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      Louisiana judge blocks abortion ban amid uproar after Roe v Wade ruling

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      Louisiana judge blocks abortion ban amid uproar after Roe v Wade rulingState temporarily blocked from enforcing ban as other US states pass ‘trigger laws’ designed to severely curtail access to abortion A Louisiana judge on Monday temporarily stopped the state from enforcing Republican-backed laws banning abortion, set to take effect after the US supreme court ended the constitutional right to the procedure last week.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for supreme court justices to be impeachedRead moreLouisiana is one of 13 states which passed “trigger laws”, to ban or severely restrict abortions once the supreme court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that recognized a right to the procedure. It did so on Friday, stoking uproar among progressives and protests and counter-protests on the streets of major cities.In New Orleans on Monday, an Orleans Parish civil district court judge, Robin Giarrusso, issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the state ban.The case before Judge Giarruso, a Democrat, was brought by Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, one of three abortion clinics in Louisiana.“We’re going to do what we can,” Kathaleen Pittman, administrator of Hope Medical Group, told the Associated Press. “It could all come to a screeching halt.”The Louisiana lawsuit is one of several challenging Republican-backed abortion laws under state constitutions.In Utah, a branch of Planned Parenthood sued on Saturday over a trigger ban. In Ohio, abortion rights advocates plan to challenge a ban on abortions after six weeks that took effect on Friday. A Florida ban on abortions after 15 weeks is also the subject of a request for a temporary block.In Arizona, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and an abortion-rights group filed an emergency motion on Saturday, seeking to block a 2021 law they worry can be used to halt all abortions.On the national stage on Monday, a group of 22 attorneys general issued a statement promising to “leverage our collective resources” to help women in states where abortions are banned.A statement said: “Abortion care is healthcare. Period.”The statement was signed by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.They said: “We stand together, as our states’ chief law officers, to proudly say that we will not back down in the fight to protect the rights of pregnant people in our states and across the country.“While the US supreme court’s decision reverses nearly half a century of legal precedent and undermines the rights of people across the United States, we’re joining together to reaffirm our commitment to supporting and expanding access to abortion care nationwide.”The statement added: “Ultimately, what harms people in some states harms us all. The future and wellbeing of our nation is intrinsically tied to the ability of our residents to exercise their fundamental rights.“… If you seek access to abortion and reproductive healthcare, we’re committed to using the full force of the law to … fight for your rights and stand up for our laws.“We will support our partners and service providers. We will take on those who seek to control your bodies and leverage our collective resources – thousands of lawyers and dedicated public servants across our states. Together, we will persist.”02:03As of Saturday, abortion services had stopped in at least 11 states. Speaking to the Associated Press, Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said the group was looking at “all options” to protect access.But lawsuits may only buy time. Even if courts block restrictions, lawmakers could address any cited flaws.That is likely to be the case in Louisiana. The plaintiffs in the suit there do not deny that the state can ban abortion. Instead, they contend Louisiana has multiple and conflicting trigger mechanisms in law.The suit says the trigger laws, the first of which was passed in 2006, make it impossible to tell when they are in effect, if one or all are in force and what conduct is prohibited. The lawsuit contends that such vagueness has resulted in state and local officials issuing conflicting statements about whether the trigger bans are in effect.Judge Giarruso wrote: “Each of the three trigger bans excepts different conduct, making it impossible to know what abortion care is illegal and what is allowed, including what care can be provided to save a woman’s life or end a medically futile pregnancy.”Giarruso scheduled an 8 July hearing to decide whether to further block enforcement of the ban. The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit on behalf of the clinic, said abortion care was resuming in Louisiana.The Republican state attorney general, Jeff Landry, did not immediately comment. On Friday, he said those who challenged state bans would be “in for a rough fight”.Prosecutors in some Democratic-led cities in Republican-led states have indicated they will not enforce abortion bans.The New Orleans district attorney, Jason Williams, said he would not criminalize abortions and that the overturning of Roe v Wade “is a cruel and irresponsible stripping of a woman’s agency”.‘A matter of life and death’: maternal mortality rate will rise without Roe, experts warnRead moreCondemning leaders for not focusing on issues such as lifting children out of poverty, he added: “It would not be wise or prudent to shift our priority from tackling senseless violence happening in our city to investigating the choices women make with regard to their own body.”On Monday, in light of moves by Cincinnati city leaders to support abortion access, Joseph Deters, the Republican county prosecutor, said: “I have repeatedly stated it is dangerous when prosecutors pick and choose what laws they want to enforce. When prosecutors do not follow their oath, it will promote lawlessness and challenge the basic structures of separation of powers.”Regarding the Louisiana case, Nancy Northup, chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said: “A public health emergency is about to engulf the nation. We will be fighting to restore access in Louisiana and other states for as long as we can.“Every day that a clinic is open and providing abortion services can make a difference in a person’s life.”TopicsRoe v WadeLouisianaAbortionWomenHealthUS politicsUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

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      Supreme court sides with high school coach who led on-field prayers

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      Supreme court sides with high school coach who led on-field prayersRuling expands religious rights of government employees in latest of decisions taking a broad view of religious liberty The US supreme court’s conservative majority on Monday sided with a former public high-school football coach who lost his job for praying with players at the 50-yard line after games.The 6-3 ruling, with the court’s liberals in dissent, represented a victory for Christian conservative activists seeking to expand the role of prayer and religion in public schools. In its decision, the court ruled that the school district had violated the constitutional rights of the coach, Joseph Kennedy, when it suspended his employment after he refused to stop praying on the field.“The constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority.The case before the court pitted the religious rights of public school employees against the rights of students not to feel pressured into practicing religious activities. Since expanding its conservative majority, the court in recent years has increasingly ruled in favor of expanding individual religious rights, turning against government actions once viewed as necessary to maintaining a separation of church and state.Police arrest New York man accused of slapping Rudy Giuliani on backRead moreIn a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the decision “sets us further down a perilous path in forcing states to entangle themselves with religion”. She was joined by Stephen Breyer and Justice Elena Kagan.The Bremerton school district argued that Kennedy “made a spectacle” of delivering prayers and speeches, invited students to join him and courted media attention while acting in his capacity as a government employee. Some parents said their children felt compelled to participate.The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals last year ruled against Kennedy, finding that if they let his actions continue local officials would have violated the ban on government establishment of religion that is embedded in the first amendment of the federal constitution.Kennedy served as a coach at his alma mater, Bremerton high school, from 2008 to 2015. His lawyers assert that he “lost his job” because of his actions and sued in 2016. Kennedy’s suit sought a court order to be reinstated as a coach, accusing officials of religious discrimination and violating his free speech rights.Kennedy initially appeared to comply with directions to stop the prayers while on duty, the district said, but he later refused and made media appearances publicizing the dispute, attracting national attention. After repeated defiance, he was placed on paid leave from his seasonal contract and did not reapply as a coach for the subsequent season.Officials have pointed out that Kennedy no longer lives in the school district and has moved to Florida. He has said he would return if he got his job back.First Liberty Institute, a conservative religious rights group, helped represent Kennedy in the case.Kennedy’s victory was only the latest in a series of rulings on religious rights that the supreme court has issued this year.On 21 June, it endorsed the use of public money to pay for students to attend religious schools in a Maine case. On 2 May, it backed a Christian group that sought to fly a flag emblazoned with a cross at Boston city hall. On 24 March, it directed Texas to grant a convicted murderer on death row his request to have his Christian pastor lay hands on him and audibly pray during his execution.In other religious rights rulings in recent years, the supreme court broke down barriers for public money to go to religious schools and churches and exempted family-owned corporations from a federal requirement regarding employee insurance coverage for women’s birth control on religious grounds.It also sided with a Catholic organization receiving public money that barred LGBT people from applying to be foster parents and backed a Christian baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.Reuters contributed to this reportTopicsUS supreme courtUS politicsReligionLaw (US)Washington statenewsReuse this content More

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      How the Christian right took over the judiciary and changed America

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      How the Christian right took over the judiciary and changed America Leaders of the movement understood very well that if you can capture the courts, you can change societyThe supreme court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which reverses the constitutional abortion rights that American women have enjoyed over the past 50 years, has come as a surprise to many voters. A majority, after all, support reproductive rights and regard their abolition as regressive and barbaric.Understood in the context of the movement that created the supreme court in its current incarnation, however, there is nothing surprising about it. In fact, it marks the beginning rather than the endpoint of the agenda this movement has in mind.At the core of the Dobbs decision lies the conviction that the power of government can and should be used to impose a certain moral and religious vision – a supposedly biblical and regressive understanding of the Christian religion – on the population at large.How did this conviction come to have such influence in the courts, given America’s longstanding principle of church-state separation? To understand why this is happening now, it’s important to know something about the Christian nationalist movement’s history, how its leaders chose the issue of abortion as a means of creating single-issue voters, and how they united conservatives across denominational barriers by, in effect, inventing a new form of intensely political religion.Christian nationalists often claim their movement got its start as a grassroots reaction to Roe v Wade in 1973. But the movement actually gelled several years later with a crucial assist from a group calling itself the “New Right”.Paul Weyrich, Howard Phillips, Phyllis Schlafly and other leaders of this movement were dissatisfied with the direction of the Republican party and the culture at large. “We are radicals who want to change the existing power structure. We are not conservatives in the sense that conservative means accepting the status quo,” Paul Weyrich said. “We want change – we are the forces of change.”They were angry at liberals, who they believed threatened to undermine national security with their softness on communism. They were angry at establishment conservatives – the “Rockefeller Republicans” – for siding with the liberals; they were angry about the rising tide of feminism, which they saw as a menace to the social order, and about the civil rights movement and the danger it posed to segregation. One thing that they were not particularly angry about, at least initially, was the matter of abortion rights.New Right leaders formed common cause with a handful of conservative Catholics, including George Weigel and Richard John Neuhaus, who shared their concerns, and drew in powerful conservative preachers such as Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones Sr. They were determined to ignite a hyper-conservative counter-revolution. All they needed now was an issue that could be used to unify its disparate elements and draw in the rank and file.Among their core concerns was the fear that the supreme court might end tax exemptions for segregated Christian schools. Jerry Falwell and many of his fellow southern, white, conservative pastors were closely involved with segregated schools and universities – Jones went so far as to call segregation “God’s established order” and referred to desegregationists as “Satanic propagandists” who were “leading colored Christians astray”. As far as these pastors were concerned, they had the right not just to separate people on the basis of race but to also receive federal money for the purpose.They knew, however, that “Stop the tax on segregation!” wasn’t going to be an effective rallying cry for their new movement. As the historian and author Randall Balmer wrote, “It wasn’t until 1979 – a full six years after Roe – that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools.”In many respects abortion was an unlikely choice, because when the Roe v Wade decision was issued, most Protestant Republicans supported it. The Southern Baptist Convention passed resolutions in 1971 and 1974 expressing support for the liberalization of abortion law, and an editorial in their wire service hailed the passage of Roe v Wade, declaring that “religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.” As governor of California, Ronald Reagan passed the most liberal abortion law in the country in 1967. Conservative icon Barry Goldwater supported abortion law liberalization too, at least early in his career, and his wife Peggy was a cofounder of Planned Parenthood in Arizona.Yet abortion turned out to be the critical unifying issue for two fundamentally political reasons. First, it brought together conservative Catholics who supplied much of the intellectual leadership of the movement with conservative Protestants and evangelicals. Second, by tying abortion to the perceived social ills of the age – the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement, and women’s liberation – the issue became a focal point for the anxieties about social change welling up from the base.Over time, pro-choice voices were purged from the Republican party. In her 2016 book, How the Republican Party Became Pro-Life, Phyllis Schlafly details the considerable effort it took, over several decades, to force the Republican party to change its views on the issue. What her book and the history shows is that the “pro-life religion” that we see today, which cuts across denominational boundaries on the political right, is a modern creation.In recent decades, the religious right has invested many hundreds of millions of dollars developing a complex and coordinated infrastructure, whose features include rightwing policy groups, networking organizations, data initiatives and media. A critical component of this infrastructure is its sophisticated legal sphere.Movement leaders understood very well that if you can capture the courts, you can change society. Leading organizations include the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is involved in many of the recent cases intended to degrade the principle of church-state separation; First Liberty; Becket, formerly known as the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty; and the Federalist Society, a networking and support organization for rightwing jurists and their allies whose leader, Leonard Leo, has directed hundreds of millions of dollars to a network of affiliated organizations. This infrastructure has created a pipeline to funnel ideologues to important judicial positions at the national and federal level. Nearly 90% of Trump’s appellate court nominees were or are Federalist Society members, according to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and all six conservative justices on the supreme court are current or former members.The rightwing legal movement has spent several decades establishing a new regime in which “religious liberty” is reframed as an exemption from the law, one enjoyed by a certain preferred category of religion. LGBT advocacy groups are concerned that the supreme court’s willingness, in the next session, to hear the case of a Colorado website designer who wishes to refuse services to same-sex couples is a critical step to overturning a broad range of anti-discrimination laws that protect LGBT Americans along with women, members of religious minority groups and others.The legal powerhouses of the Christian right have also recognized that their efforts can be turned into a gravy train of public money. That is one of the reasons a recent supreme court decision, which ruled Maine must fund religious schools as part of a state tuition program, was predicted by observers of this movement. This decision forces the state to fund religious schools no matter how discriminatory their practices and sectarian their teachings. “This court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.This supreme court has already made clear how swiftly our Christian nationalist judiciary will change the law to suit this vision of a society ruled by a reactionary elite, a society with a preferred religion and a prescribed code of sexual behavior, all backed by the coercive power of the state. The idea that they will stop with overturning Roe v Wade is a delusion.TopicsAbortionRoe v WadeUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsReligionChristianityfeaturesReuse this content More

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      The supreme court just overturned Roe v Wade – what happens next?

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      The supreme court just overturned Roe v Wade – what happens next?Court’s move will allow more than half of states to ban abortion, with an immediate impact on tens of millions of Americans01:39The supreme court just overturned the landmark Roe v Wade case, which granted women in the US the right to terminate a pregnancy. A reversal of this magnitude is almost unprecedented, particularly on a case decided nearly 50 years ago.The extraordinarily rare move will allow more than half of states to ban abortion, with an immediate and enduring impact on tens of millions of Americans.Roe v Wade overturned as supreme court strikes down federal right to abortion – liveRead moreWhat happened?The court decided there is no constitutional right to abortion in a case called Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In reaching that decision, the conservative-majority court overturned Roe v Wade, from 1973.Historically, the court has overturned cases to grant more rights. The court has done the opposite here, and its decision will restrict a constitutional right generations of Americans have grown up taking for granted.As a result of the reversal, states will again be permitted to ban or severely restrict abortion, changes that will indelibly alter the national understanding of liberty, self-determination and personal autonomy.Where will this happen?Twenty-six states are expected to do so immediately, or as soon as practicable. This will make abortion illegal across most of the south and midwest.In these states, women and other people who can become pregnant will need to either travel hundreds of miles to reach an abortion provider or self-manage abortions at home through medication or other means.However, anti-abortion laws are not national. The US will have a patchwork of laws, including restrictions and protections, because some Democratic-led states such as California and New York expanded reproductive rights in the run-up to the decision.Even so, new abortion bans will make the US one of just four nations to roll back abortion rights since 1994, and by far the wealthiest and most influential nation to do so. The other three nations to curtail abortion rights are Poland, El Salvador and Nicaragua, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. More than half (58%) of all US women of reproductive age – or 40 million people – live in states hostile to abortion.When will this happen?Across most states, this will happen quickly. Thirteen states have abortion bans “triggered” by a reversal of Roe v Wade, though the laws vary in their enforcement dates. Louisiana, for example, has a trigger law that is supposed to take effect immediately. Idaho has a trigger ban that goes into effect in 30 days.Other states have abortion bans that pre-date the Roe decision, but have been unenforceable in the last five decades. Michigan has a pre-Roe ban that is currently the subject of a court challenge.A final group of states intends to ban abortion very early in pregnancy, often before women know they are pregnant. One such state is Georgia, where abortion will be banned at six weeks. Several states, such as Texas, have multiple bans in place.In many cases, court challenges under state constitutions are likely, and experts believe there will be chaos for days or weeks as states implement bans.Can the federal government stop this?The most effective protection against state abortion bans is a federal law, which would precede the states. Public opinion favors such statute – 85% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in most or all circumstances.Such a law would need the majority support of the House of Representatives, a 60-vote majority in the Senate, and a signature from Joe Biden to pass. A majority of members of the House of Representatives support an abortion rights statute, as does the White House.However, Republicans are almost certain to block abortion rights laws in the Senate, which is evenly split with Democrats. One Democratic senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has repeatedly crossed party lines to vote against abortion rights. That leaves just 49 Democrats, far short of the support needed to pass such a measure.To overcome the evenly split Senate, Democrats would need to win landslide victories in the upcoming midterm elections. However, despite the fact that popular opinion favors abortion rights, it is unclear how the midterms could be swayed by the issue.And, regardless of the outcome of the next election, Dobbs will forever change life in the US. The lives of individuals will be irrevocably altered as people are denied reproductive healthcare, face long journeys or are forced to give birth.TopicsRoe v WadeUS supreme courtAbortionWomenUS politicsLaw (US)HealthexplainersReuse this content More

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      January 6 hearings: Barr ‘not sure at all’ transition would have happened had DoJ not resisted Trump – live

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      The January 6 committee has concluded its hearing for the day, with the next sessions expected later in July, when House lawmakers return to Washington from a recess.In his closing remarks, committee’s chair Bennie Thompson outlined what the committee had found thus far and what it expected to show in the future..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Up to this point, we’ve shown the inner workings of what was essentially a political coup and attempt to use the powers of the government, from the local level all the way up, to overturn the results of the election. Send fake electors, just say the election was corrupt. Along the way, we saw threats of violence, we saw what some people were willing to do. In a service of the nation, the constitution? No. In service of Donald Trump.
      When the Select Committee continues this series of hearings, we’re going to show how Donald Trump tapped into the threat of violence, how he summoned the mob to Washington, and how after corruption and political pressure failed to keep Donald Trump in office, violence became the last option.The testimony of the justice department officials who gave the bulk of the day’s evidence has concluded, but before they did, Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, told a tale familiar to those who have watched the committee’s hearings closely: he never heard from Trump on the day of the attack.“I spoke to a number of senior White House officials, but not the president,” Rosen said.What Trump was doing during the attack and who he was talking to are both expected to be focuses of later hearings of the committee.The committee has just unveiled evidence of more Republican congressmen requesting pardons from Trump in his final days in office. NEW on PARDONS: Republican congressman Mo Brooks sent an email on 11 January 2021 seeking pardons for “Every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania.”— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 23, 2022
      Trump WH aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Brooks and Gaetz pushed for pardons for every Republican lawmaker who participated in Jan. 6 planning meeting — and Reps. Perry, Biggs, Gohmert asked for pardons. Jordan asked whether White House would pardon members.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 23, 2022
      The testimony adds to the list of pardon requests that have emerged as the January 6 committee aired its evidence.Capitol attack pardon revelations could spell doom for Trump and alliesRead moreJeffrey Clark came very close to be the acting attorney general, a position in which he could have used his authority to disrupt the certification of Biden’s election win in several states, according to evidence the committee is airing.On January 3, three days before the attack on the Capitol, the White House had already begun referring to Clark as acting attorney general, according to Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican leading the committee’s questioning today.The committee then turned to exploring a meeting between Trump and the leaders of the justice department that day in the Oval Office, in which Trump repeated specific claims of fraud that had been debunked and expressed his will to see Clark take over the department.Richard Donoghue said he warned of mass resignations to follow if Clark took over the department. “You’re gonna lose your entire department leadership. Every single (assistant attorney general) will walk out. Your entire department of leadership will walk out within hours. And I don’t know what happens after that. I don’t know what the United States attorneys are going to do,” Donoghue said. “My guess would be that many of them would have resigned.”Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general in the final weeks of the Trump administration, is now recounting Trump’s attempt to replace him with Jeffrey Clark, who was playing a major roles in his efforts to have states that voted for Biden overturn their results.In a meeting on a Sunday, Rosen said Clark “told me that he would be replacing me,” and had made the atypical request to ask to meet him alone, “because he thought it would be appropriate in light of what was happening to at least offer me, that I couldn’t stay on his his deputy.”“I thought that was preposterous. I told him that was nonsensical,” Rosen said. “There’s no universe where I was going to do that, to stay on and support someone else doing things that were not consistent with what I thought should be done.”However, Clark also said he would turn down Trump’s offer to replace Rosen if the acting attorney general signed the letter disputing the validity of Georgia’s electors for Biden. Richard Donoghue recounted that Rosen made the decisions to begin informing other department officials about the quandary, and almost all the assistant attorney generals said they would resign if Trump replaced Rosen with Clark.As this hearing has unfolded, the justice department officials testifying have said they investigated many of the claims of fraud in the 2020 election brought forward by Trump and his allies. The decision to look into these claims in the weeks after polls closed may be more significant than it appears at first glance.In video testimony aired earlier in the hearing, William Barr, Trump’s attorney general during the election, said be believes that the department’s ability to debunk the false claims of fraud as Trump was making them were essential to allowing Joe Biden to assume office.“I felt the responsible thing to do was to be… in a position to have a view as to whether or not there was fraud,” Barr told investigators.“I sort of shudder to think what the situation would have been if the position of the department was, we’re not even looking at this until after Biden’s in office. I’m not sure we would have had a transition at all.”The committee has returned, and is now asking Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, about a request from Trump to seize voting machines.“We had seen nothing improper with regard to the voting machines,” Rosen said he replied, noting that investigators had looked into allegations the machines gave fraudulent results and found nothing wrong. “And so that was not something that was appropriate to do … I don’t think there was legal authority either.”Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, is recounting a meeting with Trump, in which he pushed him unsuccessfully to seize voting machines. By the end, “The president again was getting very agitated. And he said, ‘People tell me I should just get rid of both of you. I should just remove you and make a change in the leadership with Jeff Clark, and maybe something will finally get done,’” Donoghue said.Donoghue said he responded: “Mr President, you should have the leadership that you want. But understand the United States justice department functions on facts and evidence, and then those are not going to change. So you can have whatever leadership you want, but the department’s position is not going to change.”The committee is now in recess, but before they finished, Richard Donoghue described his reaction when he first learned of Jeffrey Clark’s proposed letter to the Georgia legislature asking them to convene to declare alternate electoral college voters.“I had to read both the email and the attached letter twice to make sure I really understood what he was proposing because it was so extreme to me I had a hard time getting my head around it initially,” Donoghue said. He responded in writing to Clark’s letter, saying that its allegations were “not based on facts,” and, in his view, “for the department to insert itself into the political process this way, I think, would have had grave consequences for the country. It may very well have spiraled us into a constitutional crisis. And I wanted to make sure that he understood the gravity of the situation because he didn’t seem to really appreciate it.”Clark himself made a brief appearance in video testimony the committee played before it took its break, responding to questions by asserting his fifth amendment rights and executive privilege.The committee will reconvene in a few minutes.One name that’s coming up a lot in this hearing is Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican congressman who the committee said took part in Trump’s plan to pressure the justice department, and in particular install Jeff Clark at its helm.The committee just showed text messages between Perry and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, which showed the lawmaker encouraging Meadows to work on promoting Clark. Richard Donoghue also detailed a phone call from Perry where the congressman claimed fraud in the results in Pennsylvania from the 2020 election – which the justice department determined unfounded.The committee had sought documents and requested an interview with Perry last year, but the Republican refused to comply. Last month, Perry was among a group of congressmen subpoenaed by the committee.Capitol attack panel subpoenas five Republicans in unprecedented stepRead moreRichard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, is outlining his efforts to convince the president that the justice department could not interfere with a state’s election.“States run their elections. We are not quality control for the states,” he recalled explaining to Trump. “The bottom line was, if a state ran their election in such a way that it was defective, that is to the state or Congress to correct, it is not for the justice department to step in.”But Trump wanted something simpler, Donoghue said.“That’s not what I’m asking you to do,” Donoghue told the committee Trump said after he explained the department’s position. “Just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” the president said.Today’s hearing is focusing on the inner workings of the justice department, but as in previous sessions, the committee has tried to make sure the insurrection isn’t far from viewers’ minds.Case in point: lawmakers just aired video from the day of the attack showing marchers chanting “Do your job!” outside the justice department — evidence that Trump’s most ardent supporters were well aware of the president’s attempts to push government lawyers to interfere with Joe Biden’s victory.But as justice department officials tell it, they never believed in Trump’s fraud claims. Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, said Trump lawyer Pat Cipollone described the letter Clark wanted to send for Trump as a “murder-suicide pact. It’s going to damage everyone who touches it.”The committee’s top Republican Liz Cheney is offering more details about the actions of justice department official Jeffrey Clark, who had his house raided today by federal investigators.According to Cheney, Clark and another justice department lawyer drafted a letter addressed to the Georgia state legislature, which would have said the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia”, and that the legislature should convene and consider approving a new slate of electors. Joe Biden had won Georgia, but Trump made baseless allegations of fraud in the polls, and the new electors would have presumably given him the state’s electoral votes.“In fact, Donald Trump knew this was a lie,” Cheney said. “The Department of Justice had already informed the president of the United States repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud sufficient to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”Cheney said Clark had met with Trump privately and agreed to help him sway these states’ legislatures without telling his bosses at the justice department. But Cheney said Clark’s superiors – who are the witnesses testifying today – refused to sign it. That was when Trump began considering installing Clark at the helm at the justice department – which he never ended up doing. The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has started its fifth hearing, which will focus on Donald Trump’s efforts to get the justice department to go along with his plans to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Testifying in the chamber will be:
      Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general for the final weeks of Trump’s term, including during the attack on the Capitol.
      Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, who appeared in a video aired at the conclusion of Tuesday’s hearing threatening to resign if Trump appointed Jeffrey Clark to head the justice department.
      Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.
      We’re about 10 minutes away from the start of today’s January 6 hearing, which my colleague Lauren Gambino reports will offer new evidence of how Trump pressured the justice department to take part in his plot to overturn the 2020 election:The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection plans to present new evidence on Thursday about Donald Trump’s brazen attempts to pressure the justice department to overturn the 2020 presidential election that he lost, aides said.After exhausting his legal options and being rebuffed by state and local elections officials, the president turned to the justice department to declare the election corrupt despite no evidence of mass voter fraud, the nine-member panel will seek to show in their fifth and final hearing of the month.Testifying from the Cannon Caucus Room on Capitol Hill are Jeffrey Rosen, the former acting attorney general; Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general; and Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.Capitol attack panel to show how Trump pressured DoJ to overturn electionRead more More

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      Sotomayor accuses supreme court conservatives of dismantling church-state separation

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      Sotomayor accuses supreme court conservatives of dismantling church-state separationLiberal justice delivers warning after ruling that state of Maine cannot exclude religious schools from tuition programme The liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor has warned that the US supreme court is dismantling the wall between church and state, after the conservative majority ruled that the state of Maine cannot exclude religious schools from a tuition programme.‘I got in the car and he blindfolded me. I was willing to risk death’: five women on abortions before RoeRead moreIn a dissent to the ruling in Carson v Makin, released on Tuesday, Sotomayor wrote: “This court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the framers fought to build.“… In just a few years, the court has upended constitutional doctrine, shifting from a rule that permits states to decline to fund religious organisations to one that requires states in many circumstances to subsidise religious indoctrination with taxpayer dollars.”Progressives fear other rulings due this month, among them a case set to bring down Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which established the right to abortion, and a ruling on a New York law set to loosen gun regulations even after several horrific mass shootings.Supreme court justices often claim not to rule according to political beliefs but few serious observers give such claims any credence.In the Maine case, John Roberts, the chief justice, wrote for the conservative majority. In Roberts’ view, the tuition programme violated the free exercise clause of the first amendment to the US constitution, because it said private schools were “eligible to receive the payments, so long as they [we]re ‘nonsectarian’”.Roberts wrote: “Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the programme operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.”A conservative, Roberts was appointed by George W Bush. Since Republicans rammed three new justices on to the court under Donald Trump, the chief justice has become in some cases a voice for moderation. Not this time.Sotomayor wrote: “While purporting to protect against discrimination of one kind, the court requires Maine to fund what many of its citizens believe to be discrimination of other kinds.”The main dissent was written by Stephen Breyer, at 83 the oldest of three liberals on the nine-judge panel. Breyer will soon retire, to be replaced by Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s first pick and the first Black woman confirmed to the court.Like her fellow liberal Elena Kagan, Sotomayor was nominated by Barack Obama.Concluding her dissent, Sotomayor wrote: “What a difference five years makes. In 2017, I feared that the court was ‘lead[ing] us … to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment’.“Today, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation. If a state cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any state that values its historic antiestablishment interests more than this court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens.“With growing concern for where this court will lead us next, I respectfully dissent.”Sonia Sotomayor says supreme court’s ‘mistakes’ can be corrected over timeRead moreHer words caused a stir. Antony Michael Kreis, a law professor and political scientist at Georgia State University, wrote: “Sotomayor is not having it today.”Nonetheless, Roberts’ ruling was further evidence of a court in conservatives’ grip.Last week, addressing progressive lawyers in Washington, Sotomayor said: “There are days I get discouraged. There are moments where I am deeply, deeply disappointed. And yes, there have been moments when I’ve stopped and said, ‘Is this worth it any more?’“And every time when I do that, I lick my wounds for a while, sometimes I cry, and then I say, ‘OK, let’s fight.’”TopicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)MaineUS politicsnewsReuse this content More