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      US supreme court vacancy upends Senate races with just weeks to go

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      The shock of a sudden new vacancy on the US supreme court has rippled out to some of the most contentious Senate races in the final weeks before the 3 November elections, throwing the vital issue of who might win control of the body into confusion.The recent death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg while Republicans control the Senate and the White House virtually ensures that her replacement will be conservative, swinging the court into a 6-3 conservative majority.Donald Trump and Republicans have indicated they plan to move swiftly to install a new justice, meaning the vetting period and confirmation battle will happen during the days when incumbent senators and their challengers are making their final pitches to voters.As a result, the dynamic in key races has shifted to varying degrees across the country, from Maine to Colorado. For Republicans, the battle for the Senate is an essential bid to cling to a hugely powerful body; for Democrats, wresting control of the chamber would be a hugely welcome – if previously unexpected – triumph.In some races, the supreme court vacancy offers a chance for Democrats to rally their bases in states that increasingly lean left. In others, the vacancy gives Republican candidates the opportunity to remind voters who want the high court to tackle cases on abortion, deregulation, and overturning healthcare reform that senators can play a role.“It should help red-state enthusiasm in that it’ll remind people what’s at stake in this election,” said the Republican strategist Cam Savage. “[But] there will be places in the country where it benefits the Democrats.”Strategists and officials for both parties stress the campaign landscape is not yet clear.Trump has not announced a nominee and only in the past few days have swing senators indicated whether they support quickly going through the process of confirmation.In deciding whether to confirm a justice before the election or after, senators have signaled they are taking their own electoral prospects into account.In Democratic-leaning Maine, where Senator Susan Collins is trailing her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon, Collins has split with most of her Republican colleagues and said she would hold off on confirming a justice until after the November election. More

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      Florida’s attorney general requests inquiry into Mike Bloomberg’s voting effort

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      Florida’s attorney general asked law enforcement officials on Wednesday to investigate recent fundraising efforts by billionaire and former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg to pay off court fees and other fines so people with felony convictions can vote. The same effort has been championed by high profile figures, including the NBA megastar LeBron James.The basis for an investigation was not immediately clear, but it came a day after Bloomberg announced he had raised $16m for the effort. The Republican attorney general, Ashley Moody, said she began reviewing the matter at the request of Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, also a Republican. Her letter, addressed to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI, includes a Washington Post article that frames the $16m haul in the context of Bloomberg’s efforts to boost Joe Biden in the state. She also included several state and federal statutes making it clear that someone cannot pay someone for their vote.“After preliminarily reviewing this limited public information and law, it appears further investigation is warranted. Accordingly, I request that your agencies further investigate this matter and take appropriate steps as merited,” she said in the brief letter. More

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      The US supreme court has become a threat to democracy. Here's how we fix it | Sabeel Rahman

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      Just a few days after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, Donald Trump and Senate Republicans are moving quickly to appoint and confirm a replacement. A growing number of moderates, such as Eric Holder, are warning that should Republicans ram through an appointment, this fact, plus the deliberate blockade of Barack Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland in 2016, would justify a new Democratic administration and Congress to add seats to the supreme court to restore balance.With voting already under way in the 2020 election, a rushed appointment and confirmation in this moment would be a clear partisan power play, and further collapse the legitimacy of the supreme court. But more broadly, the firestorm over Justice Ginsburg’s replacement is a reminder of how the modern supreme court has too much power in the first place. It is critical that our democracy reform agenda also consider how to reform the judiciary.Courts have too much power to radically remake our social and economic lifeFirst, courts have too much power to radically remake our social and economic life. If this latest Trump appointment goes through, the resulting 6-3 far-right majority on the supreme court would have the power and opportunity next month to invalidate the Affordable Care Act (in the middle of a deadly pandemic). They would be positioned to further gut voting rights, reproductive rights and rollback anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ and Black and brown Americans, while further shielding police departments and immigration officials from accountability for racist state-sponsored violence against people of color. While courts have at times also ruled in more progressive directions to advance rights and equity, on balance this concentration of power without sufficient accountability is a threat to democracy – and to the ability of our communities to thrive.Second, courts today are a threat to democracy because of how they have been weaponized to skew political power and insulate extreme conservative coalitions from democratic accountability. Over the last decade, conservative jurists and their aligned partisans in the states and the Congress have combined to radically shift the terms of political power in the country towards corporations and away from working class communities and Black and brown communities in particular. More