sneakers, perfume, and his “USA Bible” for $60.Trump’s sycophants in the House Freedom Caucus have sought to distract from the inexorable approach of his New York trial with frantic gestures to burnish the brand. While, under Trump’s thumb, they have bottled up the Senate-passed omnibus bill for aid to Ukraine and Israel and solutions for the border, and stalled funding for the rebuilding of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, they have assiduously advanced a new bill: “To designate the Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia as the ‘Donald J Trump International Airport’”.The Dulles airport is named after John Foster Dulles, President Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of state, and as such is a monument to Ike as well. Replacing Dulles’ name with Trump’s can be seen as part of the Maga campaign to erase the Rino infamy – to usurp and replace the remnants of that older Republican party while retaining its name. The sponsors of the airport rebranding scheme, however, have failed to notice the unironic implication that Trump might be a flight risk.The House Democrats have responded to the “Donald J Trump International Airport” bill with a proposal of their own, a bill to rename a different and more appropriate institution: “To designate the Miami Federal Correctional Institution in Florida as the Donald J Trump Federal Correctional Institution.” It is a low-security facility located 90 miles from Mar-a-Lago.Being branded a felon is not branding as Trump explains it. It is not about selling memberships to Mar-a-Lago’s golf club or hawking Bibles. In the criminal justice system, Trump is the offender.
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      in US Politics

      For all his bombast, Trump is plummeting – financially, legally and politically | Lloyd Green

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      Donald Trump is doing his best Wizard of Oz imitation. These days, Trump is not looking like the “winner” he needs voters to believe him to be. Like the title character in L Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s fantasy and the 1939 movie, there is less there than meets the eye. The 45th president’s lead in the polls evaporates while his cash stash shrinks.His upcoming felony fraud trial in Manhattan looms. For the record, he is zero for three in his bids to adjourn the trial, and lawyers are expensive.At the same time, the stock price of Trump Media & Technology Group – his eponymous meme stock, DJT – has plummeted this week. “DJT stock is down again,” announced Barron’s on Thursday. “Trump’s stake in Truth Social parent has taken a hit.”Elsewhere a headline blared: “Trump’s ‘DJT’ stock dives to lowest close since Ron DeSantis dropped out”. Reminder, Trump is a guy whose businesses are no stranger to bankruptcy or allegations of fraud. He leaves wreckage in his wake.The spirit of Trump University remains alive. Like life in Oz, so much in Trump World is illusory.Meanwhile, Trump’s attempts to bond New York state’s $454m judgment have run into a legal roadblock. The purported bond posted to avoid enforcement pending appeal may be legally insufficient. Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, demands clarification. Whether the paperwork will be sustained will be decided at a court hearing later this month.If the court finds the bond to be insufficient or invalid, James may be able to immediately seek to collect what the state is owed. Financial humiliation set against the backdrop of the campaign is something that Trump can ill afford.For the record, he has already posted a $91m bond to stave off enforcement in the second E Jean Carroll defamation case. His assets are getting tied up, his liquidity ebbs. To him, image is almost everything.At the same time, abortion has re-emerged as a campaign issue, to the horror of the presumptive Republican nominee and his minions. The death of Roe v Wade cost the Republican party its “red wave” in the 2022 midterms. This time, it may lead to another Trump loss and Hakeem Jeffries of Queens wielding the speaker’s gavel in the US House of Representatives.Hell hath no fury like suburban moms and their daughters. The last thing they need is a thrice-married libertine seventysomething with a penchant for adult film stars and Playboy models telling them how to raise their kids or meddling in their personal lives.When a guy who hawks Bibles for a side-hustle refuses to say whether any of his partners ever had an abortion, it’s time to roll your eyes and guard your wallet.“Such an interesting question,” he replied to Maureen Dowd in 2016, when asked about his days as a swinging single. “So what’s your next question?”For the moment anyway, the party faithful ignore Trump’s pleas to rectify the decision of Arizona’s highest court to allow the criminalization of all abortions except when the life of the mother is endangered. On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature refused to revoke the 1864 law in the middle of this latest controversy.In case anyone forgot, once upon a time Trump himself had called for the criminalization of abortion. There had to be “some form of punishment” for women who have abortions, Trump said at a 2016 town hall.Likewise, Kari Lake – a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona, Trump acolyte and frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago – had demanded that her state enact an abortion regime that copied Texas’s draconian law.Not any more. Live by Dobbs, die by Dobbs. Arizona is the new ground zero of this election. This is what states’ rights looks like.Having feasted on Hunter Biden’s depredations, it is once again time for the Republican party to stare into the mirror and cringe. Trump is more Caligula and Commodus than Cyrus, the biblical paradigm of a virtuous heathen king.For all of Joe Biden’s missteps and mistakes, his candidacy is demonstrating unexpected vitality. Then again, he is running against a defeated former president who lost the popular vote in 2016 to Hillary Clinton and again four years later.Trump’s lead is now a matter of fractions. According to Real Clear Politics, he is now ahead by a microscopic two-10ths of 1%. Indeed, Reuters’s latest poll shows the 46th president with a four-point lead up from a single percentage point a month ago. Said differently, Trump’s campaign is in retrograde.Joe Biden is in the hunt and Donald Trump is looking like the old man behind the curtain. Substitute Stormy Daniels for Dorothy and the only things missing from this tableau are Toto, the little dog, ruby slippers and Kansas.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      in US Politics

      Arizona’s abortion ban is a political nightmare for Republicans in the 2024 election

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      When the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, Republicans across the country cheered. Freed from Roe’s regulations, GOP lawmakers promptly blanketed the US south and midwest in near-total abortion bans.But today, after a string of electoral losses, stories of women being denied abortions and polls that confirm abortion bans remain wildly unpopular, the political calculus has changed. Republicans are now trying to slow down the car whose brakes they cut – and to convince voters that, if the car crashes, they had nothing to do with it anyway.Nowhere encapsulates the GOP’s backpedal on abortion better than Arizona, whose state supreme court on Tuesday ruled to let an 1864 near-total abortion ban go into effect. That ban, which outlaws abortion in all cases except to save the life of a woman, was passed before Arizona became a state, before the end of the civil war and before women gained the right to vote.Kari Lake, a Republican running to represent Arizona in the US Senate and a diehard ally of Donald Trump, once called that ban “a great law”. But on Tuesday, the inflammatory politician became one of several GOP officials to denounce the ruling, urging the state legislature to “come up with an immediate commonsense solution that Arizonans can support”. On Wednesday, Trump also indicated that he thought Arizona’s near-total ban – whose revival was enabled by a US supreme court ruling he has repeatedly taken credit for – had gone too far. “It’ll be straightened out and as you know, it’s all about states’ rights,” he said.Abortion remains banned past 15 weeks in Arizona, since the 1864 ban is being held up by legal delays. But Arizona is expected to be a key battleground state in the 2024 elections, and abortion rights supporters have gathered more than half a million signatures in support of a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. Democrats are hoping that measure will boost turnout and their candidates – including Joe Biden – to victory.In other words, this ban threatens to become a political nightmare for Republicans come November.Lake and Trump are caught in the quandary that is now facing Republicans in Arizona and beyond its borders. For 50 years, the GOP became increasingly wedded to the anti-abortion movement, passing restrictions that cut off access to the procedure and littering the courts with lawsuits to overturn Roe. These restrictions won them votes from anti-abortion advocates, as well as cash from influential advocacy groups. But because Roe stopped many of these restrictions from taking effect, it shielded Republicans from reckoning with the real-world consequences of anti-abortion policies – or with the outrage of voters. Since Roe was overturned, and those real-world consequences have come into focus, abortion rights-related ballot measures have succeeded in several Republican strongholds, including Kansas and Kentucky.Lake didn’t say what that “commonsense solution” might be, but other Republicans have tried to take a stab at it. Juan Ciscomani, who represents Arizona in the US House, called the decision no less than “a disaster” and claimed he was a “strong supporter of empowering women to make their own healthcare choices”. He also, in the same statement, said the 15-week ban “protected the rights of women and new life”.This seems to be the party line that many Arizona Republicans are now congealing around: they will support a 15-week ban, which the state legislature first passed in 2022, but not a near-total ban. This, too, is a gamble. Last year, when Virginia Republicans tried to take control of the state legislature by proposing to “compromise” and ban abortion past 15 weeks of pregnancy, they fell short.Yet the post-Roe electoral firepower of abortion has never been tested in a presidential election. Biden has spent months trying to blame abortion bans on Trump, since he appointed three of the justices who overturned Roe. Trump, meanwhile, alternates between congratulating himself for overturning Roe, both rebuking and flirting with the idea of a national ban, and claiming, as he did earlier this week, that abortion access should now be left up to the states.For Republicans, the only option may be to take a cue from their party’s leader and rewrite their own history. When asked about Lake’s previous support for the 1864 ban, her campaign suggested to the New York Times that Lake was referring to a different law.But in the comments praising it, Lake even referred to the 1864 ban by its statute number, 13-3603. “I’m incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that’s already on the books”, she said. More

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      in Elections

      Several January 6 rioters get early releases ahead of supreme court review

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      Several January 6 rioters have won early release from their sentences ahead of a key supreme court review of the legality of a specific federal charge against them – a review that could, in turn, see them ordered to return to prison.A decision on the legal issue, which revolves around how January 6 prosecutors distinguished between conduct qualifying as “obstructing an official proceeding” of Congress and misdemeanor offenses, including shouting to interrupt a congressional hearing, is not expected until the summer, according to the Washington Post.The decision could impact convictions and sentences passed on more than 350 January 6 defendants if the supreme court decides that prosecutors misused criminal statutes to obtain the convictions.Three men have already been granted early releases, according to the Post.They include a Delaware man who carried a Confederate flag into the Capitol and was released one year into a three-year term; a Ohio man who broke through police lines to become one of the first rioters to enter the building, released six months into a 19-month sentence; and a man who entered the Senate chamber draped in a Trump flag, who was freed after serving five months of a 14-month sentence.The law that prosecutors used to charge the men was passed after the collapse of energy trading firm Enron in 2001 and crafted to limit accounting corruption. But the charge was used to prosecute some January 6 rioters in place of charging sedition or insurrection violations.The legality of using the obstruction charge has mostly been upheld by January 6 trial judges, but two judges, one Trump-appointed, have argued that it applies only to tampering or destruction of evidence.In 2021, one of those federal judges, Randolph Moss, said the government could face a “constitutional vagueness problem” if it could not articulate to the courts how the charge distinguished between obstruction of Congress and ordinary trespassing.If the supreme court decides the obstruction charge was not suitable for the January 6 rioters, the decision could also affect the election interference case against Donald Trump.Retired US district judge Thomas F Hogan, who passed sentence on 26 January 6 defendants, told Georgetown law school students earlier this year that if the supreme court rejects the use of the law it “would have a devastating effect on the prosecution side” of January 6 prosecutions that didn’t involve violence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAmong those who could see their convictions overturned by the supreme court is Jacob Chansley, known as the “QAnon shaman” and wore a horned headdress, who was charged under the law. Other include members of the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys extremist groups.Prosecutors have urged judges to delay releasing the men charged only under the contested obstruction law pending the supreme court appeal, arguing in one case that doing so into another presidential election, “would be releasing defendant into the same political maelstrom that led him to commit his crimes in the first place”. More