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      Biden Finds Support but Also Protests in Michigan

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      The president’s Michigan trip underscored the fresh challenges he faces this year.President Biden’s visit to Michigan yesterday had all the hallmarks of a vintage Scranton Joe event, as he talked to United Automobile Workers members about his love of cars and affinity for the labor movement.But if the appearance was a throwback to previous campaigns — and a reminder of his historical appeal to a multiracial bloc of working-class voters — the Michigan trip itself underscored the fresh challenges Biden faces this year.Michigan is home to many Arab American and Muslim voters, who were once a solid Biden constituency but are now livid about the president’s support of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.Pro-Palestinian groups protested his visit, carrying signs that called for voters to “abandon Biden.” Demonstrators chanted “Genocide Joe” and “How many kids have you killed today?” outside a campaign stop later in the day, my colleague Michael Shear reported.Some Arab American community leaders, including the mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, recently declined a meeting with Biden’s campaign manager. And a group of activists is planning to encourage Michiganders to vote “uncommitted” in the state’s primaries on Feb. 27.“If we can demonstrate our political power and discontent through as many uncommitted votes as possible in the Michigan Democratic primaries, then the hope is that Biden would feel more at risk of losing Michigan in the general election,” said Layla Elabed, the campaign manager for the effort, who is a sister of Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. She hopes that would prompt him to “shift his policy to support a cease-fire, at least” and to urge restrictions on military aid to Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Surprise as Black Democrats work with Republicans to undo electoral maps

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      A lawsuit brought by Black Democrats who partnered with Republican attorneys has undone Michigan’s first independently drawn legislative maps, in a development some other Democrats have labeled a GOP “power grab”.Republicans for decades controlled all or part of the state legislature, and developed districts that a judge in 2019 characterized as a “gerrymander of historical proportions”. Democrats in 2022 took control of the state government for the first time in over 40 years after a nonpartisan independent redistricting commission implemented more balanced maps.But a Republican-majority panel of federal district court judges appointed by a Republican circuit court judge ruled in early January that the maps diluted Black voting power and were drawn based on race, thus splitting communities that would otherwise vote in a bloc.Several Michigan Democrats who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to publicly criticize members of their party expressed dismay because a Republican judiciary now controls the redrawing process, and they fear the new maps will be more favorable to the GOP.Constituents in Detroit and elsewhere in the state will suffer if the legislature is turned back over to Republicans, some Democrats said. Michigan now has its first Black speaker of the house and more Black committee chairs than it has ever had, the maps’ supporters noted, and the speaker’s district is one of those included in the lawsuit.But former Michigan state representative Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, one of the lead plaintiffs along with a group of Black voters, told the Guardian her colleagues’ arguments were “ludicrous”. The new maps carved up Detroit into more districts than before, and that destroyed Detroit’s voting bloc, she added.The lawsuit encompasses 13 senate and house districts in and around Detroit, a city that is around 85% Black. Of those, eight districts are currently represented by Black representatives or senators.“We don’t want a majority on the backs of Black people who have no voice in selecting their own representation,” she said. “If the party is suggesting that the only way they can have a majority is by selling Black people up the river, then hell no. It’s not fair.”Typically, Republicans in other states argue on the opposite side of the Voting Rights Act and 14th amendment violations, which Democrats say is evidence the party is disingenuous and capitalizing on Democratic divisions to try to destroy the maps.Michigan Democratic party chair Lavora Barnes did not respond to specific questions from the Guardian, but in a statement said she is “confident that Democrats will be able to hold the majority in the House and maintain our Democratic trifecta that has continually delivered for Michiganders”.Previously, the party in charge of the legislature drew the maps every 10 years. That changed with the 2018 passage of a citizen initiative for an independent nonpartisan redistricting commission. The commission’s new lines went into effect this year, giving Democrats a much fairer shot at control.Michigan was one of a handful of swing states to come under full Democratic control in 2022 as the undoing of Roe V Wade galvanized voters, but their majority in both chambers is razor thin. The state’s congressional districts are not affected by the lawsuit, though a second suit is possible.Among the plaintiff’s lead attorneys is John Bursch, a former state solicitor general under GOP former attorney general Bill Schuette who has represented conservatives in anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion causes.In what observers say is an unprecedented move, the federal court appointed a special master to draw new maps at the same time as the commission, reasoning that the commission was beset by infighting and incapable of redrawing legislative lines in time for the 2024 elections.With the close proximity of the 2024 primaries, the moves make sense, even if it is unprecedented, said Josh Douglas, an election law and voting rights professor at the University of Kentucky.“It just shows that courts sometimes need to be creative as an election draws nearer,” he said.The court ruled the maps violated the US constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act.The latter stems from the diminished number of majority-Black districts the commission drew because it connected the city to suburbs, which diluted the voting strength of Black voters. The districts should be at least 50-55% minority, observers say, and are currently about 35-40% minority.More importantly, the court ruled the maps violated the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause, which prohibits the use of race as the primary consideration in drawing lines. The process of drawing lines can frequently be drawn based on race, and Black Democrats in other states have have previously partnered with white Republicans.Bill Ballenger, a conservative-leaning Michigan political analyst, said the maps were “clearly” flawed, and noted the Democratic judge on the panel, Janet Neff, agreed with the GOP members. He scoffed at the notion of a “power grab”.“Of course they are saying all this, but the commission has given Republicans a lot of ammunition,” he said.The ruling was highly critical of the commission, and though Neff agreed with the majority decision, she questioned the need for a “harsh” tone in the panels’ decision. State Democrats who spoke to the Guardian said they suspected it was meant to undermine the commission’s credibility, but the commission has been beset by partisan infighting.The plaintiffs’ attorneys seized on that this week as the court continues to work out the redraw’s specifics: “The commission and its members appear more intent on cannibalizing each other than functioning as a cohesive group to draw a set of acceptable maps.”Ultimately, the issue boils down to having an effective caucus of Detroit senators and representatives, Gay-Dagnogo said. She pointed to the Detroit caucus’s success in negotiating on behalf of residents over auto insurance reform and state takeover of the city’s public school system. Even well-intentioned legislators sometimes propose policies that are bad for Detroiters, she added.“That’s the importance of having representation from your community, being well versed in those issues, and being able to get in these roles to advocate for your community,” Gay-Dagnogo said. More

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      Michigan GOP chair Kristina Karamo rightly ousted, say RNC lawyers

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      The Republican National Committee’s top attorneys have declared they believe the Michigan Republican chair, Kristina Karamo, was legitimately ousted from her position earlier this month, ending weeks of silence from the national party on a leadership crisis that has engulfed state Republicans.The factional split within the Michigan Republican party, over ideological differences as well as personal ones, has sown chaos with just months to go before the 2024 presidential election. In recent weeks, tensions escalated, with two feuding groups within the state party claiming to be its legitimate leaders.RNC general counsel Michael Whatley and chief counsel Matthew Raymer wrote in a letter obtained by the Guardian that they believed that an early January vote by state party officials to remove Karamo, who made her mark peddling election conspiracies after the 2020 election, as their chair was indeed legitimate – in spite of Karamo’s insistence that it was not.“Based upon its initial review, it appears to the counsel’s office that Ms Karamo was properly removed in accordance with the Michigan GOP bylaws on January 6,” they wrote in a letter to Karamo and Pete Hoekstra, who was elected to replace her by party members who engineered her ouster. They noted that the issue was not yet settled and that the RNC’s position was not final or binding.The RNC attorneys’ opinion offers Michigan and national Republicans guidance as they head to their winter meeting in Las Vegas at the end of the month. But it is not a definitive resolution in the factional dispute that has festered over the last year within their state party. The letter also declared that neither Karamo nor Hoekstra would be “credentialed as Michigan GOP chair” when those meetings convene.Until now the RNC had remained silent over the feud, especially since its current chair, Ronna McDaniel, is herself a former chair of the Michigan Republican party.But Karamo and her allies insist that even a ruling from the RNC won’t remove them from leadership. In a 25 January email to precinct delegates, the Michigan GOP general counsel – a Karamo ally who was also removed in the 6 January vote – wrote that he acknowledged the RNC letter was “authentic”, but added: “I do not care because their opinion is irrelevant to any resolution.”When Karamo took office nearly a year ago, she inherited an organization that was broke and divided – and in her year as chair, the party’s problems have worsened. Karamo, who embodies the GOP’s shift into stranger and more extreme political territory, made a name for herself as a vocal proponent of Trump’s false election claims, pushing election conspiracy theories as well as even wilder ideas (like claiming Jay-Z is a “satanist” and yoga is a “satanic ritual” ) during her 2022 run for secretary of state.She was defeated in the general election but refused to concede, then beat a Trump-backed nominee for state party chair who had voiced similar campaign conspiracy theories last February after she promised to revitalize the state party’s moribund fundraising operation.But the flow of grassroots cash Karamo promised never came. Divisions deepened in county chapters over the growth of extreme factions on the right, with physical altercations breaking out on multiple occasions. The party under her leadership got wrapped up in litigation. Even though the party was nearly broke, under Karamo’s leadership state GOP took out a loan to cover a more than $100,000 speaking fee to bring Jim Caviezel, a celebrity figure in the QAnon movement and the starring actor in The Passion of the Christ, to the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference in September.By the time a group of Michigan GOP committee members moved to oust Karamo on 6 January, tensions had been brewing for months.As the RNC stayed silent, other powerful Michigan and national Republicans weighed in.The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the official party organization for Republican House candidates, expressed frustrations about the party’s spending last week in a letter to the Michigan GOP general counsel under Karamo, Daniel Hartman.“I will not deny that we are growing increasingly alarmed by reports that the Michigan GOP is in dire financial straits and grossly mismanaging their limited funds,” wrote NRCC general counsel Erin Clark, in a letter obtained by the Guardian. The Michigan GOP, Clark admonished, was not acting like a party that “adheres to conservative principles; or frankly, one that has the desire or ability to elect Republicans to office”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCongressman John James, a Michigan Republican up for re-election in a contested district in 2024, nodded to the leadership crisis on X on Saturday.“Congrats to Pete Hoekstra on being elected as the chair of MRP,” wrote James. “I look forward to working with you to put America First, hold our battleground #MI10 seat, and deliver victories for conservatives up and down the ballot this November.”Karamo’s opponents say they believe a new party chair will bring unity, and, most critically in an election year, the return of major donors such as the DeVoses, a Michigan family that lavishes donations upon conservative causes, into the party’s good graces. They are betting on Hoekstra, the former ambassador to the Netherlands under the Trump administration, to bridge the divide between the party’s activist base and its more traditional donor class.But if one goal of Karamo’s challengers is to reunify the party, they may have to assuage local dissent.“They should have come to us and asked for our opinion,” said Mary Harp, a precinct delegate in the Oakland county Republican party, the largest Republican party chapter in the state. Harp said she did not support Karamo in her run for GOP chair last year, but expressed frustration in the way Karamo was removed, saying it lacked the input of lower ranking members of the party.“A lot of us are going to have a hard time going forward supporting the state party,” she warned. More

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      in US Politics

      Election denier Kristina Karamo voted out as Michigan Republican party chair

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      A group of Michigan Republicans voted on Saturday to remove Kristina Karamo as state party chair after months of infighting and slow fundraising raised concerns her leadership would hurt the party’s chances in the key swing state in 2024.Karamo, a former community college instructor and election-denying activist who was elevated to her post in February, has indicated she would not respect Saturday’s vote, setting the stage for a potentially messy court battle over party leadership.At a special meeting called by critics of Karamo, nearly all of the state committee members present voted to remove her from her post, according to Bree Moeggenberg, a state committee member who helped organize the meeting in Commerce Charter Township.“We have voted to remove Kristina Karamo as the Chair of the Michigan Republican Party. It is now time to collaborate and grow forward,” Moeggenberg said in a statement.After running unsuccessfully for Michigan secretary of state in 2022, Karamo ran for the party’s top position with a promise to break free from the big donors she vilified as part of the “establishment” while expanding the base of small donors.She has failed to deliver on that promise while angering many of her supporters with what they have called a lack of transparency from her administration. Contributions from the party’s largest donors have dried up, leading to a cash crunch.A report released last month by Warren Carpenter, a former congressional district chair and one-time Karamo supporter, said the state party was mired in debt, on the “brink of bankruptcy” and “essentially non-functional” under her leadership.Calls for Karamo to step down came three years after she made claims of election fraud on her Christian podcast that would propel her to a leading voice in Donald Trump’s campaign discrediting the 2020 election.Karamo continued to espouse her outlandish views last year after winning the party seat, echoing the QAnon conspiracy theory that a shadowy cabal of elites are harvesting children’s organs.“There’s a ton of money involved in those freshly harvested organs,” Karamo said on a 2020 podcast hosted by RedPill78, a conspiracy theory website. She has also called Beyoncé and Jay-Z “satanists”, said yoga is a satanic ritual and described Cardi B as a “tool of Lucifer”.Karamo did not respond to requests for comment. In an email statement on Friday, the party said the Saturday meeting “by a faction of the State Committee” was unauthorized and in violation of party bylaws. Karamo would attend a separately called special meeting on 13 January, according to the statement.Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican party, said an effective new leader could help the party “right the ship” before the November 2024 elections, but that a drawn-out fight in court could hinder that progress.To date, the chaos engulfing the party has prevented it from fulfilling its traditional role of organizing and fundraising for Republican candidates, former party officials have said.“I think the chaos is far from over,” Roe said. “If this turns out to be a binding vote, I don’t think she [Karamo] or her supporters will go quietly and there will probably continue to be skirmishes throughout the election cycle.”As the special meeting got underway on Saturday, Karamo’s administration announced it would consider a plan under which candidates for elected office would no longer be chosen by voters in a primary but by precinct delegates in a caucus.The plan, due to be discussed at the 13 January meeting called by Karamo, was met with criticism by a number of prominent Republicans in Michigan, some of whom warned the move would empower party insiders more likely to elevate extremist candidates while stripping power from voters.“Instead of trusting voters, the Michigan Republican Party is now attempting to consolidate power into the hands of 2,000 people,” Tudor Dixon, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022, said in a statement on social media, referring to the party’s roughly 2,000 precinct delegates across the state.“The MIGOP [Michigan GOP] leadership has become what it claims it despises.”Alice Herman contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      Michigan Republicans move to oust conspiracy theory-touting chair

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      Michigan Republicans are on the verge of ousting their party’s conspiracy theory-touting chair after a tenure marred by financial collapse and internal feuds that have at times turned into physical altercations.Kristina Karamo, the Michigan Republican party chair, an election-denying activist who won a hard-fought race for the position last year, is facing a likely vote to fire her at a special meeting convened by concerned party leaders on Saturday.“She has failed as a leader,” said Bree Moeggenberg, a state committee member who called for the Saturday special meeting to vote on Karamo’s removal. “She has failed to build a bigger coalition of Republicans, and instead, she has disenfranchised many, including those who don’t specifically agree with her.”Anger over the chair’s leadership has grown in recent weeks. A majority of the Michigan GOP’s district chairs have demanded Karamo’s resignation. Even Karamo’s running mate and co-chair has called for her removal.“We see our opportunity to win Michigan for Republicans slipping through our fingers,” wrote party leaders in an open letter to Karamo, signed by eight of the Michigan Republican party’s 13 district chairs. “We, the undersigned District Chairs, are locking arms in our request for your resignation. Please put an end to the chaos in our Party,” they wrote.It’s unclear whether Karamo’s opponents will convince enough people to show up to the Saturday meeting to achieve the quorum needed to officially oust her – and even if they do, Karamo may not accept defeat. But it could prove the culmination of a year of bitter infighting.The calls for Karamo to step down come less than a year after she was elected to lead the state party and three years after her outspoken claims of election fraud elevated her from a virtually unknown Christian podcaster and former community college teacher to a leading voice in Donald Trump’s campaign to discredit the results of the 2020 election. She parlayed that newfound prominence into winning the GOP nomination for secretary of state in 2022, but was crushed in the general election. Despite that lopsided loss, she ran against a Trump-endorsed candidate for party chairman last year – and defeated him.Karamo’s outlandish views are not confined to election conspiracy theories. She has echoed the claim promoted by the QAnon conspiracy theory movement that a shadowy cabal of elites are harvesting children’s organs.“There’s a ton of money involved in those freshly harvested organs,” Karamo said on a 2020 podcast hosted by RedPill78, a conspiracy theory website. She has also called Beyoncé and Jay-Z satanists, said yoga is a satanic ritual and described Cardi B as a “tool of Lucifer”.But it’s her apparent financial mismanagement of the party as much as her polarizing politics and wild views that have local GOP leaders prepared to oust her. The state party was already in poor financial shape when she took over, with donations drying up after Democrats won a trifecta in the statehouse in 2022 – but things have gotten significantly worse on her watch. Since Karamo took over, the party has gone further into debt, with other party officials furious over questionable decisions like a loan to spend more than $100,000 to pay a speaking fee to Jim Caviezel, the actor in the 2004 biblical drama The Passion of the Christ who has emerged as a celebrity in QAnon-affiliated circles.Karamo initially agreed via text message to a phone interview, but subsequent attempts to reach her were unsuccessful. She and her general counsel on Thursday called for a town hall on Friday evening “to discuss any concerns or answer any questions” about the party’s legal woes in an apparent last-ditch effort to salvage her job.The Michigan GOP under Karamo’s leadership has even sued the Michigan Republican party Trust and Comerica Bank, which reportedly sent the party a notice of default, in an effort to gain control of the party’s Lansing headquarters. In a motion filed on Tuesday, the trust, which is governed by former establishment party leaders, asked the court to sanction the party for engaging in a “frivolous” suit.A January email obtained by the Guardian from the state GOP treasurer, Jennifer Standerfer, called concerns about the party’s financial solvency – among them, an internal report that showed the party owed more than $600,000 – “misinformation” and claimed the party “retains a net profit of approximately $30,000”. Standerfer did not immediately reply to a request for comment and has not publicly substantiated the claim.The stakes could not be higher for the state GOP. Michigan is one of a handful of states that will decide the 2024 presidential election. And local candidates on the ballot are worried about their own fates as well.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m coming up for re-election in 2024,” said state representative Mark Tisdel, who articulated the fear, shared by state party activists, that the current Republican party would be unable to shore up campaign cash for state elected officials. “The anticipation is that with limited resources, there will be limited support.”Even if Republicans manage to remove Karamo from office, it is unclear who would be able to take over and unify the party – the divide within the state GOP runs deeper than their controversial chair. Numerous county party chapters are at war internally, with tensions in the Hillsdale and Kalamazoo GOP chapters spilling out into public battles. At a July meeting of the party’s executive committee, tensions devolved into a physical altercation when an activist tackled a local party chair, later citing a “war” between the grassroots and establishment Republicans as a cause of the dispute in an interview with the Detroit Free Press.“I had somebody say to me, ‘Well, I’m more Maga than you,’” said Kelly Sackett, the chair of the Kalamazoo Republican party, who is facing a protracted revolt within her chapter by allies of Karamo who view her as insufficiently rightwing. Sackett and her allies accused the state party of meddling in their affairs after the Michigan GOP’s general counsel called for a meeting that the Kalamazoo county leadership denounced as in violation of the party’s bylaws.Karamo’s allies offered a curious justification.“It was a ‘Peace Summit’ the term was selected because, in world politics, it is a meeting of warring factions to reach a peace accord,” the Michigan GOP general counsel, Daniel Hartman, replied in a September email obtained by the Guardian. “It was not called a meeting, and I am aware that the bylaws do not ‘authorize’ a meeting.”Party activists told the Guardian the rise of a paranoid form of Christian nationalism within the party has also played a role in dividing Michigan Republicans.“One of the things that has been said is that the Kalamazoo county Republican party is godless,” said Sackett, “and we start every single meeting with an invocation.” Muslim leaders in the party have also spoken publicly about the party’s evangelical Christian leadership, which they viewed as exclusionary and hostile to Michigan’s diverse population.“It’s fundamentalism,” said Jon Smith, a former Michigan GOP district chair who supported Karamo before becoming disillusioned with her leadership. “What I’m seeing is, like, if you don’t believe in their [view of] salvation 100% to a tee, you’re the enemy or you’re evil.” More

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      in Elections

      In Tense Election Year, Public Officials Face Climate of Intimidation

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      Colorado and Maine, which blocked former President Donald J. Trump from the ballot, have grappled with the harassment of officials.The caller had tipped off the authorities in Maine on Friday night: He told them that he had broken into the home of Shenna Bellows, the state’s top election official, a Democrat who one night earlier had disqualified former President Donald J. Trump from the primary ballot because of his actions during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.No one was home when officers arrived, according to Maine State Police, who labeled the false report as a “swatting” attempt, one intended to draw a heavily armed law enforcement response.In the days since, more bogus calls and threats have rolled in across the country. On Wednesday, state capitol buildings in Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi and Montana were evacuated or placed on lockdown after the authorities said they had received bomb threats that they described as false and nonspecific. The F.B.I. said it had no information to suggest any threats were credible.The incidents intensified a climate of intimidation and the harassment of public officials, including those responsible for overseeing ballot access and voting. Since 2020, election officials have confronted rising threats and difficult working conditions, aggravated by rampant conspiracy theories about fraud. The episodes suggested 2024 would be another heated election year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Michigan Supreme Court Decides Trump Can Stay on Ballot

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      After Colorado’s top court ruled that the former president was disqualified for engaging in insurrection, justices in Michigan considered a similar challenge.The Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday paved the way for Donald J. Trump to appear on the state’s primary ballot, a victory for the former president in a battleground state. The state’s top court upheld an appeals court decision that found that the former president could appear on the ballot despite questions about his eligibility to hold elected office because of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.The Michigan decision followed a bombshell ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, which on Dec. 19 determined in a 4-3 opinion that Mr. Trump should be removed from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.Mr. Trump applauded the Michigan ruling in a statement posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. “We have to prevent the 2024 Election from being Rigged and Stolen like they stole 2020,” the statement said. Ron Fein, the legal director of Free Speech For People, a group seeking to have Mr. Trump disqualified from running in the 2024 election, said the Michigan Supreme Court ruled narrowly, sidestepping the core questions at the heart of the case. The decision, he said, leaves the door open to challenge whether Mr. Trump can appear on the general election ballot in Michigan. “The Michigan Supreme Court did not rule out that the question of Donald Trump’s disqualification for engaging in insurrection against the U.S. Constitution may be resolved at a later stage,” Mr. Fein said in a statement. Michigan’s primary will be held Feb. 27.The question of Mr. Trump’s eligibility is widely expected to be answered by the U.S. Supreme Court. Some form of challenge to Mr. Trump’s eligibility has been lodged in more than 30 states, but many of those have already been dismissed.The challengers’ arguments are based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies anyone from holding federal office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after having taken an oath to support it.A lower-court judge previously decided the ballot eligibility case in Mr. Trump’s favor. Judge James Robert Redford of the Court of Claims in Michigan ruled in November that disqualifying a candidate through the 14th Amendment was a political issue, not one for the courts. A lower court in Colorado had also ruled in Mr. Trump’s favor before the Supreme Court there took up the case.Judge Redford also ruled that Michigan’s top elections official does not have the authority alone to exclude Mr. Trump from the ballot. Free Speech for People, a liberal-leaning group that filed the lawsuit, appealed the ruling, asking the state Supreme Court to hear the case on an accelerated timetable.Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state and a Democrat, echoed the request for a quick decision, citing approaching deadlines for printing paper primary ballots. She wrote that a ruling was needed by Dec. 29 “in order to ensure an orderly election process.”Jan. 13 is the deadline for primary ballots to be sent to military and overseas voters; absentee voter ballots must be printed by Jan. 18. The state’s presidential primary is set for Feb. 27.Mitch Smith More

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      Michigan supreme court rules that Trump will stay on state ballot

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      Donald Trump will remain on Michigan’s state ballot after a ruling from the Michigan supreme court on Wednesday, which upheld a lower court order.The move sets the stage for the former president to participate in the Michigan primary despite accusations that he led an insurrection against the United States.The court’s decision not to move forward with a case against Trump sets the court in sharp contrast to the Colorado supreme court, which recently ruled to strip Trump from its state primary ballot because of his role in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.In Michigan, as in Colorado, the challengers have invoked section 3 of the US constitution’s 14th amendment, which broadly blocks people from holding government office if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US government. Legal experts are divided on whether this provision, written against the backdrop of the US civil war, applies to the office of the president. There are also questions as to whether Trump’s actions around January 6 legally constitute “insurrection or rebellion”.Colorado’s decision is currently paused on appeal. Special counsel Jack Smith has asked the US supreme court to fast-track the decision, but the nation’s highest court – which is dominated 6-3 by conservatives – has declined. However, the court will likely weigh in soon.The Michigan supreme court justices did not give a reasoning for their Wednesday decision.“We are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court,” the justices wrote in an unsigned, one-paragraph order.However, in a dissent where she largely agreed with the court’s order, Justice Elizabeth Welch said that procedural differences may make the difference in Colorado and Michigan’s election laws. The challengers in the case, she added, may “renew their legal efforts as to the Michigan general election later in 2024 should Trump become the Republican nominee for President of the United States or seek such office as an independent candidate”.Free Speech for the People, the group that brought the lawsuit, stressed that the Michigan supreme court’s decision was made on procedural grounds.“We are disappointed by the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision,” said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech For People, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. But, Fein added: “The decision isn’t binding on any court outside Michigan and we continue our current and planned legal actions in other states to enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment against Donald Trump.”Michigan is expected to be a battleground state in the 2024 US presidential election. Its primary is set for 27 February 2024. More