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      Americans are hoping the courts will spare them an electoral reckoning with Trump | Lawrence Douglas

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      “This is how dictatorships are born.” Such was Donald Trump’s response to news that the Colorado supreme court had ruled that the former president is disqualified from holding office and so should be removed from the state’s Republican primary ballot.Anytime Trump speaks of “dictatorships” these days we should pay attention. He has all but declared his intention to engage in dictatorial rule should he win in 2024. It isn’t clear, then, whether his statement, in a fund-raising missive fired off minutes after the news broke, was meant as a condemnation of the ruling or a prediction of how he would handle such legal setbacks should he be returned to the White House.The specter of a dictatorial Trump using the presidency to deform the rule of law into a tool of political punishment explains why millions of Americans continue to cling to the hope that our court system will spare us an electoral reckoning with Trump. Biden continues to suffer from inexplicably weak polling numbers while Trump has managed to turn criminal counts into a fund-raising juggernaut. None of this translates into Trump’s defeating Biden in the national popular vote in 2024. But, as we all know, he doesn’t have to. Our grossly defective Electoral College could once again hand Trump the presidency.And so the hope that our court system will insulate us from the infirmities of our electoral system and our own failings as democratic citizens. Yet, however understandable, the hope will find no answer in yesterday’s ruling. This is not because the Colorado supreme court reached the wrong decision.Indeed, the ruling, which turned on the court’s interpretation of the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment, was brave and correct. A lower Colorado court had already concluded that Trump had engaged in insurrection on 6 January 2021, but had concluded that the 14th amendment’s bar against insurrectionists from holding office did not apply to the presidency.The Colorado supreme court had little trouble rejecting this latter conclusion. To argue, the court observed, that the 14th amendment, ratified in the wake of the civil war, “disqualifies every oath-breaking insurrectionist except the most powerful one and that it bars oath breakers from virtually every office, both state and federal, except the highest one in the land” would be utterly nonsensical (italics in original).And so the court concluded that Trump is “disqualified from holding the office of the President” and instructed the Colorado secretary of state to remove his name from the presidential primary ballot.Admittedly, the seven-member court was divided, with three dissenters questioning whether Trump can be disqualified without having first been convicted of engaging in insurrection. The court itself stayed its own ruling until early 2024, anticipating Trump’s already announced appeal. And so this explosive issue will all but inevitably land in the lap of the US supreme court.How will the court act? In an ideal world, it would uphold the Colorado ruling and would do so unanimously. Only a unanimous decision, handed down by a court composed of three Trump appointees – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – and one, the ethically-challenged and ideologically-rigid Clarence Thomas, whose spouse was a committed ‘stop the steal” activist, could possibly weather the storm of protest and civil unrest that such a historic ruling would trigger.Alas, no such ruling will issue from this supreme court. This court will predictably toss out the Colorado decision, insisting that Trump’s name be placed back on the ballot. I say this not because the court is necessarily beholden to Trump, but because, already suffering from historically low and largely self-inflicted approval ratings (see its ruling in Dobbs, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion; and Bruen, elevating gun ownership to a fundamental right), it will hide behind judicial modesty, insisting that voters and not unelected judges, should have the final say about Trump’s fitness for office.Still, in refusing to intervene, the court will be unable to escape the damaging appearance of extreme partisanship. The court has already been asked to review Trump’s claim that he enjoys “absolute immunity” from prosecution, an argument, which, if accepted, would derail his Washington DC federal trial, tentatively scheduled to begin on 4 March 2024, for conspiring to defraud the United States by seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. And it has already agreed to review the scope of the charge that January 6 insurrectionists obstructed an official proceeding, a matter also central to the federal case against Trump.While it’s hard to imagine the court accepting Trump’s unsustainably broad immunity argument, it’s easier to imagine it ruling in a manner that might work to the benefit of Trump’s tried and true legal strategy of delay, delay, delay. So while the supreme court might dodge a reckoning with Trump, there will be no escape for the American people.
      Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College More

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      Colorado’s ruling to disqualify Trump sets up a showdown at supreme court

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      The Colorado ruling disqualifying Donald Trump from the ballot because he incited an insurrection on January 6 sets up another high-stakes, highly controversial political intervention by the US supreme court – a conservative-dominated panel to which Trump appointed three stringent rightwingers.Compromised in progressive eyes by those appointments and rulings including the removal of the federal right to abortion, the court was already due to decide whether Trump has immunity from prosecution regarding acts committed as president.Arising from one of four criminal indictments that have generated 91 charges, that case – concerning elected subversion if not incitement of insurrection – has produced intense scrutiny of Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice and a hardline conservative also at the centre of an ethics scandal.Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, is a hard-right activist who was deeply involved in attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, a defeat which according to Trump’s lie was the result of electoral fraud.With the Colorado ruling, calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse from cases involving Trump will no doubt increase – and no doubt continue to be ignored.On Tuesday, the progressive strategist Rachel Bitecofer said: “Justice Thomas will get to weigh in on whether Trump engaged in insurrection for the same plot his own wife helped organise. Extraordinary.”Earlier, in a scene of extraordinary Washington pageantry, Biden addressed Thomas and the other justices at a memorial service for Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the court.Speaking at the National Cathedral, the president delivered a passage that would within hours assume greater significance.To O’Connor, Biden said, the court was “the bedrock of America. It was a vital line of defence for the values and the vision of our republic, devoted not to the pursuit of power for power’s sake but to make real the promise of America – the American promise that holds that we’re all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.”Citing that need for equality before the law, some prominent observers said the supreme court should uphold the Colorado ruling.J Michael Luttig, a conservative former judge who testified before the House January 6 committee and has written with the Harvard professor Laurence Tribe on the 14th amendment, called the Colorado ruling “historic”, “masterful” and “brilliant”.“It will be a test of America’s commitment to its democracy, to its constitution and to the rule of law,” Luttig told MSNBC, adding: “Arguably, when it is decided by the supreme court, it will be the single most important constitutional decision in all of our history.“… It is an unassailable … decision that the former president is disqualified from the presidency because he conducted, engaged in or aided or supported an insurrection or rebellion against the United States constitution.”But others were not so supportive.Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor from George Washington University who has appeared as a witness for House Republicans seeking to impeach Biden on grounds of supposed corruption, told Fox News: “This court has handed partisans on both sides the ultimate tool to try to shortcut elections. And it’s very, very dangerous.“This country is a powder keg, and this court is throwing matches at it. And I think it’s a real mistake. I think they’re wrong on the law. You know, January 6 was many things, most of it not good. In my view it was not an insurrection, it was a riot.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That doesn’t mean the people responsible for that day shouldn’t be held accountable. But to call this an insurrection for the purposes of disqualification would create a slippery slope for every state in the union.“This is a time where we actually need democracy. We need to allow the voters to vote to hear their decision. And the court just said, ‘You’re not going to get that in Colorado, we’re not going to let you vote for Donald Trump.’ You can dislike Trump, you can believe he’s responsible for January 6, but this isn’t the way to do it.”Adopted in 1868, section three of the 14th amendment barred former Confederates from office after the civil war. But it has rarely been used. In Trump’s case, much legal argument has centered on whether the presidency counts as an office, as defined in the text. In Colorado, a lower court found that it did not. The state supreme court found that it did. That argument now goes to the highest court in the land.After the Colorado ruling, many observers also pointed out that Trump has not been convicted of inciting an insurrection, or charged with doing so. He was impeached for inciting an insurrection on January 6 but acquitted at trial in the Senate, where enough Republicans stayed loyal.What is clear is that thanks to Colorado, a US supreme court already racked by politics and with historically low approval ratings will once again pitch into the partisan fight. On Tuesday, Trump seized on the Colorado ruling as he has his criminal indictments: as battle cry and fundraising tool. His Republican opponents also slammed the ruling.Last month, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Eric Foner, an expert on the civil war and Reconstruction, spoke to the Guardian about 14th amendment challenges to Trump, including in Colorado. A successful case, Foner said, would be likely to act on Trump like “a red flag in front of a bull”.So, it seems clear, will anything the US supreme court now does regarding the Colorado ruling.On Wednesday a Trump attorney, Jay Sekulow, said on his own internet show he expected the court to act quickly, with “the next 10 days … critical in this case” and oral arguments likely by mid-January. His son and co-host, Jordan Sekulow, countered that a slow-moving case could not be counted out. More

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      Trump lawyers urge supreme court to reject fast-tracking immunity decision

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      Lawyers for Donald Trump on Wednesday urged the US supreme court to reject a request from the special counsel to expeditiously decide whether he was immune from prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, contending prosecutors lacked standing to bring the petition.The argument from the ex-president was that prosecutors had no basis to appeal a lower court ruling that was favorable to them, and should instead defer intervening in the case until a federal appeals court issued its own judgment first.“This Court’s ordinary review procedures will allow the DC Circuit to address this appeal in the first instance, thus granting this Court the benefit of an appellate court’s prior consideration,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the 35-page filing.“The Special Counsel urges this Court to bypass those ordinary procedures, including the longstanding preference for prior consideration by at least one court of appeals, and rush to decide the issues with reckless abandon. The Court should decline that invitation at this time.”The papers filed by Trump’s lawyers in essence amounted to an attempt to refreeze the case – and indefinitely delay the March 2024 trial date – after prosecutors sought to bypass the potentially lengthy appeals process by directly asking the nation’s highest court to resolve the matter.Trump’s main argument asking the supreme court to defer the petition was procedural, arguing the narrow cases where prosecutors could appeal a favorable lower court ruling were limited to when the government had suffered some harm, which did not apply to the special counsel Jack Smith.The filing added that the court’s preference should be to allow the DC circuit to issue a judgment first, consistent with ordinary practice and especially when the DC circuit had already agreed to consider the question on an expedited basis.Whether Trump’s line of arguments will prevail remains uncertain, insofar as Trump repeatedly cited the case of Camreta v Greene (2011), in which the court expressly ruled that the fact that the victor filed the appeal did not deprive it of jurisdiction to hear the case.Trump also accused the special counsel’s office of conflating the “public interest” in a speedy trial with “partisan interest”, alleging prosecutors of wanting to go to trial before the 2024 election in order to tie him up in court during the height of his presidential campaign for political reasons.The supreme court is likely to decide whether to grant the special counsel’s appeal in short order. If it does take the case, it could schedule oral arguments in January and issue a decision within weeks. If it declines, it would return to the DC circuit’s jurisdiction.Earlier this month, Trump asked the US court of appeals for the DC circuit to reverse a decision by the trial judge rejecting his motion to dismiss the indictment on grounds that he enjoyed absolute immunity for any actions related to his official duties while president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump legal team suspected the motion would fail, according to people familiar with the matter, but filed it in the knowledge that it could be appealed before trial and, crucially, that it would cause the case to be paused pending the outcome of the appeals process.Trump’s lawyers appeared to expect the DC circuit to take months to schedule oral arguments and issue a ruling. They only intended to take the matter to the supreme court after a possible loss, which could again take months to decide whether Trump could be prosecuted in the case.But prosecutors pre-empted Trump and forced him to contend with the supreme court plank of his delay strategy earlier than he expected, requesting a grant of what is known as certiorari before the DC circuit issued a judgment. Prosecutors also separately asked the DC circuit to expedite its consideration.The federal 2020 election interference trial is currently set for 4 March, the day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states are scheduled to hold Republican primaries or caucuses. Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, has been adamant that he does not want to be stuck in a courtroom.Trump has also made no secret that his overarching legal strategy, for all of his criminal cases, is to pursue procedural delays. If the cases do not go to trial before next year’s election and he wins a second term, then he could direct his handpicked attorney general to drop all of the charges.And even if the case did go to trial before November, the people said, Trump’s preference would have been for the trial to take place as close as possible to the election because it would have given his 2024 campaign ammunition to miscast the criminal case against him as political in nature. More

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      Joe Biden hails Sandra Day O’Connor as ‘American pioneer’ in eulogy

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      Joe Biden hailed Sandra Day O’Connor as an “American pioneer” who embodied principle over politics in his eulogy at the Washington funeral of the US supreme court’s first female justice.The president praised O’Connor for breaking down barriers in the legal and political worlds, transcending political divisions and weighing ordinary people in her decision-making in pointed remarks that contrasted sharply with his words about the current supreme court.“She was especially conscious of the law’s real impact on people’s lives,” he said. “One need not agree with all her decisions in order to recognize that her principles were deeply held and of the highest order and that her desire for civility was genuine.“O’Connor knew that “no person is an island” and that Americans – “rugged individualists, adventurers and entrepreneurs” – were inextricably linked, he said at the service in Washington National Cathedral.“And for America to thrive, Americans must see themselves not as enemies, but as partners in the great work of deciding our collective destiny,” Biden said.Tributes to O’Connor, who died on 1 December aged 93, were also delivered by chief justice John Roberts and O’Connor’s son Jay O’Connor.Sandra Day O’Connor died in Phoenix, Arizona, of complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness.A centrist on the court who was appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1981, O’Connor served until her retirement in 2006.She created a critical alliance in 1992 to affirm the central holding in Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal nationwide. She also was a crucial vote in 2003 to uphold campus affirmative action policies that were used to increase the number of underrepresented minority students at American colleges.The supreme court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority, overturned the Roe ruling in 2022 and in June struck down race-conscious admissions programs in higher education, effectively prohibiting affirmative action.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden has said the current supreme court has done more to “unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history” but has rejected calls to expand it.Chief justice Roberts called her a “strong, influential and iconic jurist”.Jay O’Connor spoke of his mother as an indefatigable woman with “unearthly energy” who kept working long after she hung up her judicial robes.“We thank you, we love you, we will never, ever forget you.” More

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      Clarence Thomas’s salary complaints sparked rightwing fears he would resign

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      Clarence Thomas told a Republican congressman that US supreme court justices should get a pay raise or “one or more” would quit, prompting “a flurry of activity” among rightwingers because his “importance as a conservative was paramount”, ProPublica said in its latest hard-hitting report on questionable ethics at the high court.Cliff Stearns, the Florida Republican Thomas spoke to in 2000, told the non-profit newsroom: “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.”At the time, a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, would have nominated a replacement if any justice had resigned. Republicans held the Senate, which would have conducted the confirmation.ProPublica said Thomas spoke to Stearns on a flight after giving a speech at Awakening, a “‘conservative thought weekend’ featuring golf, shooting lessons and aromatherapy along with panel discussions with businessmen and elected officials”, held in Sea Island, Georgia, in January 2000.Thomas’s trip was paid for by event organisers, ProPublica said, adding that the justice’s reported 11 free trips on his annual disclosure form that year but not the trip to Awakening, “an apparent violation of federal disclosure law”.Thomas’s finances have come under the spotlight this year, with ProPublica publishing a series of in-depth reports, stirring an ethics scandal.He took and largely failed to declare gifts from Republican donors including luxury travel and resort stays, school fees and a property purchase.An arch-conservative on a panel dominated 6-3 by the right, Thomas has been in place since a 1991 confirmation dominated by allegations of sexual harassment.Responding to reports by ProPublica and other outlets, he has denied wrongdoing and pledged to conform to disclosure rules. Progressives have called for him to resign or be impeached and removed – vanishingly unlikely outcomes with the court in conservative hands and Republicans holding the House and contesting the Senate.ProPublica said the justice was struggling financially at the time of his conversation with Stearns. The site published a letter dated 11 January 2000 in which the congressman told the justice: “Just a note to let you know how much I enjoyed visiting with you on the flight back from Jacksonville to Dulles.“I intend to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of the supreme court. As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted. We must have the proper incentives here, too.”Stearns quoted the philosopher Immanuel Kant, telling Thomas to “have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived”.On Monday, responses to the ProPublica story included the former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann calling Thomas a “loyal judicial prostitute”.Stearns sought help from a lobbying firm and spoke in the House. Thomas’s suggestion that resignations might be imminent reached judicial administrators. The then chief justice, William Rehnquist, said in his annual report: “The most pressing issue facing the judiciary: the need to increase judicial salaries”.Mitch McConnell, a Republican senator from Kentucky (now minority leader), proposed removing a ban on paid speeches by justices. That effort failed, and supreme court salaries have not changed, bar keeping up with inflation.But ProPublica also reported that “during his second decade on the court, Thomas’ financial situation appears to have markedly improved.” The justice received a $1.5m advance for his memoir and gifts from rich individuals.In a public appearance in June 2019, Thomas was asked about court salaries.“Oh goodness, I think it’s plenty,” Thomas said. “My wife [the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas] and I are doing fine. We don’t live extravagantly, but we are fine.”ProPublica said: “A few weeks later, Thomas boarded [the mega-donor Harlan] Crow’s private jet to head to Indonesia. He and his wife were off on vacation, an island cruise on Crow’s 162ft yacht.”In a statement, Caroline Ciccone, president of the watchdog Accountable.US, said the ProPublica report showed again how Thomas “has long seen his position on our nation’s highest court as a way to upgrade his own lifestyle”.Ciccone said: “When the court itself wasn’t providing him with the luxury perks he wanted, his billionaire benefactor social circle stepped in to make it happen.“Justice Thomas, Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo [of the Federalist Society, a key figure in rightwing activism around the US judiciary] and other key players in this corruption crisis may believe they exist above the law – but they don’t. With public trust at record lows, it’s far past time to restore credibility and integrity to our high court.” More

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      Senate eyes vote on Ukraine aid and border security as House adjourns – as it happened

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      The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said yesterday that negotiators had made “good progress” in their talks regarding a supplemental funding package aimed at providing aid to Ukraine and reforming immigration policy.“The plan is for the Senate to act as soon as we are ready to move forward on the supplemental,” Schumer said yesterday.“We hope to come to an agreement. But no matter what, members should be aware that we will vote on a supplemental proposal next week.”The timeline will force senators to delay their planned holiday recess, although Schumer did not provide a specific schedule for next week.Even if the Senate can get a funding bill passed, it would still need to pass the House, which adjourned yesterday for its own holiday recess and is not expected to return to session until the new year.Despite the apparent progress in the Senate, the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, has indicated he will not call members back from their recess even if a supplemental funding bill passes the upper chamber.Johnson said yesterday, “While that work should continue, the House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”Here’s what else is happening today:
      Hungary blocked the EU from approving a €50bn aid package to Ukraine. The move came hours after EU leaders agreed to open membership talks with Ukraine.
      Republicans named Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip as their nominee to replace George Santos in the House. The special election has been scheduled for 13 February.
      A federal appeals court will consider a request from Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, to move his case from state to federal court. Meadows has been charged by Fulton county prosecutors over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
      That’s it from me today. Here’s what happened in US politics on this relatively sleepy Friday:
      The Senate is continuing to negotiate over a supplemental funding package to provide aid to Ukraine and money for border security. The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, met with senators on Capitol Hill today as the talks continue. However, the House has already adjourned for its holiday recess, so it is unclear how a spending package could pass both chambers of Congress before the end of the year.
      Negotiators are reportedly hoping to reach a deal on the package as early as Sunday, but it will likely take more time to draft text of a bill. That text will then be closely scrutinized by lawmakers of both parties as well as immigrant rights groups.
      The jury in Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial resumed its deliberations today, but jurors have not yet reached a decision on what damages the former Trump lawyer should pay to the former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. Freeman and Moss’s lawyer argued that Giuliani substantially damaged their reputations by spreading lies about them related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
      The New York Times reported that the supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to sign off on Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v Wade in 2022. The Times reports: “Justice Alito appeared to have pregamed it among some of the conservative justices, out of view from other colleagues, to safeguard a coalition more fragile than it looked.”
      The blog will be back on Monday for more updates from Washington.Following a 90-minute meeting with the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, this morning, one of the Democratic negotiators in the immigration talks, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, expressed optimism about the direction of the negotiations.“It’s a very aggressive goal to get this on the floor next week, but there’s a lot of good faith in that room,” Murphy said, per Punchbowl News. “There are still disagreements. We continue to work at it.”Meetings are expected to continue this afternoon and into the weekend, as the Senate hopes to hold a vote next week on a supplemental funding package.Congress has taken steps to restrict public access to records related to UFOs, the Guardian’s Richard Liscombe reports:If the truth about UFOs is out there, the American government doesn’t want you to see it yet.Just months after US space agency Nasa appointed a research director of unidentified anomalous phenomena, and promised more transparency about what it knows, the US Congress has acted to throttle the flow of information that ultimately reaches the public.Measures to create a presidential commission to review UFO records, and to order the Department of Defense to declassify certain “records relating to publicly known sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)”, were stripped from the sweeping defense policy bill that passed Congress on Thursday with bipartisan support.What was left were provisions ordering the National Archives to collect reports of “unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin and nonhuman intelligence”, but giving various government departments broad authority to keep the records secret.Read the Guardian’s full report:While many hard-right Republicans remain staunchly opposed to sending more money to Ukraine, one prominent Democrat warned that their rhetoric risked empowering dictators.In response to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Washington earlier this week, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Republican of Georgia, accused the Ukrainian president of “begging for your money”.“How much money will Washington spend to slaughter an entire generation of young Ukrainian men as Washington fights it’s proxy war with Russia?” Greene said Tuesday. “Shame!”Congressman Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland and the former House majority leader, responded to the comment today, attacking Greene for promoting the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin.“No sweeter Christmas gift to Vladimir Putin than statements like this,” Hoyer said. “Our inaction warms the heart of dictators and despots across the globe.”Joe Biden will “have an LBJ moment” and decide not to run for re-election next year, the leftwing academic and independent presidential candidate Cornel West has predicted.“I’m not even sure whether I’ll be running against Biden,” West told Politico. “Biden – I think he’s going to have an LBJ moment [and] pull back.”West was referring to the moment on 31 March 1968 when Lyndon B Johnson, in office since the assassination of John F Kennedy in November 1963, announced that he would not seek re-election.Already the oldest president ever sworn in, Biden is 81 and would be 86 at the end of a second term. In polling, clear majorities say he is too old.Read the Guardian’s full report:In a moment of levity before the holidays, comedian Conan O’Brien visited the White House press briefing room and chatted with reporters.“They won’t let me take questions,” O’Brien joked. “But, boy, I have the answers to everything.”O’Brien explained that he was visiting the White House because he is a “huge history buff slash nerd” who has toured the building a number of times.Watch the full clip:A Senate deal to overhaul border policies could be unveiled as early as Sunday, sources told Semafor. But it remains unclear how quickly senators can compile the text of a bill, which will be closely scrutinized by immigration groups.One of the chief negotiators, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, told reporters that they were “making progress” in their talks and would hold more meetings this afternoon and over the weekend.The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, has already indicated he wants to hold a vote on a supplemental funding package next week, and he has delayed the chamber’s holiday recess to accommodate a potential vote.Congressman Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland and the former House majority leader, is imploring the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, to call the chamber back to session if the Senate passes a supplemental funding package.In a letter sent to Johnson today, Hoyer argued the House must act swiftly if the Senate reaches a deal on Ukraine aid and border policy changes.“As Members return to their districts for the holidays and the people of Ukraine and Israel continue to wait anxiously for supplemental aid, I write to urge you to call the House back within 72 hours of the Senate passing legislation to provide additional assistance to our allies,” Hoyer wrote.“We ought to have secured these vital resources for our allies months ago. There is no cause that demands the attention of this Congress more than the preservation of democracy, freedom, and our national defense.”So far, Johnson has shown little interest in calling members back from their holiday recess, saying yesterday: “The House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”The US supreme court has refused to overturn an Illinois ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, Michael Sainato reports:The court rejected the request, made by a gun shop and a national gun rights group in an appeal of a lower court’s decision not to allow a preliminary injunction to block the law.A previous injunction request was also denied by the supreme court in May 2023. As is customary, the justices did not comment on their denial of the injunction.The latest request came from a firearms retailer owned by Robert Bevis in Naperville and the National Association for Gun Rights.In November 2023, a US appeals court upheld the Illinois assault weapons ban, rejecting appeals that challenged the law by claiming it violated the second amendment of the US constitution.Read the Guardian’s full report:Here’s where the day stands so far:
      The Senate is continuing to negotiate over a supplemental funding package to provide aid to Ukraine and money for border security. The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, was spotted on Capitol Hill today as the talks continue. However, the House has already adjourned for its holiday recess, so it is unclear how a spending package could pass both chambers of Congress before the end of the year.
      The jury in Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial resumed its deliberations today, as jurors weigh what damages the former Trump lawyer should pay to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. Freeman and Moss’ lawyer argued that Giuliani substantially damaged their reputations by spreading lies about them related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
      The New York Times reported that supreme court Justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to sign off on Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v Wade in 2022. The Times reports: “Justice Alito appeared to have pregamed it among some of the conservative justices, out of view from other colleagues, to safeguard a coalition more fragile than it looked.”
      The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, was seen leaving Capitol Hill after meeting with senators to continue talks over a potential deal on border policy changes.The cabinet secretary did not answer reporters’ questions as he left the Capitol, per Punchbowl News, so it is unclear what (if any) progress was made in the negotiations.The conservative supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to approve without changes a 98-page draft of the opinion that would remove the federal right to abortion that had been guaranteed for nearly 50 years, the New York Times reported.According to the paper, Samuel Alito, the author of the opinion in Dobbs v Jackson, the case that struck down Roe v Wade, from 1973, circulated his draft at 11.16am on 10 February 2022.Citing two people who saw communications between the justices, the Times said: “After a justice shares an opinion inside the court, other members scrutinise it. Those in the majority can request revisions, sometimes as the price of their votes, sweating sentences or even words.“But this time, despite the document’s length, Justice Neil M Gorsuch wrote back just 10 minutes later to say that he would sign on to the opinion and had no changes.”Three other conservatives – Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh – signed on in the following days.Read the Guardian’s full report: More

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      Trump’s election-interference case may get boost from US supreme court

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      A decision by the US supreme court to take a case linked to the January 6 attack on the Capitol could have consequences altering the trajectory of the criminal case against Donald Trump over his effort to overturn the 2020 election as well as for hundreds of other people prosecuted for the riot.The nation’s highest court has agreed to consider whether federal prosecutors can charge January 6 riot defendants with a statute that makes it a crime to obstruct an official proceeding of Congress – a charge also filed against Trump in his 2020 election-interference case.The decision by the conservative-dominated court to take up the matter complicates and could delay Trump’s trial in federal district court in Washington, which is currently scheduled for next March.The supreme court’s eventual ruling in Fischer v United States will indicate whether the obstruction charge under section 1512 of title 18 of the US criminal code can be used against Trump, and could undercut the other general conspiracy charges brought against the former president by the special counsel, Jack Smith.The court could also end up by extension invalidating many convictions against rioters involved in the January 6 Capitol attack. The obstruction statute has been the justice department’s primary weapon to hold accountable those involved in the violence of that day.The case involves Joseph Fischer, who was indicted in Washington on seven counts of obstructing the congressional certification of the 2020 election results when he assaulted police officers during the riot.Fischer sought to dismiss part of his indictment, arguing that the obstruction statute passed under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in response to the Enron scandal, had to do with document or evidence tampering for white-collar financial crime.The US district judge Carl Nichols, who presided in the case, interpreted the statute as requiring prosecutors to show that the defendant took some action with respect to a document or record and did not apply to Fischer as he assaulted police officers at the Capitol.But a split three-judge panel at the US court of appeals for the DC circuit reversed the decision, deciding that obstruction applied more broadly and encompassed impeding any official proceeding. Fischer, and two other January 6 defendants, appealed to the supreme court to resolve the issue.The supreme court may not decide whether the obstruction statute can be applied to the Capitol attack until June, when the next term ends. In the meantime, the viability of that charge – and potentially that of other general conspiracy charges – against Trump remains uncertain.It could also give Trump an opening to seek to pause ongoing pre-trial proceedings in his 2020 election interference case pending the supreme court’s consideration of the issue, although he is unlikely to succeed and it may not be appealable should such an effort be denied.Similar criminal cases involving members of Congress or congressional aides, for instance, typically go to trial and are then tried again if a higher court finds that some of the charges were inapplicable.At issue for Trump is the definition of “corruptly” in the obstruction statute. The DC circuit has been unable to agree, with judge Justin Walker interpreting it as “unlawful benefit”, while judge Greg Katsas interpreted it as “an unlawful financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage”.The obstruction statute was never a natural fit for January 6 cases, and defense lawyers have repeatedly argued in trial and appeals courts in Washington that the justice department was using it in an overly broad fashion to target rioters because of the 20-year maximum sentence it carries.The problem for the justice department now is that the supreme court has previously chafed at the use of broad conspiracy arguments by federal prosecutors.In the case of Jeffrey Skilling in the Enron scandal, the court held in a unanimous decision that Skilling had been improperly charged with the “honest services” provision of the statute about a scheme to defraud, because it applied only to accepting bribes and kickbacks.“The court’s been very clear that over-aggressive theories under general criminal statutes don’t fly,” said the former House general counsel Stanley Brand, whose firm Brand Woodward has also represented January 6 defendants. “That’s the lesson of Skilling and all these other cases.”If the supreme court were to rule in favor of Fischer next year on the basis that the justice department was using charges that were too broad, Brand added, it could undercut the other general conspiracy statutes used in the indictment against Trump, as well. More

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      Clarence Thomas pressured to recuse himself from Trump immunity case

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      Senate Democrats are pressuring the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from deciding whether Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution for alleged crimes he committed while president.Democrats have argued that Thomas poses a potential conflict of interest because his wife, Ginni Thomas, has previously supported Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen, the Hill reported.During her testimony to the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection in 2022, Ginni Thomas said she still believed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.Following the 2020 election, Ginni Thomas also texted Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and told him to contest the election results, accusing Biden and Democrats of “attempting the greatest Heist of our History”.The Illinois senator Dick Durbin, who is chair of the Senate judicial committee, has called for Thomas’s recusal, arguing the relationship between Trump and the Thomas family is unclear.“There are so many unanswered questions about the relationship of the justice and his family with the Trump administration that I think in the interests of justice, he should recuse himself,” Durbin said to the Hill.Durbin later told CNN that Thomas should “think twice” and recuse himself from the case.“There’s been enough information raised about Mr Thomas and his spouse that he ought to think twice about recusal in this case,” Durbin said.The Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal echoed the calls. Blumenthal told the Hill that the supreme court would be deciding on if Trump can be tried for attempting to overturn the results of 2020 election, which involves “Jan 6, which involved [Thomas’s] wife”.Special counsel Jack Smith asked the supreme court on Monday to decide if Trump can be criminally prosecuted. The supreme court quickly responded to say it would, and gave Trump until 20 December to reply. The earliest the court would consider the motion is 5 January, when the justices have their next scheduled private conference.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSmith’s move came amid fears that Trump’s trial could be indefinitely delayed, if as expected Trump appeals a decision from a federal judge on Friday that rejected his immunity claims. The judge in that case, Tanya Chutkan, denied Trump’s motion for dismissal, opening up the possibility for him to appeal to the DC circuit court and if necessary the US supreme court.“It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” Smith’s filing said.“Only this court can definitively resolve them.” More