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      The Quiet Way Democrats Hope to Expand Their Power at the State Level

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      The Democratic Governors Association is beginning a multimillion-dollar effort aimed at appointing more state judges.Locked out of power on the Supreme Court and still playing catch-up against Republicans in the federal judiciary, Democrats are hoping to gain a political advantage on a less visible but still important playing field: the state courts.After flipping the Arizona governor’s seat from Republican to Democratic last year, Gov. Katie Hobbs has appointed 15 judges to the state’s Superior Courts. In five years leading deeply red Kansas, the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, has named two justices to the Court of Appeals and one to the State Supreme Court.Governors have the power to appoint judges in nearly every state. These responsibilities are set to take center stage in political campaigns this year, as the Democratic Governors Association begins a multimillion-dollar effort, called the Power to Appoint Fund, aimed at key governor’s races.The fund, with a $5 million goal, will focus especially hard on two open seats in 2024 battlegrounds: New Hampshire, where the governor has the power to appoint state court justices, and North Carolina, which elects its justices; the next governor will appoint at least one State Supreme Court justice because of the state’s age limit rules.“Before we had our own abortion amendment issue here in the state of Kansas, I honestly didn’t hear much about court appointments except from attorney groups,” Governor Kelly said in an interview. “But since the Dobbs decision and then our own decision here in the state of Kansas, it’s become more of a forefront issue with folks. People, I think, recognize now more than ever the impact that the courts can have on their daily lives.”Pointing to the rightward tilt of the Supreme Court and important statewide court battles, Meghan Meehan-Draper, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, said that voters needed to be reminded of the power “Democratic governors have to appoint judges who are going to uphold the rule of law.”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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      Utah Sets Restrictions on Transgender People’s Bathroom Use

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      The NewsUtah will prohibit transgender people from using bathrooms in public schools and government-owned buildings that align with their gender identity, after Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill on Tuesday imposing the restrictions.Demonstrators protest the bill on the steps of the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City. Marielle Scott/The Deseret News, via Associated PressBackgroundThe bill, House Bill 257, which passed the Legislature last week, set sweeping restrictions for transgender people.Under the bill, also known as Sex-Based Designations for Privacy, Anti-Bullying and Women’s Opportunities, transgender people can use bathrooms that match their gender identity only if they can prove that they have had gender-affirming surgery and have had the sex on their birth certificates changed.In public schools, students can now use only a bathroom, shower room or locker room that aligns with their sex assigned at birth, with few exceptions. For government-owned buildings, including state universities, the restrictions apply only to showers and locker rooms.Violators may face charges for loitering, and government-owned institutions may face fines if they do not enforce the new rules. The state auditor will be required to establish a process to receive and investigate reports of violations.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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      Illinois Hearing Officer, a Former Republican Judge, Says Trump Engaged in Insurrection

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      But the hearing officer said the State Board of Elections should let the courts decide whether Mr. Trump’s conduct disqualified him from the ballot.A former Republican judge appointed to hear arguments on whether to disqualify former President Donald J. Trump from the Illinois primary ballot said on Sunday that he believed Mr. Trump engaged in insurrection by attempting to remain in office after the 2020 election.But the former judge, Clark Erickson, whose nonbinding opinion will be considered by the State Board of Elections on Tuesday, added that he believed the board did not have the authority to disqualify Mr. Trump on those grounds and that the question should instead be left to the courts.The mixed decision was at least a symbolic setback for the former president, who has faced official challenges to his candidacy in 35 states and has been found ineligible for the primaries in Colorado and Maine. Mr. Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, is still likely to appear on the primary ballots in both of those states as the U.S. Supreme Court considers an appeal of the Colorado ruling.In Illinois, at least five of the eight members of the Board of Elections would have to vote on Tuesday to remove Mr. Trump for him to be struck from the ballot. The appointed board is made up of four Democrats and four Republicans. Their decision can be appealed to the courts before the March 19 primary.The Illinois challenge, like those in other states, is based on a clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that disqualifies government officials who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.At a hearing on Friday in downtown Chicago, lawyers for residents objecting to Mr. Trump’s candidacy accused the former president of insurrection and played footage from the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Lawyers for Mr. Trump denied the allegation and argued that, in any case, the constitutional clause in question did not apply to the presidency. 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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      Last Exit Before Trump: New Hampshire

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      Tuesday’s primary election will probably decide whether there will be a race at all.Newport, N.H., last week. CJ Gunther/EPA, via ShutterstockLet’s be blunt about the stakes of the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.If Donald J. Trump wins decisively, as the polls suggest, he will be on track to win the Republican nomination without a serious contest. The race will be all but over.The backdrop is simple: Mr. Trump holds a dominant, 50-plus-point lead in the polls with just seven weeks to go until the heart of the primary season, when the preponderance of delegates will be awarded. His position has only improved since Iowa, with national polls now routinely showing him with over 70 percent of the vote.Even skeptical Republican officials are consolidating behind the party’s front-runner. Ron DeSantis’s decision to suspend his campaign and endorse Mr. Trump is only the latest example.The polling by state isn’t much better for Nikki Haley, the only remaining opponent for Mr. Trump. He leads Ms. Haley by at least 30 points in all of the states after New Hampshire until Super Tuesday. So without a monumental shift in the race, he will secure the nomination in short order. More

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      Maine Judge Suspends Decision to Exclude Trump From Primary Ballot

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      The judge sent the matter back to Maine’s secretary of state, ordering her to modify, withdraw or confirm her ruling after the Supreme Court rules on a similar case out of Colorado.A Maine judge ordered the state’s top election official on Wednesday to wait for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling before putting into effect her decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s Republican primary ballot. Justice Michaela Murphy of Maine Superior Court said in the ruling that the official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, had been forced under Maine law to issue her decision quickly, without the benefit of the high court’s input.The Supreme Court has agreed to review, at Mr. Trump’s request, an earlier decision by a Colorado court to exclude him from the ballot, and is expected to hear arguments in the case on Feb. 8. Ms. Bellows had cited the Colorado court’s reasoning in her decision.“The secretary confronted an uncertain legal landscape when she issued her ruling,” Justice Murphy wrote in a 17-page decision, and “should be afforded the opportunity to assess the effect and application” to her ruling of whatever the high court decides.Read the Maine Judge’s Ruling on Trump’s Ballot EligibilityThe judge ordered the state’s top election official to wait until the Supreme Court weighs in on the eligibility issue in a Colorado case, and then to confirm, modify or reverse her Dec. 28 decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s primary ballot.Read DocumentWe 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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      The U.S. Lacks What Every Democracy Needs

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      The history of voting in the United States shows the high costs of living with an old Constitution, unevenly enforced by a reluctant Supreme Court.Unlike the constitutions of many other advanced democracies, the U.S. Constitution contains no affirmative right to vote. We have nothing like Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, providing that “every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein,” or like Article 38 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, which provides that when it comes to election of the Bundestag, “any person who has attained the age of 18 shall be entitled to vote.”As we enter yet another fraught election season, it’s easy to miss that many of the problems we have with voting and elections in the United States can be traced to this fundamental constitutional defect. Our problems are only going to get worse until we get constitutional change.The framers were skeptical of universal voting. The original U.S. Constitution provided for voting only for the House of Representatives, not for the Senate or the presidency, leaving voter qualifications for House elections to the states. Later amendments framed voting protections in the negative: If there’s going to be an election, a state may not discriminate on the basis of race (15th Amendment), gender (19th Amendment) or status as an 18-to-20-year old (26th Amendment).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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      F.D.A. to Issue First Approval for Mass Drug Imports to States from Canada

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      The agency authorized Florida to purchase medicines directly from wholesalers in Canada, where prices are far cheaper. Pharmaceutical companies oppose the plan.The Food and Drug Administration has allowed Florida to import millions of dollars worth of medications from Canada at far lower prices than in the United States, overriding fierce decades-long objections from the pharmaceutical industry.The approval, issued in a letter to Florida Friday, is a major policy shift for the United States, and supporters hope it will be a significant step forward in the long and largely unsuccessful effort to rein in drug prices. Individuals in the United States are allowed to buy directly from Canadian pharmacies, but states have long wanted to be able to purchase medicines in bulk for their Medicaid programs, government clinics and prisons from Canadian wholesalers.Florida has estimated that it could save up to $150 million in its first year of the program, importing medicines that treat H.I.V., AIDS, diabetes, hepatitis C and psychiatric conditions. Other states have applied to the F.D.A. to set up similar programs.But significant hurdles remain. The pharmaceutical industry’s major lobbying organization, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, which has sued over previous importation efforts, is expected to file suit to prevent the Florida plan from going into effect. Some drug manufacturers have agreements with Canadian wholesalers not to export their medicines, and the Canadian government has already taken steps to block the export of prescription drugs that are in short supply.“Canada’s drug supply is too small to meet the demands of both American and Canadian consumers,” Maryse Durette, a spokeswoman for Health Canada, wrote in an email message. “Bulk importation will not provide an effective solution to the problem of high drug prices in the U.S.”Congress passed a law allowing drug importation two decades ago, but federal health officials delayed implementing it for years, citing safety concerns, one of the main arguments drug companies have used against it. In 2020, President Donald J. Trump pushed the law forward, announcing that states could submit importation proposals to the F.D.A. for review and authorization. President Biden added momentum the following year, instructing federal officials to keep working with states on importation plans.Florida applied and later sued the F.D.A., accusing the agency of what Gov. Ron DeSantis called a “reckless delay” in approving the request. Friday’s announcement grew out of that lawsuit; a federal judge had set a Jan. 5 deadline for the F.D.A. to act on the state’s application.Dr. Robert Califf, the F.D.A. commissioner, said in a statement that the agency will be vetting additional state applications to be sure they live up to the program’s goals.“These proposals must demonstrate the programs would result in significant cost savings to consumers without adding risk of exposure to unsafe or ineffective drugs,” Dr. Califf said.Eight other states — Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wisconsin — have laws allowing for a state drug importation program, and many are seeking, or planning to seek, F.D.A. approval.Colorado’s application is pending with the F.D.A. New Hampshire’s application was rejected last year. Vermont’s was deemed incomplete; a spokeswoman said the state was waiting to see how the F.D.A. handled the applications by other states before resubmitting.Colorado officials have signaled that states may face challenges from drugmakers in Canada, among them familiar names like Pfizer, Merck and AstraZeneca. Some drugmakers have written contracts with drug-shipping companies prohibiting deliveries to the United States, Colorado officials said in a report.Drug importation has broad political and public support. A 2019 poll by KFF, a nonprofit health research group, found that nearly 80 percent of respondents favored importation from licensed Canadian pharmacies.“Importation is an idea that resonates with people,” Meredith Freed, a senior policy analyst with KFF, said. “They don’t fully understand why they pay more for the same drug than people in other countries.”With the 2024 presidential election on the horizon, candidates are looking to claim credit for efforts to reduce drug prices. President Biden is spotlighting the Inflation Reduction Act, which empowers Medicare to negotiate prices directly with drugmakers for the first time, but only for a limited number of high cost medicines. Mr. DeSantis, who is challenging Mr. Trump for the Republican nomination, is touting his import plan.Several experts in pharmaceutical policy said that importation from Canada would not address the root cause of high drug prices: the ability of pharmaceutical makers to fend off generic competition by gaming the patent system, and the federal government’s broad failure to negotiate directly with drugmakers over cost.“Seems like political theater to me, where everyone wants to say they did something to drive down the price of prescription drugs,” Nicholas Bagley, a health law expert at the University of Michigan Law School, said of Florida’s plan.Both Mr. Bagley and Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said that the Inflation Reduction Act is a more direct path to lowering prices; the law’s price negotiation provisions are expected to save the federal government an estimated $98.5 billion over a decade. Drugmakers are suing to block those provisions from taking effect.A protest outside the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in Washington in 2021. PhRMA is likely to file suit to prevent any plan from going into effect.Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWith its approval in hand, Florida has more work to do. Before it can distribute Canadian drugs, the state must send the F.D.A. details on those it plans to import. The state has to ensure that the drugs are potent and not counterfeit. It also must put F.D.A.-approved labels on medications instead of those used in Canada.The F.D.A. said it would be watching to see if the state upholds safety rules — such as the reporting of any drug side effects — and delivers significant cost savings to consumers. Florida’s approval to import lasts for two years from the date of the first drug shipment.In Canada, health officials have been casting a wary eye on the push to import from their country. In November 2020, shortly after the Trump administration announced that states could submit importation proposals, the Canadian government published its own rule to prevent manufacturers and wholesalers from exporting some drugs that are in short supply.The Canadian government is likely to further restrict exports if they begin to affect Canadians, said Amir Attaran, a law professor at the University of Ottawa. He said the numbers don’t work out for a nation of nearly 40 million to supply medications for a state with 22 million people, much less for 49 other U.S. states.“If all of a sudden Florida is able to extend a vacuum cleaner hose into this country to take what’s in the medicine chest, the supply disruption will be a completely different category,” he said. Dr. Kesselheim, of Harvard, said the F.D.A.’s authorization was unlikely to make a difference in the price of very expensive brand-name drugs, because manufacturers would block wholesalers from exporting the medicines.“I think it’s going to be hard for states to import drugs like that in any kind of scale that would make a difference in terms of lowering prices for patients,” Dr. Kesselheim said. Even so, he said, the F.D.A.’s announcement is significant because it puts to rest the notion that drug importation cannot be accomplished safely.Mr. Bagley of the University of Michigan said there was a simpler solution to high drug prices than patchwork state importation programs: Having the U.S. government negotiate with drug companies over prices, just as many other nations, including Canada, do.“This whole thing is a jerry-rigged, complicated approach to a problem that’s amenable to a pretty straightforward solution, which is that you empower the government to bargain over the price for drugs,” he said. “So instead, we’re sort of trying to exploit the machinery that Canada has created and that we were too timid to create.” More

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      Trump Ballot Challenges Advance, Varying Widely in Strategy and Sophistication

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      Donald J. Trump’s eligibility for the presidential ballot has been challenged in more than 30 states, but only a handful of those cases have gained traction so far.John Anthony Castro, a 40-year-old Texan, long-shot Republican presidential candidate and the most prolific challenger of Donald J. Trump’s eligibility to be president, has gone to court in at least 27 states trying to remove the former president from the ballot.On Wednesday, Mr. Castro found himself in a mostly empty courthouse in New Hampshire’s capital, where he was making a second attempt to advance his arguments; his initial case was dismissed last fall.None of Mr. Castro’s lawsuits have succeeded. But the New Hampshire case is part of a growing constellation of ballot challenges — some lodged by established groups with national reach, many others far more homemade — that have been playing out in more than 30 states. Challengers in Colorado and Maine have succeeded, at least temporarily, in getting Mr. Trump disqualified, while other lawsuits have stalled or been dismissed. In at least 22 states, cases have yet to be resolved.Tracking Efforts to Remove Trump From the 2024 BallotSee which states have challenges seeking to bar Donald J. Trump from the presidential primary ballot.All the litigation has made for an odd, diffuse process in which some of the weightiest issues of American democracy are being raised not primarily by elected officials or a political party, but by an unlikely assortment of obscure figures, everyday citizens and nonprofit groups. Even some of the players are wondering what they are doing there.“How did we get to this point, where you have random brewers in Wisconsin throwing Hail Marys to try to get Trump off the ballot?” said Kirk Bangstad, a brewing company owner and liberal activist who filed an unsuccessful challenge to Mr. Trump’s eligibility with the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Mr. Bangstad, who is now considering a lawsuit, readily admits that he wishes someone more prominent would have taken up the cause.Kirk Bangstad, a brewing company owner and liberal activist who filed an unsuccessful challenge of Mr. Trump’s eligibility with the Wisconsin Elections Commission.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThough the ballot challenges vary in format, venue and sophistication, they share a focus on whether Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat make him ineligible to hold the presidency again. The cases are based on a largely untested clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which was enacted after the Civil War. The clause bars federal or state officials who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.Some lawyers have argued since 2021 that the clause could preclude Mr. Trump from appearing on a presidential ballot, and lawsuits invoking that theory were filed in several states in 2023. But it was not until last month, when the Colorado Supreme Court found Mr. Trump ineligible for that state’s primary ballot because of the 14th Amendment, that the question vaulted to the center of American politics. When Maine’s Democratic secretary of state announced last week that she, too, was disqualifying Mr. Trump, it only intensified the spotlight on the issue.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, described the lawsuits in a statement last week as “bad-faith, politically motivated attempts to steal the 2024 election,” claiming that Democrats had “launched a multifront lawfare campaign to disenfranchise tens of millions of American voters and interfere in the election.” Mr. Cheung did not respond to a request for comment for this article.Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit in state court in Maine on Tuesday seeking to overturn the secretary of state’s decision, and on Wednesday he asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Colorado ruling.The issue could not be more urgent: Republican presidential primary elections and caucuses begin this month, and polls have shown Mr. Trump with a commanding lead over his opponents.In the meantime, other cases continue to wind their way through state and federal court systems.Those lawsuits can generally be divided into three categories: Mr. Castro’s lawsuits, almost all of which have been filed in federal court; state challenges filed by two nonprofit organizations; and one-off cases brought in state or federal courts by local residents. In a handful of places — most notably Maine, but also Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Wisconsin — voters have challenged Mr. Trump’s eligibility directly with a secretary of state or an election commission rather than in court. In California and New York, some elected officials have written letters pushing for elections officers in those states to disqualify or consider disqualifying the former president.Most establishment Democrats have not publicly embraced the cause. President Biden said after the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that it was “self-evident” that Mr. Trump had supported an insurrection, but that it was up to the judiciary to determine his eligibility for the ballot. Several Democratic secretaries of state, who in much of the country are their states’ chief election officers, have included Mr. Trump on candidate lists and deferred to the courts on the question of his eligibility. A growing constellation of challenges to Mr. Trump’s eligibility have been filed in courts across the country, including federal court in Concord, N.H.Neville Caulfield for The New York TimesThe two national groups are Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW, which brought the Colorado case, and Free Speech for People, which filed lawsuits in Michigan, Minnesota and Oregon, as well as complaints with election officials in Illinois and Massachusetts. Those two groups have focused on state-level challenges. The Michigan and Minnesota Supreme Courts declined to take Mr. Trump off the primary ballot in those states. The Oregon lawsuit is still pending, as are the objections in Illinois and Massachusetts, which were both filed on Thursday.Ben Clements, the chairman of Free Speech for People, said he believed challenges originating in federal court “are not helpful” to the disqualification cause because of concerns about plaintiffs not having the legal standing to bring a case. But he said the array of lawsuits in state courts — such challenges were pending this week in California, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oregon, Wisconsin and Wyoming — were welcome.“Even if we wanted to, and even if CREW had taken an approach of filing multiple suits, we’re not going to hit all 50 states,” Mr. Clements said.Many people expect the U.S. Supreme Court to ultimately decide the question of Mr. Trump’s eligibility. And outside of a few states, the challenges so far have not gained traction.Some cases have been dismissed, including a federal lawsuit in Virginia and Mr. Bangstad’s complaint in Wisconsin, both last week. Others have been withdrawn, including several of Mr. Castro’s lawsuits and a state case in New Jersey filed by John Bellocchio, a former history teacher. In an interview, Mr. Bellocchio said he was working on a second lawsuit, and that he was motivated by concern that the former president and his supporters “envision a Christian theocracy.”“You cannot have a theocracy and a democracy at the same time,” Mr. Bellocchio said in an interview.By far, the most persistent litigant is Mr. Castro, who, according to his campaign website, first ran for a county office at the age of 19 and has since run unsuccessfully at least twice for other offices, including in a special congressional election in 2021.Mr. Castro received a law degree from the University of New Mexico and a master’s degree from Georgetown’s law school. He said he had never been licensed as a lawyer by any state, but was certified by the I.R.S. to work on federal tax cases. Over the years, he has been involved in a dizzying array of legal disputes.Mr. Castro said he had hoped that someone better known would mount a Republican presidential campaign to challenge Mr. Trump’s ballot qualifications, but when no one else stepped up, he decided to do it himself.“My biggest fear was having the knowledge how to stop Trump and having to tell my grandchildren that I did nothing,” he said.At Wednesday’s federal court hearing, Mr. Castro needed to persuade Judge Samantha Elliott that he was a real candidate for the Republican nomination for president and had the legal standing to sue.Among his evidence: He had filed reports with the Federal Election Commission (as of September, records show his campaign had raised $678), and two of his relatives had driven around New Hampshire one day in October, installing a dozen yard signs, before flying home to Texas.In the courtroom on Wednesday, Mr. Castro appeared at times to be unfamiliar with court procedures. But he seemed to come to life as he cross-examined Michael Dennehy, a veteran political strategist and expert witness for Mr. Trump, who testified that it would be “impossible” for Mr. Castro to win any delegates in the state based on his nearly “nonexistent” fund-raising and campaign.If Mr. Castro’s goal is to disqualify Mr. Trump, some observers have suggested that his strategy may backfire.Derek Muller, an election law expert and professor at Notre Dame’s law school, said Mr. Castro risked creating unfavorable precedent with his failed lawsuits. Mr. Trump has already been able to use a judge’s opinion in one state — in which the judge dismissed a Castro lawsuit — to bolster his arguments in another.Mr. Castro is “single-handedly building up precedent for Trump, inadvertently,” said Mr. Muller, who has filed briefs in two state court cases analyzing the relevant election law.Mr. Castro disagreed. If anything, he said, his suits have forced Mr. Trump’s lawyers to “show their cards,” helping other challengers to hone their arguments. He said he plans to refile lawsuits in three more states this month.Tracey Tully More