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      Supreme Court Seems Ready to Sustain Arizona Voting Limits

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySupreme Court Seems Ready to Sustain Arizona Voting LimitsThe court also signaled that it could tighten the standards for using the Voting Rights Act to challenge all kinds of voting restrictions.Election workers counting ballots in Phoenix in November. The case before the Supreme Court could determine the fate of scores if not hundreds of laws addressing election rules in the coming years.Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMarch 2, 2021Updated 6:35 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed ready on Tuesday to uphold two election restrictions in Arizona and to make it harder to challenge all sorts of limits on voting around the nation.In its most important voting rights case in almost a decade, the court for the first time considered how a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to voting restrictions that have a disproportionate impact on members of minority groups. The court heard the case as disputes over voting rights have again become a flash point in American politics.The immediate question for the justices was whether two Arizona measures ran afoul of the 1965 law. One of the measures requires election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct. The other makes it a crime for campaign workers, community activists and most other people to collect ballots for delivery to polling places, a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.”Several members of the court’s conservative majority said the restrictions were sensible, commonplace and at least partly endorsed by a bipartisan consensus reflected in a 2005 report signed by former President Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker III, who served as secretary of state under President George Bush.The Biden administration, too, told the justices in an unusual letter two weeks ago that the Arizona measures appeared to be lawful. But the letter disavowed the Trump administration’s position that the relevant section of the Voting Rights Act should not be widely used to keep states from enacting more restrictive voting procedures.Much of the argument on Tuesday centered on that larger issue in the case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19-1257, of what standard courts should apply to challenges under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The court’s answer to that question could determine the fate of scores if not hundreds of laws addressing election rules in the coming years.As Republican-controlled state legislatures increasingly seek to impose restrictive new voting rules, Democrats and civil rights groups are turning to the courts to argue that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote, thwart the will of the majority and deny equal access to minority voters and others who have been underrepresented at the polls.“More voting restrictions have been enacted over the last decade than at any point since the end of Jim Crow,” Bruce V. Spiva, a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, which is challenging the two Arizona measures, told the justices. “The last three months have seen an even greater uptick in proposed voting restrictions, many aimed squarely at the minority groups whose participation Congress intended to protect.”Though the Voting Rights Act seeks to protect minority voting rights, as a practical matter litigation under it tends to proceed on partisan lines. When Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked a lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party why his client cared about whether votes cast at the wrong precinct should be counted, he gave a candid answer.“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” said the lawyer, Michael A. Carvin. “Politics is a zero-sum game, and every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us.”Jessica R. Amunson, a lawyer for Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, a Democrat, said electoral contests should not turn on voting procedures.“Candidates and parties should be trying to win over voters on the basis of their ideas,” Ms. Amunson said, “not trying to remove voters from the electorate by imposing unjustified and discriminatory burdens.”Section 2 took on additional prominence after the Supreme Court in 2013 effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, its Section 5, which required prior federal approval of changes to voting procedures in parts of the country with a history of racial and other discrimination.Until then, Section 2, which allows after-the-fact challenges, had mostly been used in redistricting cases, where the question was whether voting maps had unlawfully diluted minority voting power. Its role in addressing the denial of the right to vote itself has been subject to much less attention.Over two hours of arguments by telephone, the justices struggled to identify a standard that would allow courts to distinguish lawful restrictions from improper ones.The court did not seem receptive to a rigorous test proposed by Mr. Carvin, the lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party, who said that ordinary election regulations are not subject to challenges under Section 2. Most justices appeared to accept that regulations that place substantial burdens on minority voters could run afoul of the law.But there was some dispute about what counted as substantial and what justifications states could offer for their restrictions. The court’s more conservative members seemed inclined to require significant disparities unconnected to socioeconomic conditions and to accept the need to combat even potential election fraud as a sufficient reason to impose restrictions on voting.Justice Elena Kagan tested the limits of Mr. Carvin’s argument, asking whether much longer lines at polling places in minority neighborhoods could be challenged under the law. He said yes. He gave the same answer when asked about locating all polling places at country clubs far from minority neighborhoods.But he said cutting back on Sunday voting, even if heavily relied on by Black voters, was lawful, as was restricting voting to business hours on Election Day.Mark Brnovich, Arizona’s attorney general, a Republican, proposed a vaguer standard, saying that the disparate effect on minority voters must be substantial and caused by the challenged practice rather than some other factor.Asked by Justice Kagan whether the four hypothetical restrictions she had posed to Mr. Carvin would survive under that test, Mr. Brnovich did not give a direct answer.He did say that the number of ballots disqualified for having been cast in the wrong district was very small and that Arizona’s overall election system makes it easy to vote.Ms. Amunson, the lawyer for Arizona’s secretary of state, urged the justices to strike down the challenged restrictions.“Arizona already has a law prohibiting fraudulent ballot collection,” she said by way of example. “What this law does is it criminalizes neighbors helping neighbors deliver ballots with up to two years in jail.”Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked her a series of hypothetical questions about early voting, ballot forms and deadlines for mailed ballots. Ms. Amunson gave a general answer.“You have to take a functional view of the political process and look to a holistic view of how it is actually affecting the voter on the ground,” she said.Justice Alito appeared unsatisfied. “Well, those are a lot of words,” he said. “I really don’t understand what they mean.”Several justices suggested that most of the standards proposed by the lawyers before them were quite similar. “The longer this argument goes on,” Justice Kagan said, “the less clear I am as to how the parties’ standards differ.”Justice Stephen G. Breyer echoed the point. “Lots of the parties on both sides are pretty close on the standards,” he said.Justices Kagan and Breyer, both members of the court’s liberal wing, may have been playing defense, hoping the court’s decision, expected by July, would leave Section 2 more or less unscathed.But Justice Alito said he was wary of making “every voting rule vulnerable to attack under Section 2.”“People who are poor and less well educated on balance probably will find it more difficult to comply with just about every voting rule than do people who are more affluent and have had the benefit of more education,” he said.Justice Barrett appeared to agree. “All election rules,” she said, “are going to make it easier for some to vote than others.”But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said he could think of two workable standards for applying the law. “One factor would be if you’re changing to a new rule that puts minorities in a worse position than they were under the old rule,” he said, “and a second factor would be whether a rule is commonplace in other states that do not have a similar history of racial discrimination.”Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that both Arizona restrictions violated Section 2 because they disproportionately disadvantaged minority voters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A Supreme Court Test for What’s Left of the Voting Rights Act

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Supreme Court Test for What’s Left of the Voting Rights ActWhile state legislatures consider new voting restrictions to address claims of election fraud, the justices will hear arguments on what kind of legal scrutiny such laws should face.The Supreme Court has never considered how a particular provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to policies that restrict the vote.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesFeb. 28, 2021, 12:24 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — As Republican state lawmakers around the nation are working furiously to enact laws making it harder to vote, the Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear its most important election case in almost a decade, one that will determine what sort of judicial scrutiny those restrictions will face.The case centers on a crucial remaining provision of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race. Civil rights groups are nervous that the court, now with a six-justice conservative majority, will use the opportunity to render that provision, Section 2, toothless.The provision has taken on greater importance in election disputes since 2013, when the court effectively struck down the heart of the 1965 law, its Section 5, which required prior federal approval of changes to voting procedures in parts of the country with a history of racial and other discrimination.But Chief Justice John G. Roberts’s majority opinion in the 5-to-4 decision, Shelby County v. Holder, said Section 2 would remain in place to protect voting rights by allowing litigation after the fact.“Section 2 is permanent, applies nationwide and is not at issue in this case,” he wrote.But it is more than a little opaque, and the Supreme Court has never considered how it applies to voting restrictions.The new case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19-1257, was filed by the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to challenge voting restrictions in Arizona. Lawyers for civil rights groups said they hoped the justices would not use the case to chip away at the protections offered by Section 2.“It would be just really out of step for what this country needs right now for the Supreme Court to weaken or limit Section 2,” said Myrna Pérez, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, which submitted a brief supporting the challengers.Civil rights lawyers have a particular reason to be wary of Chief Justice Roberts. When he was a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, he unsuccessfully worked to oppose the expansion of Section 2, which had initially covered only intentional discrimination, to address practices that had discriminatory results.The Arizona case concerns two kinds of voting restrictions. One requires election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct. The other makes it a crime for campaign workers, community activists and most other people to collect ballots for delivery to polling places, a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.” The law makes exceptions for family members, caregivers and election officials.“I can’t believe the court would strike down common-sense election integrity measures,” Mark Brnovich, the state’s attorney general, said in an interview. In his brief, he wrote that “a majority of states require in-precinct voting, and about 20 states limit ballot collection.”Whether the particular restrictions challenged in the case should survive is in some ways not the central issue. The Biden administration, for instance, told the justices in an unusual letter two weeks ago that the Arizona measures did not violate Section 2. But the letter disavowed the Trump administration’s interpretation of Section 2, which would limit its availability to test the lawfulness of all sorts of voting restrictions.Section 2 bars any voting procedure that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.” That happens, the provision goes on, when, “based on the totality of circumstances,” racial minorities “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”Dissenting in the Shelby County case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Section 2 was not nearly as valuable as Section 5.A polling site in Phoenix in 2016. The case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, was filed by the Democratic National Committee that year to challenge voting restrictions in Arizona.Credit…Max Whittaker for The New York Times“Litigation occurs only after the fact, when the illegal voting scheme has already been put in place and individuals have been elected pursuant to it, thereby gaining the advantages of incumbency,” she wrote. “An illegal scheme might be in place for several election cycles before a Section 2 plaintiff can gather sufficient evidence to challenge it. And litigation places a heavy financial burden on minority voters.”While Section 5 was available, Section 2 was used mostly in redistricting cases, where the question was whether voting maps had unlawfully diluted minority voting power. Its role in testing restrictions on the denial of the right to vote itself has been subject to much less attention.But Paul M. Smith, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, which submitted a brief supporting the challengers, said lower courts had worked out a sensible framework to identify restrictions that violate Section 2.“It is not enough that a rule has a racially disparate impact,” he said. “That disparity must be related to, and explained by, the history of discrimination in the jurisdiction. Our hope is that the court will recognize the importance of maintaining this workable test, which plays an essential role in reining in laws that operate to burden voting by Blacks or Latinos.”The two sets of lawyers defending the measures in Arizona did not agree on what standard the Supreme Court should adopt to sustain the challenged restrictions. Mr. Brnovich, the state attorney general, said the disparate effect on minority voters must be substantial and caused by the challenged practice rather than some other factor. Lawyers for the Arizona Republican Party took a harder line, saying that race-neutral election regulations that impose ordinary burdens on voting are not subject at all to challenges under Section 2.Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that both Arizona restrictions violated Section 2 because they disproportionately disadvantaged minority voters.In 2016, Black, Latino and Native American voters were about twice as likely to cast ballots in the wrong precinct as were white voters, Judge William A. Fletcher wrote for the majority in the 7-to-4 decision. Among the reasons for this, he said, were “frequent changes in polling locations; confusing placement of polling locations; and high rates of residential mobility.”Similarly, he wrote, the ban on ballot collectors had an outsize effect on minority voters, who use ballot collection services far more than white voters because they are more likely to be poor, older, homebound or disabled; to lack reliable transportation, child care and mail service; and to need help understanding voting rules.Judge Fletcher added that “there is no evidence of any fraud in the long history of third-party ballot collection in Arizona.”In dissent, four judges wrote that the state’s restrictions were commonplace, supported by common sense and applied neutrally to all voters.Lawmakers were entitled to try to prevent potential fraud, Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain wrote. “Given its interest in addressing its valid concerns of voter fraud,” he wrote, “Arizona was free to enact prophylactic measures even though no evidence of actual voter fraud was before the legislature.”The appeals court stayed its ruling, and the restrictions were in place for the election in November.Mr. Brnovich will argue before the justices on Tuesday in the case that bears his name. He said the Ninth Circuit’s approach “would jeopardize almost every voting integrity law in almost every state.”Leigh Chapman, a lawyer with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which filed a brief supporting the challengers, said the Supreme Court faced a crossroad.“Especially in the absence of Section 5,” she said, “Section 2 plays an essential role in advancing the federal commitment to protecting minority voters and ensuring that they have an equal opportunity to participate in the political process.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      We Still Have to Worry About the Supreme Court and Elections

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionKey TakeawaysTrump’s RoleGeorgia InvestigationExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWe Still Have to Worry About the Supreme Court and ElectionsThe justices are about to consider whether the Voting Rights Act applies to policies that restrict the vote.Contributing Opinion WriterFeb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesWhen the Supreme Court on Monday rejected Pennsylvania Republicans’ after-the-fact effort to invalidate late-arriving mailed ballots, it was tempting to suppose that the country’s courthouse doors had finally closed on this most litigated of presidential elections.If only it were that simple.True, in denying the Republicans’ petitions, the court didn’t issue an opinion. Of the four votes necessary to accept a case, these two cases (treated by the court as one) garnered only three. So for the official record, the only outcome in Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. DeGraffenreid and in Corman v. Pennsylvania Democratic Party was “denied.”But the three justices who would have accepted the cases — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — issued dissenting opinions that provide both a road map and a rationale for the Supreme Court’s future intervention in the quintessentially state matter of how to conduct elections.Remember Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 presidential election, in which five justices voted to overturn the Florida Supreme Court’s handling of a statewide recount? That decision was based on a theory of equal protection so wacky that the majority opinion insisted that “our consideration is limited to the present circumstances” — that is to say, don’t dare invoke this poor excuse for an opinion as a precedent.That didn’t stop Justice Thomas from citing Bush v. Gore in his dissenting opinion on Monday, and he did so in a particularly shameless fashion. The language he cited wasn’t even from the Bush v. Gore majority opinion, but rather from a separate concurring opinion filed in that case by only three of the majority justices, who argued that the Florida Supreme Court had violated the U.S. Constitution by substituting its will for that of the state Legislature. Justice Thomas invoked that minority portion of the decision to assert that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was constitutionally out of bounds when, citing both the Covid-19 pandemic and the collapse of the Postal Service as its reasons, it added three postelection days for lawful receipt of mailed ballots.He went on to warn that fraud was “more prevalent with mail-in ballots,” citing as evidence a 1994 Federal District Court case, an article in this newspaper from 2012 and the 2018 Republican ballot-harvesting fraud in North Carolina. Such occurrences, he said, raise “the likelihood that courts will be asked to adjudicate questions that go to the heart of election confidence.” This was the reason, he argued, that the Supreme Court should have taken and decided the Pennsylvania cases before the next election cycle.In his inventory of ballot fraud, Justice Thomas of course could not refer to fraud in the 2020 election, because there wasn’t any. Not a problem:We are fortunate that many of the cases we have seen alleged only improper rule changes, not fraud. But that observation provides only small comfort. An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence. Also important is the assurance that fraud will not go undetected.In other words, Justice Thomas would have it both ways: If there was fraud, the court needed to intervene, and if there was no fraud, the court needed to intervene because the fraud might simply be undetected. Despite his disclaimer, the entire structure of his opinion, suggesting that something bad had happened even if no one could prove it, is fairly read as validating the essence of the Trump narrative.Justice Alito, in a separate dissenting opinion that Justice Gorsuch also signed, was more circumspect about the fraud issue. His emphasis was the urgency of stopping state courts from substituting their judgment for that of the legislatures. He said that even though the election was over and late ballots were too few to have made a difference in Pennsylvania’s vote totals, state courts could be expected to behave in the same way in the future unless the Supreme Court used this occasion to stop them.There are several things to note about the Pennsylvania cases. The most obvious is the absence of a fourth vote. In an initial round in the Pennsylvania cases, in mid-October, Justice Brett Kavanaugh had provided Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch with a fourth vote to grant a stay of the state court decision. But a stay requires five votes rather than four. With Amy Coney Barrett not yet confirmed, the eight justices divided 4 to 4, and the stay was denied without opinions. Justice Kavanaugh withheld his vote on Monday, without explanation. Maybe he decided this was a propitious time to offer some cover for Chief Justice John Roberts, who has voted in nearly all the election cases this fall with the three remaining liberal justices.Justice Barrett was also silent. During her confirmation hearing, Senate Democrats had pressed her to promise recusal from any election cases, given that President Donald Trump had said he needed a prompt replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg so that he would have a majority of justices voting his way in any election disputes. Justice Barrett did not recuse herself from the Pennsylvania case. Perhaps her decision not to provide the fourth vote her dissenting colleagues needed was a kind of de facto recusal, in recognition that the optics of voting to hear a last-ditch Trump appeal would be awkward, to say the least.The deeper question raised by Monday’s development is why Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch are so intent on what would seem to be a counterintuitive goal for conservatives: curbing the power of state courts. I’m cynical enough to think it has to do with how these three understand the position of state legislatures and state courts in today’s political climate. It’s been widely reported that Republican-controlled legislatures are rolling out bills by the dozens to restrict access to the polls, aimed at discouraging the kind of turnout that produced Democratic victories in Georgia last month. The vote-suppression effort has become so aggressive that some Republicans are starting to worry about voter backlash, according to a recent Washington Post article.State courts, on the other hand, are capable of standing in the way of this strategy. When state high-court judges are elected, as they are in many states, they typically run in statewide races that are not subject to the gerrymandering that has entrenched Republican power in states that are much more balanced politically than the makeup of their legislatures reflects. What better way to disable the state courts in their democracy-protecting role than to push them to the sidelines when it comes to federal elections.So there is no way the Supreme Court is finished with elections. Next Tuesday, as it happens, the justices will hear a crucial voting rights case. The case, from Arizona, asks the court to decide for the first time how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to policies that restrict the vote, through such measures as voter ID requirements.Section 2, which pertains nationwide, is the major remaining provision of the Voting Rights Actfollowing the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the act’s Section 5, in the 2013 Shelby County case. That section barred certain states and smaller jurisdictions from making changes in their election procedures without first receiving federal permission, known as “preclearance.” Section 5 provided vital protection in parts of the country where racism had not released its grip on the levers of power.The issue now is whether Section 2 can be deployed to fill that gap. It prohibits any voting practice that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” It has typically been used to challenge redistricting plans that dilute the electoral power of racial and ethnic minorities. The question of whether it can be useful in challenging the wave of vote-suppression schemes, which can present complex problems of proof, hands the justices arguably the most important civil rights case of their current term.With the country exhausted and still reeling from the turmoil of the 2020 election and its bizarre aftermath, the urge not to think about elections for a while is powerful. I share it. But it’s a luxury the Supreme Court hasn’t given us, not now, not as long as some justices have more to say.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Los impuestos de Donald Trump: los pasos que siguen en la investigación

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Los impuestos de Donald TrumpLos donativos del presidenteNuestra investigaciónEl pantano reinventado de TrumpHallazgos claveUna nota del editor ejecutivoAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNueva YorkLos impuestos de Donald Trump: los pasos que siguen en la investigaciónUna sentencia de la Corte Suprema ha allanado el camino para que los fiscales comiencen a escudriñar los registros financieros de Trump.En 2019 el expresidente Donald Trump demandó por primera vez para bloquear una citación que buscaba acceder a sus impuestos personales y corporativos.Credit…Pete Marovich para The New York TimesWilliam K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess y 23 de febrero de 2021 a las 16:34 ETRead in EnglishTerabytes de datos. Docenas de fiscales, investigadores y contadores forenses escudriñando millones de páginas de documentos financieros. Una empresa consultora externa inmersa en los secretos de los bienes inmuebles comerciales y las estrategias fiscales.Esa es la monumental tarea que se avecina en la investigación penal del fiscal del distrito de Manhattan sobre el expresidente Donald Trump y su empresa familiar, después de que el lunes una orden de la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos despejó el camino para que los fiscales obtengan ocho años de declaraciones de impuestos y otros registros financieros de Trump.La breve orden, sin firma, fue una rotunda victoria para los fiscales y una derrota para Trump, que culmina su amarga y prolongada batalla legal para bloquear la entrega de los registros —un esfuerzo que llegó dos veces a la Corte Suprema— e impulsa los esfuerzos de los fiscales después de que la demanda los estancó durante más de un año.La investigación es una de las dos indagaciones penales conocidas sobre Trump, la otra proviene de los fiscales de Georgia que examinan el esfuerzo de Trump para persuadir a los funcionarios locales revertir los resultados de las elecciones allí. Cuando Trump dejó su cargo, perdió la protección contra las acusaciones que le otorgaba la presidencia.El fiscal del distrito, Cyrus R. Vance Jr, emitió un escueto comunicado, que decía: “El trabajo continúa”. Un portavoz de su oficina declinó hacer más comentarios sobre la investigación.La siguiente fase, crucial en la investigación de Manhattan, comenzará en serio esta semana cuando los investigadores de la oficina del fiscal del distrito recojan los registros del bufete de abogados que representa a los contadores de Trump, Mazars USA, según personas con conocimiento del asunto, así como exfiscales y otros expertos que describieron los próximos pasos bajo la condición de anonimato.Los investigadores irán a la oficina del bufete de abogados en el condado neoyorquino de Westchester con una copia de la citación del gran jurado de agosto de 2019 que fue el centro de la demanda. Saldrán de ahí con un vasto tesoro de copias digitales de las declaraciones, resmas de estados financieros y otros registros y comunicaciones relacionados con los impuestos de Trump y los de sus empresas.Luego, los investigadores entregarán la masa de datos a la oficina de Vance, donde el equipo de fiscales, contadores forenses y analistas ha estado investigando a Trump y sus empresas por una amplia gama de posibles delitos financieros. Vance, un demócrata, ha estado examinando si Trump, su empresa y sus empleados cometieron fraudes de seguros, fiscales y bancarios, entre otros delitos, han dicho personas con conocimiento del asunto.Incluso antes de la sentencia de la Corte Suprema, la investigación se había calentado, al emitir la oficina de Vance más de una docena de citaciones en los últimos meses y entrevistar a testigos, incluidos los empleados del Deutsche Bank, uno de los principales prestamistas de Trump.Las citaciones son respecto a un aspecto central de la investigación de Vance, que se centra en si la empresa de Trump, la Organización Trump, infló el valor de algunas de sus propiedades emblemáticas para obtener los mejores préstamos posibles, al tiempo que rebajaba los valores para reducir los impuestos sobre la propiedad, han dicho personas con conocimiento del asunto. Los fiscales también están examinando las declaraciones de la Organización Trump a las compañías de seguros sobre el valor de varios activos.Ahora, armados con los registros de Mazars —que incluyen las declaraciones de impuestos, los registros comerciales en los que se basan y las comunicaciones entre la Organización Trump y sus contadores— los fiscales podrán ver una imagen más completa de las posibles discrepancias entre lo que la compañía dijo a sus prestamistas y a las autoridades fiscales.Los fiscales también han requerido a la Organización Trump los registros relacionados con la cancelación de impuestos sobre millones de dólares en honorarios de consultoría, algunos de los cuales parecen haber ido a la hija mayor del presidente, Ivanka Trump, un acuerdo reportado primero por The New York Times. La empresa entregó algunos de esos registros el mes pasado, dijeron dos personas con conocimiento del asunto, aunque los fiscales han cuestionado si la compañía ha respondido completamente al requerimiento.No está claro si los fiscales presentarán finalmente cargos contra Trump, la empresa o cualquiera de sus ejecutivos, incluidos los dos hijos adultos de Trump, Donald Trump Jr. y Eric Trump.En un extenso e indignado comunicado, que incluía una reiteración de muchas de sus conocidas quejas, Trump arremetió contra la Corte Suprema y la investigación, a la que caracterizó como “una continuación de la mayor cacería de brujas política de la historia de nuestro país”.Añadió: “Durante más de dos años, la ciudad de Nueva York ha estado investigando casi todas las transacciones que he realizado, incluyendo la búsqueda de declaraciones de impuestos que fueron realizadas por uno de los mayores y más prestigiosos bufetes de abogados y contadores de Estados Unidos”.Es probable que los abogados de Trump argumenten a los fiscales que Trump no pudo haber engañado al Deutsche Bank porque el banco, un sofisticado actor financiero, realizó su propio análisis de las propiedades de Trump. Cyrus R. Vance Jr, el fiscal del distrito de Manhattan, ha estado investigando a Trump y sus empresas por una amplia gama de posibles delitos financieros.Credit…Eduardo Munoz/ReutersMazars dijo en un comunicado que estaba al tanto de la nueva sentencia. “Como hemos mantenido a lo largo de este proceso, Mazars sigue comprometida con el cumplimiento de todas nuestras obligaciones profesionales y legales”, dice el comunicado.El mayor desafío para los fiscales de Vance será armar el rompecabezas de los registros fiscales, los estados financieros y los documentos de apoyo que las empresas de Trump proporcionaron a los contadores.A principios de este mes, Vance reclutó a Mark F. Pomerantz, una figura prominente en los círculos legales de Nueva York, para ayudar con la investigación. Pomerantz, un exfiscal federal de alto nivel con experiencia relevantee tanto en la investigación como en la defensa de casos complejos de cuello blanco y crimen organizado, se encargará de las interacciones con los testigos clave, entre otras tareas.Para obtener ayuda adicional, la oficina de Vance ha contratado a FTI, una gran empresa de consultoría que puede analizar algunos de los sectores en los que operan las empresas de Trump, incluido el inmobiliario comercial, así como cuestiones fiscales, dijeron personas con conocimiento del asunto.La firma también cargará la vasta cantidad de registros en un sistema de análisis de datos y gestión de documentos que puede utilizar para explorarlos en busca de patrones y apoyar así la investigación, dijeron las personas.La medida de los jueces de la Corte Suprema, que sin disentir negaron a Trump una suspensión de emergencia para que la corte pudiera revisar completamente las cuestiones del caso por segunda vez, no pondrá las declaraciones de impuestos de Trump en manos del Congreso ni las hará automáticamente públicas. Las leyes de confidencialidad del gran jurado mantendrán los registros en privado a menos que la oficina de Vance presente cargos e introduzca los documentos como prueba en un juicio.El público ya se ha enterado de muchas cosas sobre los impuestos de Trump a través de otros medios.The New York Times obtuvo datos de declaraciones de impuestos de más de dos décadas de Trump y los cientos de empresas que conforman su organización empresarial, e incluyen información detallada de sus dos primeros años en el cargo.El Times publicó el año pasado una serie de artículos de investigación basados en un análisis de los datos que mostraban que Trump no pagó prácticamente ningún impuesto sobre la renta durante muchos años y que actualmente se le realiza una auditoría en la que un fallo adverso podría costarle más de 100 millones de dólares. Él y sus empresas presentan declaraciones de impuestos por separado y emplean estrategias fiscales complicadas y a veces agresivas, según la investigación.Pero la acción de la Corte Suprema puso en marcha una serie de acontecimientos que podrían conducir a la extraordinaria posibilidad de un juicio penal para el expresidente. Como mínimo, el fallo arrebata a Trump el control de sus registros financieros más cercanos y el poder de decidir cuándo, si es que alguna vez, se pondrán a disposición de la inspección pública.Trump y sus abogados han luchado durante mucho tiempo para mantener los registros en secreto. Después de prometer durante la campaña de 2016 que publicaría sus declaraciones de impuestos, como han hecho todos los candidatos presidenciales durante al menos 40 años, se negó a hacerlo, lo que proporcionó una línea persistente de crítica para los demócratas y otros adversarios.Además de luchar contra el requerimiento de la oficina de Vance en los tribunales, Trump interpuso una demanda para bloquear el pedido del Congreso y desafió con éxito una ley de California que requiere que los candidatos a las primarias presidenciales publiquen sus declaraciones.El fallo de la Corte Suprema se produce casi 18 meses después de que Trump demandó por primera vez a Vance, en un intento de bloquear el requerimiento de su oficina y estimulando una batalla legal que llegó a la Corte Suprema por primera vez el verano pasado. En una decisión histórica en julio, la corte rechazó el argumento de Trump de que, como presidente en ejercicio, era inmune a la investigación. El caso fue litigado por el consejero general de Vance, Carey Dunne, quien ayuda a dirigir la investigación.Pero la corte dijo que Trump podía impugnar por otros motivos, como relevancia y alcance. Trump inició entonces una nueva batalla legal, argumentando que el requerimiento era demasiado amplio y equivalía a acoso político. Tras perder con ese argumento en los tribunales inferiores, Trump pidió a la Corte Suprema que aplazara la ejecución de la citación de Vance hasta que pudiera decidir si atendía la apelación de Trump.Fue esa solicitud la que la Corte Suprema negó, terminando efectivamente la cruzada legal del expresidente, dijeron los expertos legales.“A Trump no se le dará deferencia como expresidente”, dijo Anne Milgram, una exasistente del fiscal de distrito en Manhattan que luego sirvió como fiscala general de Nueva Jersey. “Bajo los ojos de las leyes del estado de Nueva York, él tiene los mismos derechos que otros en el estado. Ni más ni menos”.Reed Brodsky, un veterano abogado defensor de cuello blanco y exfiscal federal, dijo que los abogados de Trump probablemente le dirán que los nuevos intentos de bloquear la citación podrían socavar su capacidad de argumentar los méritos de su defensa.“Corren el riesgo, si siguen presentando argumentos que son frívolos, de socavar su credibilidad”, dijo Brodsky.Jonah E. Bromwich More

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      Supreme Court Won’t Hear Pennsylvania Election Case on Mailed Ballots

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySupreme Court Won’t Hear Pennsylvania Election Case on Mailed BallotsIn dissent, three justices said the court should have used the case to provide guidance in future elections.Election workers counting ballots in Philadelphia after the presidential election last year.Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesFeb. 22, 2021Updated 7:58 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would not hear an appeal from Pennsylvania Republicans who sought to disqualify mailed ballots in the 2020 presidential election that arrived after Election Day.The court’s brief order gave no reasons for turning down the case, which as a practical matter marked the end of Supreme Court litigation over the election. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented, saying the court should have used it to provide guidance in future elections.The dissenting justices acknowledged that the number of ballots at issue in the case was too small to affect President Biden’s victory in the state. But the legal question the case presented — about the power of state courts to revise election laws — was, they said, a significant one that should be resolved without the pressure of an impending election.The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in September that ballots sent before Election Day could be counted if they arrived up to three days after. On two occasions before the election, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case, though several justices expressed doubts about the state court’s power to override the State Legislature, which had set an Election Day deadline for receiving mailed ballots.On Monday, Justice Thomas wrote that the time was now right to take up the case.“At first blush,” he wrote, “it may seem reasonable to address this question when it next arises. After all, the 2020 election is now over, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision was not outcome determinative for any federal election. But whatever force that argument has in other contexts, it fails in the context of elections.”“Because the judicial system is not well suited to address these kinds of questions in the short time period available immediately after an election,” Justice Thomas wrote, “we ought to use available cases outside that truncated context to address these admittedly important questions.”In a separate dissent, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Gorsuch, agreed that “our review at this time would be greatly beneficial.”“A decision in these cases would not have any implications regarding the 2020 election,” Justice Alito wrote. “But a decision would provide invaluable guidance for future elections.”On Oct. 19, before Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court, the justices deadlocked, 4 to 4, on an emergency application in the case. Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh said they would have granted a stay blocking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision. On the other side were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three-member liberal wing: Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.Later that month, the justices refused a plea from Republicans in the state to fast-track a decision on whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had acted lawfully.In a statement issued at the time, Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, criticized the court’s treatment of the matter, which he said had “needlessly created conditions that could lead to serious postelection problems.”“The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has issued a decree that squarely alters an important statutory provision enacted by the Pennsylvania Legislature pursuant to its authority under the Constitution of the United States to make rules governing the conduct of elections for federal office,” Justice Alito wrote, adding that he regretted that the election would be “conducted under a cloud.”“It would be highly desirable to issue a ruling on the constitutionality of the State Supreme Court’s decision before the election,” Justice Alito wrote. “That question has national importance, and there is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the federal Constitution.”But there was not enough time, he wrote. Still, Justice Alito left little doubt about where he stood on the question in the case.“The provisions of the federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless,” he wrote, “if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.”Even after the election, Pennsylvania Republicans continued to seek Supreme Court review in the case, Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar, No. 20-542, saying the justices should address the issue it presented in an orderly way.“By resolving the important and recurring questions now, the court can provide desperately needed guidance to state legislatures and courts across the country outside the context of a hotly disputed election and before the next election,” their brief said. “The alternative is for the court to leave legislatures and courts with a lack of advance guidance and clarity regarding the controlling law — only to be drawn into answering these questions in future after-the-fact litigation over a contested election, with the accompanying time pressures and perceptions of partisan interest.”On Monday, Justice Thomas wrote that the court had missed an opportunity.“One wonders what this court waits for,” he wrote. “We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections.”“The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling,” Justice Thomas wrote. “By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump Taxes: Here's What's Next in the Manhattan D.A.'s Investigation

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Trump’s TaxesWhat’s NextOur InvestigationA 2016 WindfallProfiting From FameTimeline18 Key FindingsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHere’s What’s Next in the Trump Taxes InvestigationA Supreme Court ruling has paved the way for prosecutors to begin combing through Mr. Trump’s financial records.Former President Donald J. Trump first sued to block a subpoena seeking his personal and corporate taxes in 2019.Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York TimesWilliam K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Feb. 22, 2021Updated 2:35 p.m. ETTerabytes of data. Dozens of prosecutors, investigators and forensic accountants sifting through millions of pages of financial documents. An outside consulting firm drilling down on the arcana of commercial real estate and tax strategies.That is the monumental task that lies ahead in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business after a United States Supreme Court order on Monday cleared the way for prosecutors to obtain eight years worth of Mr. Trump’s tax returns and other financial records.The brief, unsigned order was a resounding victory for the prosecutors and defeat for Mr. Trump, capping his bitter and protracted legal battle to block the release of the records — an effort that twice reached the Supreme Court — and delivering a jolt to the prosecutors’ efforts after the lawsuit stalled them for more than a year.The investigation is one of two known criminal inquiries into Mr. Trump, the other coming from prosecutors in Georgia scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s effort to persuade local officials to undo the election results there. When Mr. Trump left office, he lost the protection against indictment that the presidency afforded him.The district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., issued a terse statement, saying: “The work continues.” A spokesman for his office declined to comment further on the investigation.The crucial next phase in the Manhattan inquiry will begin in earnest this week when investigators for the district attorney’s office collect the records from the law firm that represents Mr. Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA, according to people with knowledge of the matter, as well as former prosecutors and other experts who described the next steps on the condition of anonymity.The investigators, carrying a copy of the August 2019 grand jury subpoena that was at the heart of the lawsuit, will go to the law firm’s office in New York’s Westchester County. They will leave with a vast trove of digital copies of the returns, reams of financial statements and other records and communications relating to Mr. Trump’s taxes and those of his businesses.Then, the investigators will deliver the mass of data to the office of Mr. Vance, where the team of prosecutors, forensic accountants and analysts have been investigating Mr. Trump and his companies for a wide range of possible financial crimes. Mr. Vance, a Democrat, has been examining whether Mr. Trump, his company and its employees committed insurance, tax and banking fraud, among other crimes, people with knowledge of the matter have said.Even before the Supreme Court ruling, the investigation had heated up, with Mr. Vance’s office issuing more than a dozen subpoenas in recent months and interviewing witnesses, including employees of Deutsche Bank, one of Mr. Trump’s top lenders.The subpoenas relate to a central aspect of Mr. Vance’s inquiry, which focuses on whether Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, inflated the value of some of his signature properties to obtain the best possible loans, while lowballing the values to reduce property taxes, people with knowledge of the matter have said. The prosecutors are also examining the Trump Organization’s statements to insurance companies about the value of various assets.Now armed with the records from Mazars — including the tax returns, the business records on which they are based and communications between the Trump Organization and its accountants — prosecutors will be able to see a fuller picture of potential discrepancies between what the company told its lenders and tax authorities.The prosecutors have also subpoenaed the Trump Organization for records related to tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to the president’s elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, an arrangement first reported by The New York Times. The company turned over some of those records last month, two people with knowledge of the matter said, though the prosecutors have questioned whether the company has fully responded to the subpoena.It remains unclear whether the prosecutors will ultimately file charges against Mr. Trump, the company, or any of its executives, including Mr. Trump’s two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.In a lengthy and angry statement that included a reiteration of many of his familiar grievances, Mr. Trump lashed out at the Supreme Court and the investigation, which he characterized as “a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of our Country.” He added: “For more than two years, New York City has been looking at almost every transaction I’ve ever done, including seeking tax returns which were done by among the biggest and most prestigious law and accounting firms in the U.S.”Mr. Trump’s lawyers are likely to argue to prosecutors that Mr. Trump could not have duped Deutsche Bank because the bank, a sophisticated financial player, conducted its own analysis of Mr. Trump’s properties.Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, has been investigating Mr. Trump and his companies for a wide range of possible financial crimes.Credit…Eduardo Munoz/ReutersMazars said in a statement that it was aware of the new ruling. “As we have maintained throughout this process, Mazars remains committed to fulfilling all of our professional and legal obligations,” the statement said.The biggest challenge for Mr. Vance’s prosecutors will be to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of tax records, financial statements and the supporting documents Mr. Trump’s companies provided to the accountants. Early this month, Mr. Vance enlisted a prominent figure in New York legal circles, Mark F. Pomerantz, to help with the investigation. Mr. Pomerantz, a former senior federal prosecutor with significant experience both investigating and defending complex white-collar and organized crime cases, will handle interactions with key witnesses, among other tasks.For additional help, Mr. Vance’s office has hired FTI, a large consulting company that can analyze some of the industries in which Mr. Trump’s companies operate, including commercial real estate, as well as tax issues, people with knowledge of the matter said.The firm will also load the trove of records into a data analysis and document management system that it can use to explore them and seek patterns in support of the investigation, the people said.The action by the Supreme Court justices, who without noted dissent denied Mr. Trump an emergency stay so the court could fully review issues in the case for a second time, will not put Mr. Trump’s tax returns in the hands of Congress or make them automatically public. Grand jury secrecy laws will keep the records private unless Mr. Vance’s office files charges and enters the documents into evidence at a trial.The public has already learned a great deal about Mr. Trump’s taxes through other means. The New York Times obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office.The Times published a series of investigative articles last year based on an analysis of the data showing that Mr. Trump paid virtually no income tax for many years and that he is currently under an audit in which an adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million. He and his companies file separate tax returns and employ complicated and sometimes aggressive tax strategies, the investigation found.But the Supreme Court’s action set in motion a series of events that could lead to the extraordinary possibility of a criminal trial for former president. At a minimum, the ruling wrests from Mr. Trump control of his most closely held financial records and the power to decide when, if ever, they would be made available for public inspection.Mr. Trump and his lawyers have long fought to keep the records secret. After promising during the 2016 campaign that he would release his tax returns, as every presidential candidate has done for at least 40 years, he refused to do so, providing a persistent line of criticism for Democrats and other adversaries.In addition to fighting the subpoena from Mr. Vance’s office in court, Mr. Trump sued to block the congressional subpoena and successfully challenged a California law requiring presidential primary candidates to release their returns.The Supreme Court’s ruling comes nearly 18 months after Mr. Trump first sued Mr. Vance, seeking to block the subpoena from his office and spurring a legal battle that reached the Supreme Court for the first time last summer. In a landmark decision in July, the court rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that as a sitting president, he was immune from investigation. The case was argued by Mr. Vance’s general counsel, Carey Dunne, who is helping lead the investigation.But the court said Mr. Trump could challenge the subpoena on other grounds, such as its relevance and scope. Mr. Trump then launched a new legal fight, arguing that the subpoena was overly broad and amounted to political harassment. After losing that argument in the lower courts, Mr. Trump asked the Supreme Court to delay enforcement of Mr. Vance’s subpoena until it could decide whether to hear Mr. Trump’s appeal.It was that request that the Supreme Court denied, effectively ending the former president’s legal quest, legal experts said.“Trump will not be given deference as a former president,” said Anne Milgram, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan who later served as New Jersey’s attorney general. “Under the eyes of the laws of the state of New York, he has the same rights as others in the state. Neither more nor less.”Reed Brodsky, a longtime white-collar defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor, said that Mr. Trump’s lawyers will likely tell him that further attempts to block the subpoena could undermine their ability to argue the merits of his defense.“They’re at risk, if they continue to make arguments that are frivolous, of undercutting their credibility,” Mr. Brodsky said.Jonah E. Bromwich and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Never Forget What Ted Cruz Did

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyNever Forget What Ted Cruz DidThe senator has been able to use his Ivy League pedigree as a cudgel. After last week, his credentials should condemn him.Contributing Opinion WriterJan. 11, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Pool photo by Olivier DoulieryWhen I was growing up, I was often reminded that people with fancy educations and elite degrees “put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us.” This was back in the early 1960s, before so many rich Texans started sending their kids to Ivy League schools, when mistrust of Eastern educated folks — or any highly educated folks — was part of the state’s deep rooted anti-intellectualism. Beware of those who lorded their smarts over you, was the warning. Don’t fall for their high-toned airs.Since I’ve been lucky enough to get a fancy enough education, I’ve often found myself on the other side of that warning. But then came Jan. 6, when I watched my Ivy League-educated senator, Ted Cruz, try to pull yet another fast one on the American people as he fought — not long before the certification process was disrupted by a mob of Trump supporters storming the Capitol and forcing their way into the Senate chamber — to challenge the election results.In the unctuous, patronizing style he is famous for, Mr. Cruz cited the aftermath of the 1876 presidential election between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden. It was contentious and involved actual disputes about voter fraud and electoral mayhem, and a committee was formed to sort it out. Mr. Cruz’s idea was to urge the creation of a committee to investigate invented claims of widespread voter fraud — figments of the imaginations of Mr. Trump and minions like Mr. Cruz — in the election of Joe Biden. It was, for Mr. Cruz, a typical, too-clever-by-half bit of nonsense, a cynical ploy to paper over the reality of his subversion on behalf of President Trump. (The horse trading after the 1876 election helped bring about the end of Reconstruction; maybe Mr. Cruz thought evoking that subject was a good idea, too.)But this tidbit was just one of many hideous contributions from Mr. Cruz in recent weeks. It happened, for instance, after he supported a lawsuit from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (under indictment since 2015 for securities fraud) in an attempt to overturn election results in critical states (it was supported by other Texan miscreants like Representative Louie Gohmert).The esoteric exhortations of Jan. 6 from Mr. Cruz, supposedly in support of preserving democracy, also just happened to occur while a fund-raising message was dispatched in his name. (“Ted Cruz here. I’m leading the fight to reject electors from key states unless there is an emergency audit of the election results. Will you stand with me?”) The message went out around the time that the Capitol was breached by those who probably believed Mr. Cruz’s relentless, phony allegations.Until last Wednesday, I wasn’t sure that anything or anyone could ever put an end to this man’s self-serving sins and long trail of deceptions and obfuscations. As we all know, they have left his wife, his father and numerous colleagues flattened under one bus or another in the service of his ambition. (History may note that Senator Lindsey Graham, himself a breathtaking hypocrite, once joked, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”)But maybe, just maybe, Mr. Cruz has finally overreached with this latest power grab, which is correctly seen as an attempt to corral Mr. Trump’s base for his own 2024 presidential ambitions. This time, however, Mr. Cruz was spinning, obfuscating and demagoguing to assist in efforts to overturn the will of the voters for his own ends.Mr. Cruz has been able to use his pseudo-intellectualism and his Ivy League pedigree as a cudgel. He may be a snake, his supporters (might) admit, but he could go toe to toe with liberal elites because he, too, went to Princeton (cum laude), went to Harvard Law School (magna cum laude), was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Mr. Cruz was not some seditionist in a MAGA hat (or a Viking costume); he styled himself as a deep thinker who could get the better of lefties from those pointy headed schools. He could straddle both worlds — ivory towers and Tea Party confabs — and exploit both to his advantage.Today, though, his credentials aren’t just useless; they condemn him. Any decent soul might ask: If you are so smart, how come you are using that fancy education to subvert the Constitution you’ve long purported to love? Shouldn’t you have known better? But, of course, Mr. Cruz did know better; he just didn’t care. And he believed, wrongly I hope, that his supporters wouldn’t either.I was heartened to see that our senior senator, John Cornyn, benched himself during this recent play by Team Crazy. So did seven of Texas’ over 20 Republican members of the House — including Chip Roy, a former chief of staff for Mr. Cruz. (Seven counts as good news in my book.)I’m curious to see what happens with Mr. Cruz’s check-writing enablers in Texas’ wealthier Republican-leaning suburbs. Historically, they’ve stood by him. But will they want to ally themselves with the mob that vandalized our nation’s Capitol and embarrassed the United States before the world? Will they realize that Mr. Cruz, like President Trump and the mini-Cruz, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, would risk destroying the country in the hope of someday leading it?Or maybe, just maybe, they will finally see — as I did growing up — that a thug in a sharp suit with an Ivy League degree is still a thug.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Thank the Supreme Court, for Now

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThank the Supreme Court, for NowThe justices did the right thing by declining to hear the case brought by red states to overturn the election results. But let’s see what happens down the road.Contributing Opinion WriterDec. 17, 2020Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesThe Supreme Court was never going to hear, let alone grant, the request by red-state attorneys general and the White House to overturn the election results in four battleground states that went for Joe Biden. We knew that, we privileged few who could have offered an inventory of the lawsuit’s flaws while standing on one foot. We had not the slightest doubt that the case was a non-starter.Or did we?I spent much of last week, nearly up to the moment on Friday night when the court tossed the Texas case into history’s garbage bin, assuring friends and strangers alike that Texas v. Pennsylvania had no merit whatsoever. Texas had no business invoking the court’s original jurisdiction — seeking to come directly to the Supreme Court and bypassing the lower courts — in order to complain directly to the justices about other states’ election processes. The justices, I added, would never permit themselves to be drawn into such a sorry charade.Many people who emailed me with their questions knew little about the Supreme Court and its jurisdictional quirks, but some were lawyers or avid court-followers who know a lot. Their anxiety was a measure of how much of what we once took for granted has been upended during these past four years. I confess that by the end of the week, the tiniest shadow of doubt had invaded my own mind. And no wonder: The usual inference that even young children are able to draw from experience — “This has never happened before so it’s very unlikely to be happening now” — has proved of dubious utility. We can know all the facts and all the rules, but still, we can’t be sure.In the aftermath, with the electoral votes counted and the justices off on their four-week winter recess, what more is there to say about the justices’ refusal to grant the Trump team and its statehouse enablers their day in court? It’s easy to understand why the response offered by Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, became the go-to quote in many accounts of the week’s denouement. The court, she said, delivered “an important reminder that we are a nation of laws, and though some may bend to the desire of a single individual, the courts may not.”It’s a comforting thought, one that we needed to hear and yearn to believe. But I think it gives the court too much credit. Texas v. Pennsylvania had the form of a Supreme Court case. But it was a Potemkin village of a case, with the proper Gothic typeface on the front cover but nothing inside that resembled sound legal argument. It’s as if someone filed a case asking the court to exercise its original jurisdiction and declare the moon to be made of green cheese. We would hardly pat the justices on the back for tossing out such a case. More likely, we would shrug and say, “There goes another nut case.”The court receives its share of those among the 6,000 petitions that it whittles down every year to the 65 or so accepted for decision. Of course, those cases don’t arrive, as this one did, with the support of 126 of the 196 Republican members of the House of Representatives. The fact that members of Congress are sometimes called “lawmakers” does not, evidently, bestow on them an actual regard for law.And celebrating the court for its restraint in the election cases may be premature. The 2020-21 term, nearly three months in, is still unfolding. We have yet to learn either the fate of the Affordable Care Act or how much further the court will go to elevate religion over the principle of nondiscrimination, the question presented in a case from Philadelphia. Both cases were argued last month, during the court’s first argument sitting since the arrival of the newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett.The country has learned a bit recently about the court’s original jurisdiction — its power to decide without appellate review certain disputes, including between states — something most lawyers never learn much about, let alone encounter. The last time a so-called original case received this much public notice was probably in 1998, when the court gave New Jersey administrative jurisdiction over nearly all of Ellis Island, the immigrant gateway in New York Harbor that New York had long claimed as its own.The one or two such cases the court decides in a typical year have a certain charm despite their obscurity. This week, for example, the justices decided an original case between New Mexico and Texas. The case, decided in New Mexico’s favor, involved the latest chapter in a long-running dispute over rights to water from the Pecos River. As in most original cases, the court had appointed a special master to look into the problem and recommend how to solve it. Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in his majority opinion that the special master — the “river master” in this instance — was appointed in 1988 “and he continues to serve in that position” 32 years later. The wheels of the court’s original jurisdiction usually turn very slowly.A new original case on the court’s docket is not likely to remain obscure for long. It promises, if the court accepts it, to bring the justices into culture-war territory. Last February, Texas sued California directly in the Supreme Court over a law California passed in 2016 that prohibits state-paid travel to states with laws that permit discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. individuals.Texas has a law that permits child-welfare agencies to invoke religious reasons for not placing children with same-sex couples for foster care or adoption. Once Texas enacted that law in 2017, California added Texas to the list of states, now numbering 11, to which it will not subsidize travel by its employees. Texas claims that its sovereignty is violated by California’s policy. California argues in response that its own sovereign interest against subsidizing discrimination is at stake.In June, the justices took the somewhat surprising step of asking the Trump administration for the federal government’s view on the dispute. Early this month, the Office of the Solicitor General filed the government’s brief, urging the court to accept the case and noting that “resolving such conflicts among sovereigns falls within the core of this court’s original and exclusive jurisdiction.” The court will probably announce early in the new year whether it will assume jurisdiction.I’ll end this column with a shout-out to a federal judge who really did stand up for the rule of law in an opinion last week. The question concerns abortion, and whether, given the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Food and Drug Administration should relax its rule requiring women to visit their doctor’s office in order to get the medication that causes an early abortion. The F.D.A. has suspended the in-person rule for some other medications, but refused requests from medical organizations to do the same for the abortion drug mifepristone.In July, Federal District Judge Theodore Chuang, who sits in Greenbelt, Md., issued an injunction requiring the agency to permit doctors, for the duration of the pandemic, to mail or deliver the medication. In October, the Supreme Court responded to the Trump administration’s request for a stay of the injunction by sending the case back to Judge Chuang, telling him to permit the government to argue among other points, that improvements in the Covid-19 situation since the spring meant that visiting a doctor’s office was no longer a sufficient obstacle to merit relaxing the rule for mifepristone.After receiving the administration’s brief to that effect, Judge Chuang issued a 34-page opinion explaining that while conditions have indeed changed, they have changed for the worse. Noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration have warned about the increasing intensity of the pandemic, he observed that the administration “has offered no expert opinions from a scientist at one of these agencies or elsewhere in the federal government to contradict the facts and conclusions” about the rising danger.“The fact that individuals are permitted to venture out during a pandemic to restaurants or businesses does not establish that women should be mandated to risk exposure to Covid-19 in order to exercise a constitutional right,” the judge wrote. Of course, the Trump administration promptly returned to the court this week seeking a stay of Judge Chuang’s decision.So yes, let’s give credit where credit is due. Let’s thank the courts — plural — for upholding the rule of law. Let’s celebrate the judges who were there when we needed them. We still do.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More