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    Judge to consider Trump request to delay classified documents trial

    The federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s classified documents case was scheduled on Tuesday afternoon to hear arguments from prosecutors and the former president’s lawyers about whether to delay the criminal trial until 2024 in Fort Pierce, Florida.The pre-trial conference before US district court judge Aileen Cannon is also expected to address the protective order outlining the release of classified documents to the Trump legal team in discovery that prosecutors want to use at trial.Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the documents case and the investigation into Trump’s efforts to obstruct the transfer of power, asked Cannon in court filings last week to reject Trump’s request to indefinitely delay scheduling a trial date.The dueling requests from Trump and the justice department present an early test for Cannon, a Trump appointee who is under scrutiny after previously issuing favorable rulings to the former president during the criminal investigation before her decisions were overturned on appeal.The consequences of such a delay could be far-reaching. If the case is not adjudicated until after the 2024 election, in which Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination and is re-elected, he could try to pardon himself or direct the attorney general to have prosecutors drop the case.Trump was charged last month with retaining national defense information, including US nuclear secrets and plans for US retaliation in the event of an attack, which means his case will be tried under the rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.The statute was passed in the 1980s to protect the government against the “graymail” problem in national security cases, a tactic where the defense threatens to reveal classified information at trial, betting that the government would prefer to drop the charges rather than risk disclosure.While Cipa established a mechanism through which the government can safely charge cases involving classified documents, the series of steps that have to be followed means it takes longer to get to trial compared with regular criminal cases without national security implications.Trump and his co-defendant, his valet Walt Nauta, have pleaded not guilty.The first step is the section 2 hearing scheduled for 2pm. According to the Justice Manual, the informal handbook for prosecutors, the judge is required to set a timetable for the classified discovery and deadlines for the defense to announce what classified materials they want to use.Ahead of the pre-trial conference, Trump’s lawyers Todd Blanche and Chris Kise argued in court filings that Cannon should not bother setting a tentative trial date until the major pre-trial motions were finished because they could not know how long classified discovery might take.The Trump legal team also claimed that going to trial before the 2024 presidential election – prosecutors have outlined a schedule for a trial date in December – would be unrealistic because of supposed challenges in selecting an impartial jury.In their reply last week, prosecutors took aim at Trump’s arguments for an indefinite delay, rejecting the claims that the charges touched on novel legal issues or that the discovery process was uniquely complex“The defendants are, of course, free to make whatever arguments they like for dismissal,” the prosecutors wrote. “But they should not be permitted to gesture at a baseless legal argument, call it ‘novel,’ and then claim the court will require an indefinite continuance.”The filing took particular issue with the Trump lawyers’ suggestion that any trial should be delayed until after the 2024 election because of the supposed difficulty in selecting an impartial jury.“To be sure, the government readily acknowledges that jury selection here may merit additional protocols (such as a questionnaire) that may be more time-consuming than in other cases, but those are reasons to start the process sooner rather than later,” prosecutors wrote. More

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    Donald Trump: Arizona attorney general investigating attempts to overturn 2020 vote, reports say – as it happened

    From 3h agoArizona’s Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes is moving forward with an investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the crucial swing state, the Washington Post reports.Mayes’s inquiry is the second known attempt by a state to hold the former president accountable for the effort to disrupt Biden’s win. Fani Willis, a Democratic prosecutor in Fulton county, Georgia, is reportedly close to obtaining indictments in her investigation of Trump’s campaign to overturn Biden’s win in that state. Separately, justice department special counsel Jack Smith is still investigating the former president over the January 6 insurrection, and the broader campaign to prevent Biden from entering the White House.Here’s more from the Post’s report:
    Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) assigned a team of prosecutors to the case in May, and investigators have contacted many of the pro-Trump electors and their lawyers, according to the two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the probe. Investigators have requested records and other information from local officials who administered the 2020 election, the two people said, and a prosecutor has inquired about evidence collected by the Justice Department and an Atlanta-area prosecutor for similar probes.
    It is unclear if the investigation will broaden into other attempts to undermine President Biden’s victory in the state, including a pressure campaign by Trump and his allies to thwart the will of voters and remain in office.
    Dan Barr, Mayes’s chief deputy, said the investigation is in the “fact-gathering” phase. He declined to say whether subpoenas have been issued and which state statutes the team thinks might have been broken.
    “This is something we’re not going to go into thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll get a conviction,’ or ‘Maybe we have a pretty good chance,’” he said. “This has to be ironclad shut.”
    The Secret Service announced it closed the investigation into the cocaine discovered at the White House earlier this month without naming any suspects, but Republicans seem to want to keep the matter alive. Several lawmakers, including House speaker Kevin McCarthy, expressed skepticism at the agency’s conclusion, part of a pattern of attacks on federal law enforcement by the GOP’s right wing. Meanwhile, the Democratic leader of the Senate judiciary committee Dick Durbin outlined plans to continue pressing the supreme court to tighten its ethics, after a series of reports found questionable ties between the justices and parties with interests in its decisions.Here’s what else happened today:
    Arizona’s attorney general is moving forward with an investigation of Donald Trump and his attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory in the state three years ago, the Washington Post reported.
    Florida governor Ron DeSantis remains far below Trump in support among Republicans, but NBC News obtained a memo outlining his campaign’s strategy for success in the presidential primaries.
    Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, accused Democrats of seeking to retaliate against conservative supreme court justices.
    Durbin left open the possibility of his committee investigating liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor after a report emerged of her staff asking institutions to buy her book.
    Far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was among lawmakers who raised their eyebrows at the Secret Service’s decision to close the investigation into the White House cocaine.
    A spat has broken out between Republican former president Mike Pence and a prominent progressive Democrat over Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s plans to address Congress next week during his visit to Washington DC.Ilhan Omar, a progressive Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, announced she would not attend Herzog’s speech, citing a 2019 episode in which Israel said fellow progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib, who is of Palestinian origin, could visit family in the West Bank, but only if she avoided promoting the boycott campaign against the country:This afternoon, Pence, who is seeking the GOP’s nomination for president, took direct aim at Omar, one of only three Muslims currently serving in Congress and the only Somali-American:Back at the Capitol, Republicans continue to complain about the Secret Service’s conclusion that it can’t identify who left cocaine at the White House.Here’s Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett’s take, as captured by CNN:Ron DeSantis may be considered frontrunner Donald Trump’s biggest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, but polls have consistently shown that it’s not a particularly close race.Take this one from Morning Consult released on Tuesday. It shows Trump with 56% support among potential GOP primary voters, and DeSantis in second with a measly 17%. If there’s any news there, it’s that entrepreneur and first-time candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is in third place with 8%, ahead of more experienced Republicans like former vice-president Mike Pence and senator Tim Scott.NBC News has obtained a confidential memo from the DeSantis campaign laying out their strategy in the GOP’s primary process. The Florida governor plans to aim for success in the first states that vote, particularly New Hampshire, and focus less on “Super Tuesday”, when 14 states will hold primaries on 5 March.Here’s more from their story:
    Ron DeSantis is trying to reassure donors and activists that his campaign only looks stalled.
    A confidential campaign memo obtained by NBC News lays out what the Florida governor’s presidential campaign sees as its path forward: focusing on the early states, refusing to give up on New Hampshire, not yet investing in “Super Tuesday” battlegrounds, zeroing in on DeSantis’ biography and sowing doubts about his competitors — particularly Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.
    “While Super Tuesday is critically important, we will not dedicate resources to Super Tuesday that slow our momentum in New Hampshire,” the memo states. “We expect to revisit this investment in the Fall.”
    The document, dated July 6, is labeled a “confidential friends and family update” and makes clear that it’s “not for distribution.” Its details about the campaign’s strategy are far more in-depth than what has been shared publicly.
    As DeSantis’ ability to surpass Donald Trump as leader of the Republican Party is now an open question among the GOP faithful, the memo is an effort by the governor’s top aides to reach out to donors to provide more clarity on their path forward.
    Across the DeSantis political universe there is a heightened awareness of the importance of the early states and the reality that DeSantis will burn out without strong performances there. It means that even as the group has a plan in place now, the strategy is subject to change.
    “From my understanding, if we don’t see a bump in the polls, we are basically going to shut down the idea of a national operation,” a DeSantis-aligned operative told NBC News.
    Donald Trump’s top opponent for the Republican presidential nomination is governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, which used to be considered a swing state, but lately has trended towards the GOP. The Guardian’s Sam Levine and Andrew Witherspoon report that the DeSantis administration is carrying out a crackdown against groups that are trying to encourage people to vote:Florida Republicans have hit dozens of voter registration groups with thousands of dollars of fines, the latest salvo in an alarming crackdown on voting in the state led by Governor Ron DeSantis.At least 26 groups have cumulatively racked up more than $100,000 in fines since September of last year, according to a list that was provided by Florida officials to the Guardian. The groups include both for-profit and nonprofit organizations as well as political parties, including the statewide Republican and Democratic parties of Florida.The fines, which range from $50 to tens of thousands of dollars, were levied by the state’s office of election crimes and security, a first-of-its-kind agency created at the behest of DeSantis in 2022 to investigate voter fraud. Voter fraud is extremely rare, and the office has already come under scrutiny for bringing criminal charges against people who appeared to be confused about their voting eligibility.Donald Trump’s legal trouble is both criminal, and civil. As the Associated Press reports, the former president yesterday suffered a setback in his attempt to defend himself against a potent defamation lawsuit:Donald Trump lashed out on social media against the US justice department on Wednesday after it stopped supporting his claim that the presidency shields him from liability against a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who says he sexually attacked her in the mid-1990s.The former president said in a post on his social media platform that the department’s reversal a day earlier in the lawsuit brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll was part of the “political Witch Hunt” he faces while campaigning for the presidency as a Republican.The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Arizona’s Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes is moving forward with an investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the crucial swing state, the Washington Post reports.Mayes’s inquiry is the second known attempt by a state to hold the former president accountable for the effort to disrupt Biden’s win. Fani Willis, a Democratic prosecutor in Fulton county, Georgia, is reportedly close to obtaining indictments in her investigation of Trump’s campaign to overturn Biden’s win in that state. Separately, justice department special counsel Jack Smith is still investigating the former president over the January 6 insurrection, and the broader campaign to prevent Biden from entering the White House.Here’s more from the Post’s report:
    Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) assigned a team of prosecutors to the case in May, and investigators have contacted many of the pro-Trump electors and their lawyers, according to the two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the probe. Investigators have requested records and other information from local officials who administered the 2020 election, the two people said, and a prosecutor has inquired about evidence collected by the Justice Department and an Atlanta-area prosecutor for similar probes.
    It is unclear if the investigation will broaden into other attempts to undermine President Biden’s victory in the state, including a pressure campaign by Trump and his allies to thwart the will of voters and remain in office.
    Dan Barr, Mayes’s chief deputy, said the investigation is in the “fact-gathering” phase. He declined to say whether subpoenas have been issued and which state statutes the team thinks might have been broken.
    “This is something we’re not going to go into thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll get a conviction,’ or ‘Maybe we have a pretty good chance,’” he said. “This has to be ironclad shut.”
    Joe Biden will meet the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, at the White House next week, his spokeswoman has confirmed.Herzog will be in Washington on 18 and 19 July and will deliver a joint address to Congress.The Israeli president’s US visit comes amid protests in Israel at a government push to advance legislation that would weaken the supreme court’s independence.Israel’s parliament recently voted for a bill that would scrap a “reasonableness” standard that allows the supreme court to overrule government decisions.Biden and Herzog are due to discuss deepening Israel’s regional integration, a more peaceful Middle East and Russia’s relationship with Iran.The White House statement on the visit said:
    President Biden will stress the importance of our shared democratic values, and discuss ways to advance equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis.”
    The Secret Service announced it had closed its investigation of the cocaine discovered at the White House earlier this month without naming any suspects, but Republicans seem to want to keep the matter alive. Several lawmakers, including House speaker Kevin McCarthy, expressed skepticism at the agency’s conclusion, part of a pattern of attacks on federal law enforcement by the GOP’s right wing. Meanwhile, the Democratic leader of the Senate judiciary committee Dick Durbin outlined plans to continue pressing the supreme court to tighten its ethics, after a series of reports found questionable ties between the justices and parties with interests in its decisions.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
    Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, accused Democrats of seeking to retaliate against conservative justices.
    Durbin left open the possibility of his committee investigating liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor after a report emerged of her staff asking institutions to buy her book.
    Far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was among lawmakers who raised their eyebrows at the Secret Service’s decision to close the investigation into the White House cocaine.
    In the latest indication that this is not the last we have heard about the White House cocaine saga, Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is calling on the Secret Service to continue searching for whomever left the powder at the executive mansion, Fox News reports:Here’s more from the Guardian’s Jenna Amatulli on the cocaine found at the White House, and apparent failure of the Secret Service to discover who brought it there:The investigation into the bag of cocaine found at the White House has concluded, with no suspects identified.In a statement from the Secret Service, the organization emphasized that it implemented safety closures after discovering the cocaine and that it then “field tested and preliminarily determined” the drug “to not be a hazardous compound”.They said the US Department of Homeland Security’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center later analyzed the cocaine for any biothreats and those tests came back negative.On how the item came to be inside the White House, the Secret Service said it conducted a “methodical review of security systems and protocols” that spanned “several days prior to the discovery of the substance”. They “developed an index of several hundred individuals who may have accessed the area where the substance was found” before ultimately concluding there was “insufficient DNA was present for investigative comparisons”. More

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    Fox News faces another defamation lawsuit involving Tucker Carlson

    Fox News was hit with a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday by Trump supporter Ray Epps after former host Tucker Carlson repeatedly called Epps an undercover FBI agent who orchestrated the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.Carlson said Epps, an Arizona resident and former marine, “helped stage-manage the insurrection” – a conspiracy he broadcast in nearly 20 episodes.Carlson also told viewers that Epps was recorded urging the mob to enter the Capitol building, but that he never entered himself.Epps’s lawsuit, which was filed in Delaware, comes months after the conservative network’s parent organization settled a defamation lawsuit for $787.5m with Dominion Voting Systems for spreading falsehoods about the outcome of the 2020 election.Epps claims he and his wife, Robyn, have received death threats and that their lives were ruined because of Carlson’s conspiracies.The lawsuit reads: “As Fox recently learned in its litigation against Dominion Voting Systems, its lies have consequences.”The lawsuit describes Epps as a “loyal Fox viewer and Trump supporter” and refuted the notion he was a federal agent.Before the lawsuit, Epps’s lawyer Michael Teter sent Fox News a cease-and-desist letter, demanding an on-air apology and retraction of the conspiracy theory. Teter said the network did not respond to the letter.Legal experts noted earlier this week that while Epps will have to prove that Carlson’s claims damaged his reputation, he presents a strong argument and therefore likely has standing.David D Lin of the Lewis & Lin LLC law firm said he believes “there is a lot of potential risk here to Fox and they need to take the claims very seriously,” before adding that Carlson could be personally liable if the suit included him.Epps could face charges himself for his role in the January 6 insurrection. He was questioned by the House January 6 committee, though the investigation is still ongoing. More

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    Iowa Republicans pass six-week abortion ban

    Iowa’s state legislature voted on Tuesday night to ban most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy, a time before most people know they are pregnant.Republican lawmakers, which hold a majority in both the Iowa house and senate, passed the anti-abortion bill after the governor, Kim Reynolds, called a special session to seek a vote on the ban.The bill passed with exclusively Republican support in a rare, one-day legislative burst lasting more than 14 hours.The legislation will take immediate effect after the governor signs it on Friday and will prohibit abortions after the first sign of cardiac activity – usually around six weeks, with some exceptions for cases of rape or incest. It will allow for abortions up until 20 weeks of pregnancy only under certain conditions of medical emergency. Abortions in the state were previously allowed up to 20 weeks.“The Iowa supreme court questioned whether this legislature would pass the same law they did in 2018, and today they have a clear answer,” Reynolds said in a statement. “The voices of Iowans and their democratically elected representatives cannot be ignored any longer, and justice for the unborn should not be delayed.”The legislation is the latest in a raft of anti-abortion laws passed in states across the country since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, ending the nationwide constitutional right to abortion. A number of states, including a swath of the southern US, have passed full bans on abortion without exceptions for cases of rape or incest.Preparations were already under way to quickly file legal challenges in court and get the measure blocked, once Reynolds signs it into law.A similar six-week ban that the legislature passed in 2018 was blocked by the state’s supreme court one year later. Since that decision, however, Roe has been overturned and a more conservative court ruled that abortion is no longer a constitutionally protected right in Iowa. The court was split 3-3 last month on whether to remove the block on the 2018 law, a deadlock which resulted in Reynolds seeking to pass new legislation in a special session this week.“The ACLU of Iowa, Planned Parenthood and the Emma Goldman Clinic remain committed to protecting the reproductive rights of Iowans to control their bodies and their lives, their health and their safety – including filing a lawsuit to block this reckless, cruel law,” the ACLU of Iowa’s executive director, Mark Stringer, said in a statement.In the meantime, Planned Parenthood North Central States has said it will refer patients out of state if they’re scheduled for abortions in the next few weeks. The organization, the largest abortion provider in the state, will continue to provide care to patients who present before cardiac activity is detected.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs state lawmakers debated the bill, crowds of protesters gathered in the capitol rotunda in support of reproductive rights and chanted “vote them out” at Republican legislators. A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa survey from last year showed that around 61% of Iowans were generally in favor of abortion access, a number that tracks with nationwide beliefs about the right to abortion.During a public hearing on Tuesday before the vote, lawmakers heard from advocates both for and against the bill who gave brief statements in the chambers. A range of medical professionals and reproductive rights activists urged the legislature to reconsider the bill, warning that it would cause immense societal harm, reduce bodily autonomy and prevent physicians from caring for patients.“You would be forcing a woman to a lifelong obligation which affects her education, career, family and community,” Amy Bingaman, an obstetrician and gynecologist, told lawmakers.Advocates of the bill, many from Christian organizations and hardline anti-abortion activist groups, thanked lawmakers during the hearing and touted the bill as a victory for their movement.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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    Chief justice John Roberts urged to testify on ethics scandals for ‘good of democracy’

    The US chief justice should testify before Congress about ethics scandals besetting his supreme court “for the good of democracy”, a leading Californian progressive said.The justices are “so cloistered, they’re so out of touch”, the congressman Ro Khanna told MSNBC on Sunday. “They don’t have a sense of what life is like, so my plea to him would be for the good of democracy come testify. What are you afraid of?”The Democratic-controlled Senate judiciary committee has requested that Roberts testify about reports regarding relations between justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch and rightwing donors or, in Gorsuch’s case, the chief of a prominent law firm involved in a property purchase.Thomas’s extensive gifts from the billionaire donor Harlan Crow have been exhaustively reported by ProPublica, which also reported an Alaska fishing trip Alito took with the billionaire Paul Singer.The justices failed to disclose such links. All deny wrongdoing. Singer, Crow and the law firm executive also deny wrongdoing and say they and the justices did not discuss politics or business before the court.Supreme court justices are nominally subject to the same ethics rules as other federal judges but in practice govern themselves.Questions have also been raised about the career of Roberts’ wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, who, according to the New York Times, “has made millions recruiting lawyers to prominent law firms, some of which have business before the court”.In April, turning down the invitation to testify before the Senate judiciary committee, John Roberts cited concerns about the separation of powers.Amid progressive anger over decisions on abortion, affirmative action, student debt relief and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, calls for reform to a court controlled 6-3 by conservatives after Donald Trump appointed three justices in four years have grown ever louder.Public trust in the court is at all-time lows.Speaking to the former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Khanna told MSNBC: “The court is moving us backwards and young people in particular are outraged that the court is taking away the relief of student loans. They’re moving to a time where colleges used to be just for the wealthy and largely white, so I do think this can energise young people, in particular working-class voters.”Calls for structural reform seem to have as little chance of success as calls for Thomas to resign or be impeached – calls perhaps likely to increase after the publication by the Times on Sunday of an investigation of the justice’s membership of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, “a cluster of extraordinarily wealthy, largely conservative members who lionised him and all that he had achieved”.Republicans control the House and trail Democrats by two seats in the Senate, all but ensuring a block on any such move. Furthermore, Joe Biden is against major reform, such as changing the size of the court or imposing term limits.Khanna said: “Voters know that the court is just out of touch with their lives, that the court is taking away their rights, taking away women’s rights to control their own body, taking away students’ relief in terms of the student loans. The president forgave the loans. The supreme court took that money away.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“[Voters] see these justices, they see all the ethical conflicts, and they’re saying, ‘Enough with it. Let’s have a clean slate and term limits.’“I’ve said everything should be on the table, but … it’s not an easy thing to do. Often people see that it is polarising or partisan. I guess term limits is an easier first step … and a judicial code of conduct of ethics.”The Senate judiciary chair, Dick Durbin, has promised a vote on ethics reform. Any measure would be highly unlikely to pass the Republican House.Khanna said: “Even Republicans in Congress, if we go out and have someone buy us lunch, the vast majority of us would have to disclose it and have all these ethics rules. I’m just flabbergasted that the supreme court doesn’t have any of those. The limits are so low for members of Congress, anybody who works in the federal government, and this is just a different set of rules.”Khanna did not support an attempt to force the chief justice to testify, via a subpoena, a move called for by another prominent House progressive, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.“I would support hearings,” he said. “I think that the chief justice should testify.“Look, I’ve met the chief justice. I met him a couple of years ago and he said he cared about the legitimacy of the court. The legitimacy of democracy. Well, if he cares about the legitimacy of democracy, he should come testify.” More

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    ‘Democracy is at risk’: inside the fight for supreme court reform

    The supreme court has concluded another term that upended Americans’ lives.Last week, the court’s conservative supermajority ruled against race-conscious decisions in college admissions, overturning decades of precedent supporting affirmative action. A day later, the six conservative justices both struck down Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan and sided with a Colorado-based business owner who wanted to refuse service to same-sex couples.As the conservative justices’ decisions attracted criticism, their behavior away from the bench also sparked alarm. Reports emerged that conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito had accepted previously undisclosed gifts and trips from wealthy stakeholders whose business interests at times clashed with cases before the supreme court.The outcry unleashed over the justices’ ethics scandals, combined with the widespread disapproval of their opinions, has intensified calls to reform the supreme court. And although court reform efforts have previously been denounced as radical overreach, more Americans are warming to the idea in the face of a six-three conservative supermajority issuing decisions viewed as largely out of step with the country’s principles and priorities.“Democracy is at risk,” Congressman Hank Johnson, a Democrat in Georgia, said. “We must save this supreme court from itself, and that’s why it’s so important that we do court reform now.”Confidence in supreme court plummetsThe combination of contentious rulings and dubious ethical behavior has culminated in plummeting ratings in that other all-powerful court: the court of public opinion.Gallup has yet to release its latest poll in the wake of the slew of recent ethics scandals and aggressive decisions released in the final days of the 2022-23 term. But the historic trend of its surveys gives a clear picture. In 2001, under Chief Justice William Rehnquist, 62% of Americans approved of the way the supreme court handled its job, according to Gallup; by last September that had fallen to just 40%.Such a profound dip in popularity has ushered in a proportionate rise in demands for reform, ranging from calls for ethical guardrails for the justices to proposals for a radical makeover of the court’s structure and size. One Economist/YouGov poll taken in April found that 69% of Americans support an ethics code for supreme court justices. Another AP-NORC poll taken last year showed 67% of Americans back term limits for the justices, and a Marquette Law school survey released last September found that 51% of Americans agree with calls to expand the court.Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a non-partisan group which advocates for reform, said that a growing perception that the conservative justices are acting more as politicians than as judges was driving the calls for change.“I’ve been beating this drum for almost 10 years, and it is definitely getting louder. The series of recent events have left no doubt today that the supreme court is a political body, and it is only rational to want the justices to have to follow the same ethical rules that politicians follow.”As things currently stand, the nine supreme court justices are the only judges in the country – including both state and federal – who are not bound by any formal ethics code. The justices remain essentially unbeholden to any higher power.In April, the current chief justice, John Roberts, refused to appear before the Senate judiciary committee to discuss the ProPublica revelations about Thomas’s luxury holidays courtesy of the billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow. Roberts insisted that he and his fellow justices “consult a wide variety of authorities to address specific ethical issues” – without addressing the main problem with that argument: that such consultations are entirely voluntary and self-policing.Ethics groups like Fix the Court have despaired of Roberts taking a lead on ethics reform, and are now pleading with Congress to force the issue. Roth said the current malaise was so profound it had gone beyond merely extending the existing code of ethics that, since 1973, has applied to all other federal judges.Now, he said, it had to be enforceable, with “a mechanism for reprimand when there are violations”. “There needs to be a more strict rubric telling justices what they can and cannot do when it comes to flying around on billionaires’ planes or staying in their luxury resorts,” he added.Requiring the justices to abide by clear ethical boundaries might clean up some of the grubbier optics but it would not get to the substantive problem that progressive critics have levelled at the court – its ultra-conservative rulings. “Right now we have nine kings, who can set policy for eternity – their rulings cannot be undone in constitutional cases by the president or Congress,” said Caroline Fredrickson, a law professor at Georgetown University.Like Roth, Fredrickson has observed a sea-change in attitudes towards reforming the nation’s most powerful court. “Five years ago, this was a discussion more for academics than for activists. I don’t think that’s true any more – we’ve had a series of decisions that have finally brought the American public to recognize that the court is out of control.”Fredrickson was one of a bipartisan group of 36 legal and other scholars who Joe Biden invited in April 2021 to form a presidential commission on supreme court reform. One of the key proposals that the commissioners analysed was the idea of expanding the court from its current nine members in order to rebalance the court in tune with the will of most Americans.The commission’s final report points out that Congress has made changes to the size of the court since as early as 1801. The current nine has been set since 1869, but there is no reason that Congress could not change that number through simple statute.Commissioners were divided on the subject of expansion. Some argued that adding seats was essential to make the court relevant again and prevent the erosion of democracy, while others feared it would undermine the supreme court’s independence and legitimacy.Fredrickson comes firmly down on the side of expansion. “The only realistic option for protecting our democracy is to expand the number of justices, which would allow the appointment of justices with a firmer grasp of the need to be properly deferential to the elected branches,” she said.Aligned to the question of how many justices sit on the court is the issue of their longevity in the position. The US constitution says that federal judges should hold their office “during good behavior” – a phrase that has been interpreted as meaning for their lifetimes.A new report from the Brennan Center spells out how life tenure has led to increasingly long terms, and with it an increasingly undemocratic court. For the first 180 years of US history, the average service for supreme court justices was 15 years; today that has risen to 26 years and the current crop could serve on average 35 years.With long terms has come a democratically skewed judicial panel. Since the presidency of George HW Bush, Republicans have won four out of nine presidential elections – only two prevailing in the popular vote – yet they have appointed six out of today’s nine justices.The Brennan Center recommends a new interpretation of “during good behavior”. Justices continue to serve for life, but after 18 years of actively judging cases they step back into a more supporting role – a “senior” status that has been applied to lower court judges for more than 100 years.Under Brennan’s formula, that would be coupled with regular appointments to the bench made every two years, so that each president would have two appointments per four-year term. That could instantly put an end to the ugly hyper-partisan infighting and obstructionism that saw the Republican Senate block Merrick Garland’s appointment by Barack Obama in 2016.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut many progressive activists argue term limits alone will not provide an immediate remedy to their concerns. They accuse Republicans of having “stolen” the court by refusing to consider Garland’s nomination and then fast-tracking the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett days before Biden won the 2020 election. One academic study concluded that, barring congressional intervention, the supreme court may not see a liberal majority until 2065.“Even if you passed a term limits bill with a code of ethics, it wouldn’t do much to put a dent into what is right now a Republican supermajority,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of the progressive group Demand Justice. “If you want to restore balance to the court, if you believe that the Republicans arrived at this six-three supermajority through illicit means, then court expansion becomes necessary to achieve balance anytime soon.”Political momentum builds for court reformAs Americans continue to reel from the court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v Wade, terminating federal protections for abortion access, the reproductive rights groups NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood have both come out in favor of court expansion.“We’ve known for a long time that reproductive rights and freedom are completely intertwined with the supreme court,” Naral’s president, Mini Timmaraju, nsaid. “We’ve become really clear-eyed that it’s not responsible for us to be an organization that promotes and advocates for advancement of reproductive freedom without engaging seriously in discussions around the court.”Naral was one of dozens of groups to sign on to the “Just Majority” project, which held events across the country this spring to advocate for court reform. The campaign included a diverse array of leaders from across the progressive movement, including racial justice organizations such as Color of Change and gun safety groups like Newtown Action Alliance.“We have to start coming to terms with just how much of a democracy we still don’t have,” said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change. “We have an unelected, unaccountable, corrupt body of people that stand in the way of democracy, stand in the way of justice and stand in the way of the will of the people.”To advance their court reform efforts, groups like Demand Justice followed the playbook of activists who lobbied against the Senate filibuster. By convincing more progressive groups to sign on to the campaign, court reform advocates have been able to persuade more Democratic lawmakers as well.Russ Feingold, a former Democratic senator of Wisconsin who served on the judiciary committee, counts himself among the converted. Feingold, now the president of the American Constitution Society, said he was uncomfortable with the idea of term limits or court expansion as recently as a couple of years ago.He said: “People who have been much more cautious about this in the past have come to the conclusion that, if you simply allow this kind of a situation to continue for the next 20 years or so, with justices who are very ideological, very political and also in some cases unethical, then you are allowing a whole generation or more to be locked away from having a legitimate impact on the law.”Some of Feingold’s former congressional colleagues have adopted the same mindset. In the House, Johnson has introduced a suite of bills aimed at overhauling the court through adopting a robust code of ethics, establishing term limits and adding four justices to the bench. One of Johnson’s progressive colleagues, congressman Ro Khanna of California, reintroduced his own term limit proposal last week in response to the dismantling of Biden’s student debt relief program.Asked about the possibility of expanding the court, Khanna told the Guardian: “I think everything has to be on the table, but I think the supreme court term limits is the most likely and where we should focus our energy.”But Johnson, like Fallon, takes an “all of the above” approach to reforming the court. “We need to do both,” Johnson said. “We need to unpack this court, and we need to expand this court because that will help us right now.”Even as more Democratic lawmakers have endorsed court reform, the leader of their party has remained notably quiet. During the 2020 campaign, Biden shied away from backing court expansion, and progressive activists viewed his formation of the commission to study reform proposals as a “punt”.Still, even a longtime institutionalist like Biden has had his faith in the court tested. After the conservative majority issued its decision ending affirmative action, Biden described the current court as “not normal”. He later told MSNBC that this court has “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history”.Fallon believes the president will be “the last domino to fall” in backing court reform. But Fallon predicted Biden’s endorsement of court reform will become “inevitable” in response to growing public outrage“You can’t hide your head in the sand,” Feingold said. “When the court’s been stolen, when it’s been politicized, when it has the worst ethics reputation it’s had in memory, then unusual measures have to be taken – not to recapture the court for the other side of the political agenda, but to restore the legitimacy of the court.” More

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    Key Democrat attacks US supreme court chief justice over ethics scandal

    The chair of the Senate judiciary committee has launched a new attack on the chief justice of the US supreme court, promising a vote on ethics reform legislation after a term beset by scandal over relationships between rightwing justices and wealthy donors and featuring a string of controversial rulings.“The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards,” Democrat Dick Durbin said.In a Thursday statement, Durbin added: “‘God save the United States and this honourable court!’ These are the words spoken by the marshal when she gavels the supreme court into session. But many questions remain at the end of the court’s latest term regarding its reputation, credibility, and ‘honourable’ status.”“I’m sorry to see Chief Justice [John] Roberts end the term without taking action on the ethical issues plaguing the court – all while the court handed down decisions that dismantled longstanding precedents and the progress our country has made over generations.”Roberts has refused to testify in Congress regarding reports of alleged ethics breaches concerning justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.Thomas’s relationship with the conservative donor Harlan Crow, including gifts, luxury travel, real-estate purchases and school fee payments, has been reported by ProPublica.ProPublica also reported on Alito’s relationship with Paul Singer, a conservative billionaire.And Politico reported a property sale involving Gorsuch and the chief executive of a prominent law firm.All three justices failed to declare such gifts or transactions. All deny wrongdoing. The donors and the chief executive denied discussing politics with justices or seeking to influence business before the court.The scandals have fueled calls for reform or, particularly in the case of Thomas, more drastic measures that might also restore some form of ideological balance to a court that was tilted right, with a 6-3 conservative supermajority, under the presidency of Donald Trump.But Thomas’s removal, whether by resignation or impeachment, remains a political non-starter in Washington.Three momentous rulings late in the now-concluded term – those which Durbin said “dismantled longstanding precedents and … progress” – have helped turn up the political heat from Democrats and the left.Rightwing justices used their majority to strike down race-conscious affirmative action in higher education; rule that LGBTQ+ Americans could be discriminated against by some business owners on grounds of religious belief; and ruled Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan unconstitutional.Durbin said: “The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards.” He has pledged ethics reform legislation and said: “An announcement on the timing of this vote will be made early next week.”In May, Roberts turned down an invitation to testify to the committee regarding ethics reform and, although supreme court justices are notionally subject to the same ethics rules as other federal justices, in practice they govern themselves.The court’s public trust and approval ratings have reached historic lows.Durbin said on Thursday: “Since the chief justice has refused to act, the judiciary committee must.” More

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    How do Democrats fight back against the US supreme court? – podcast

    As the dust settled on last week’s judgments from the conservative-led bench, progressives voiced their anger at what they see as a lack of determination from the Biden administration to counteract the supreme court and its most extreme decisions.
    This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan about what progressives want Joe Biden to do now

    How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More