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      Rights group calls for Samuel Alito to be investigated after claims of leaked 2014 ruling

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      Rights group calls for Samuel Alito to be investigated after claims of leaked 2014 rulingAnti-abortion activist said supreme court justice revealed the landmark ruling on contraception and religious rights weeks earlier A civil rights group issued a call Saturday for US supreme court justice Samuel Alito to be investigated over allegations that the judge leaked a 2014 landmark ruling involving contraception and religious rights at a private dinner with wealthy political donors.The claim was contained in a New York Times article in which minister Rob Schenck, an anti-abortion activist, said he was told of the decision weeks before it was announced and had used the information to prepare a public relations push.Samuel Alito assured Ted Kennedy in 2005 of respect for Roe, diary revealsRead moreSchenck also claimed he tipped off Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that brought and won the case allowing privately-held, for-profit businesses to be exempt from regulations to which its owners religiously object, in this case requiring employers to cover certain contraceptives for their female employees.“The Senate judiciary committee should immediately move to investigate the apparent leak by Justice Alito,” said Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice.“This bombshell report is the latest proof that the Republican justices on the court are little more than politicians in robes. It’s no wonder trust in the court has hit a record low. Structural reform of the court, including strict new ethics rules, is needed now more than ever.”Fallon added that Schenck “should be called to testify about both the leak and the years-long lobbying effort he once led to cultivate Alito and other Republican justices”.Claims of the judicial leak, potentially for political purposes, comes six months after a draft opinion of the Dobbs decision overturning the nationwide abortion rights established by the 1972 case Roe v Wade was leaked ahead of its June publication.In a letter to supreme court chief justice John G Roberts Jr dated 7 June, Schenck wrote that he was reaching out to the judge “to inform you of a series of events that may impinge on the investigation you and your delegates are undertaking in connection with the leak of a draft opinion”.He described a dinner at which an unnamed political donor invited to dine at the home of Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, had offered to try to glean information about the pending decision in the Hobby Lobby case.The next day, the Times reported, the dining guest called Schenck and told him Alito had written the majority opinion in the case and that Hobby Lobby would win. That exact decision was publicly announced less than a month later.Schenck concluded the letter to Roberts by saying he “thought this previous incident might bear some consideration by you and others involved in the process”.How that directly reflects on the current investigation into the leak of the Dobbs decision is not clear, but it arrives at a time of concern for the court’s legitimacy as it works under the sway of a conservative supermajority. Polls show that a majority of Americans are losing confidence in the supreme court.After the leak in May of the Dobbs decision draft, Alito called the unauthorized disclosure “a grave betrayal” and ordered an investigation by the supreme court’s marshal.The Times noted that Schenck’s account has “gaps”. But the newspaper’s examination of the claim uncovered emails and conversations that “strongly suggested” that Schenck knew of the decision before it was made public.TopicsUS supreme courtAbortionRoe v WadeContraception and family planningReligionUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      How the fall of Roe shattered Republicans’ midterm dreams

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      How the fall of Roe shattered Republicans’ midterm dreamsWomen and young people, furious over losing federal abortion protections, helped Democrats defy expectations This summer, after a tectonic decision by the supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade eliminated the nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to abortion, Joe Biden predicted American women would revolt. Republicans, however, saw a “red wave” brewing, fueled by widespread economic discontent.On Thursday, after Democrats defied historical expectations in the first major election of the post-Roe era, Biden effectively declared: “I told ya so.”Young voters hailed as key to Democratic successes in midtermsRead more“Women in America made their voices heard, man,” the president told a crowd of supporters at the Howard Theater in Washington on Thursday. “Y’all showed up and beat the hell out of them.”The 2022 midterm elections were expected to usher in staggering losses for Democrats. The party in power typically fares poorly, and with Biden’s approval ratings mired in the low 40s, Republicans were expected to make significant gains.That is not how the results unfolded. As the vote count continues in several key races, Republicans appear on track to win a far narrower House majority than they hoped, while Democrats may retain control of the Senate.As a fuller portrait of the results emerges, advocates, Democrats and even some Republicans say one thing is clear: abortion proved a defining issue. Fury over the loss of federal abortion protections galvanized women and young people and delivered a string of unexpected victories for Democrats and new protections for reproductive rights.“You cannot have half of the population have their body autonomy put under threat and not expect it to be mobilizing,” said Heidi Sieck, the CEO and co-founder of #VoteProChoice. “And that’s what we saw across the board with young people showing up, women showing up, newly registered women being more than two- thirds of the newly registered voters.”Exit polls conducted for news networks by Edison Research showed that abortion was the top issue for many Americans, especially people under the age of 30. And about 60% of voters said they were dissatisfied or angry with the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe, according to exit polls conducted by AP Votecast.In every state where an abortion-related measure was on the ballot, voters chose either to enshrine protections or reject new limits. And it was a decisive issue in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where the future of abortion access was at risk.In Michigan, voters decisively approved a ballot initiative establishing a state constitutional right to reproductive freedom, effectively stopping a 1931 abortion ban from ever taking effect.They also lifted Democrats to power at all levels of government, re-electing Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel and wresting control of the state legislature from Republicans for the first time in decades. Whitmer defeated Tudor Dixon, a Trump-backed Republican who said she opposed abortion in nearly all cases, including when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.Before the election, the Michigan congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, who was considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats, told the Guardian that she believed her political fate was tied to the result of the state’s abortion proposal. On Tuesday, she held on comfortably.In Pennsylvania, where exit polls showed that abortion was the top issue on voters’ minds, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, won in a landslide. He defeated Doug Mastriano, a far-right Republican and one of his party’s most strident opponents of abortion rights.The Democrat John Fetterman won Pennsylvania’s race for Senate against Republican Mehmet Oz, after seizing on a remark that Oz made during a debate in which he appeared to suggest that the decision to have an abortion should rest with women, doctors and “local political leaders”.The issue resonated in red states and blue ones. Like Michigan, California and Vermont approved ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights in their state constitutions. Meanwhile, in deep red Kentucky, voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have explicitly denied constitutional protections for abortion, even as they granted the Republican senator Rand Paul another term. And in Montana, another reliably conservative state, an attempt to impose new restrictions on the procedure failed.David Shor, a Democratic data analyst, told the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America that abortion had been “absolutely instrumental” in Democrats’ successes this cycle.“Abortion really up until very recently was a pretty neutral issue for Democrats – that didn’t mean it was bad, but it wasn’t necessarily a vote-getter in most of the country,” he said. But following the the supreme court decision, he said, abortion suddenly became “the single best issue for Democrats”.“The extent to which voters cared about abortion also skyrocketed,” he said. “Out of the 33 issue areas that we track, abortion went from being the 30th out of 33 most important issues to being the 12th basically overnight.”In the wake of Roe’s fall, Democrats took every opportunity to highlight their support for abortion rights and contrast it with their opponents’ views. They flooded the airwaves with nearly half a billion dollars on abortion-related ads.Voters gave Democrats a wide advantage on the issue, as debates over the loss of abortion rights raised new questions about miscarriage care and exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. Republicans, on the defensive, sought to avoid the issue. In several instances, Republican candidates removed references to abortion from their campaign websites.But months later, as the campaign season came to a close, Democrats were second-guessing the strategy. Many pre-election polls showed voters worried more about inflation and crime than abortion. These surveys prompted a bout of angst and finger-pointing. Some Democrats argued that the party had focused too singularly on reproductive rights at the expense of offering a clear economic message.But abortion rights advocates say that logic is flawed – that abortion is an economic issue.“If you’re saying inflation, if you’re saying economy, you’re saying reproductive freedom as well,” Sieck said. “We absolutely miss that connection at our peril.”After Tuesday night, there was little doubt that the issue had been decisive in key races.“For everyone who said abortion was a losing issue; for everyone who said abortion is controversial; for everyone who said abortion is a fringe concern and not the meat-and-potatoes kitchen table problem Michiganders care about: you’re wrong, and the ‘yes’ votes prove it,” said Mini Timmaraju, the president of Naral Pro-Choice America.Even some Republicans conceded the issue may have cost them electorally.“If we lost because of abortion, an issue that was not on the ballot, if we lost because I’m pro-life, because I believe every life has dignity, I’m OK with that,” Matt Birk, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Minnesota said in a concession speech.The string of victories for supporters of abortion rights followed an August vote in Kansas, when voters overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to remove abortion rights from its state constitution. The result underscored the political potency of an issue Democrats had long tiptoed around.On Tuesday, Laura Kelly, the state’s Democratic governor, held off a Republican challenge as did Democratic congresswoman Sharice Davids. With the veto pen, Kelly, like Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers, who also won re-election in a closely watched race, can block any potential legislation that would impose new restrictions on the procedure.In Wisconsin and North Carolina, Democrats kept Republicans from winning a supermajority in their state legislatures, meaning lawmakers will not have the power to override a Democratic governor’s veto and pass new abortion restrictions.There were some bright spots for anti-abortion advocates. Conservative judges were elected to the state supreme courts in Ohio and North Carolina, an encouraging sign for proponents bracing for a barrage of challenges to new laws restricting the procedure. Though Democrats may keep the US Senate, they failed to win 52 seats, enough to overcome the resistance in their party to eliminating the filibuster and codifying Roe.And key races have yet to be called, including in Arizona, where the Republican nominee for governor, Kari Lake, has backed a territorial-era abortion ban temporarily halted by a judge.None of what unfolded this election cycle surprised longtime supporters of reproductive rights, but they hope the results will finally convince Democrats that abortion is not only a winning political issue, but a foundational one that should be central to their campaign strategy and governing agendas at the state and federal level.“Abortion is a winning issue and will continue to be in elections to come,” Timmaraju said on Friday. “That means Democrats need to keep reproductive freedom at the top of their policy agenda and fight to not only codify Roe but expand access to abortion and birth control.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsAbortionWomenUS supreme courtDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      The US made women second-class citizens. Now we must give a stinging rebuke | Moira Donegan

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      The US made women second-class citizens. Now we must give a stinging rebukeMoira DoneganThe supreme court edict overturning Roe v Wade said women are ‘not without electoral and political power’. That feels almost like a dare Organized feminism has been on the decline in the US since the 1980s, with the radicalism of the second wave giving way to a more diffuse, less focused feminist movement consisting of NGOs, campus activists, online discourse and HR inclusion initiatives. In a way, this is normal. Students of the movement have long spoken of feast and fallow years for feminism, eruptions of activism that are followed by long and virulent backlashes.But feminism has perhaps never received such a dramatic and immediate setback as it did this June. The supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization undid the major legal achievement of the second wave era, reversing Roe v Wade and ending the constitutional right to an abortion.The result has been chaos, with so-called “trigger bans” blasting into enforcement in some states, long-dormant laws from before the era of women’s suffrage being revived in others and still other states left in limbo, as abortion flickers in and out of legality, depending on the proclivities of whichever judge is determining whichever injunction. Children and teens who are pregnant as a result of incest, rape or exploitation are now forced to travel across state lines for abortions, because they live in states where a fetus or embryo is valued more highly than their own health and potential. Women whose pregnancies are doomed are forced to wait, carrying fetuses they know will not live, or to slowly bleed out their miscarriages until either the fetus dies or they go septic.There’s an incalculable amount of cruelty now being forced on pregnant women, and there’s also an insidious kind of debasement being imposed on all women, pregnant or not. Millions of American women and trans people are now living in states where their lives are not their own, where an unplanned pregnancy can derail their educations, careers or plans, where they must live under the indignity of the knowledge that the state can compel them to give birth. That injury is not the kind of acute horror story that we see coming out of states where bans are now in effect. But it is an injury that has been done to each and every woman in America.This indignity is political. For the past five decades, during the Roe era, American women were endowed with a basic level of respect by the right to abortion. They could not be forced to carry a pregnancy to term; their bodies, at least on paper, were their own. This principle lent women a sense of worth and equality under the law, the sense that the freedoms and responsibilities of self-determination and self-respect – of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – so revered in the American tradition were theirs, too. The idea was that women were made, by Roe, into full citizens – not members of some lesser class needing monitoring or protection, but equal participants in the American project.This idea was so powerful and potent to American women’s identity that it did not matter what the reality of Roe was. It did not matter that the decision itself was built on legal reasoning about a right to privacy, instead of a more secure, more honest reasoning about equality; it did not matter that the supreme court had never recognized American women as having their own individual right to reject pregnancy. Over the 49 years of its existence, Roe became more than just the 1973 court decision and its logic. It became a symbol, a shorthand for the baseline preconditions of women’s full citizenship.Dobbs erased both the law and the symbol. Women no longer have a constitutional right to an abortion, and we no longer have the dignity that that right gave us. We are now, in many states, subject to laws that criminalize and surveil us, that assess our needs for medical care based on whether we are suffering enough to deserve it, that in many cases treat blobs of tissue, laughably far from anything human, as having rights and interests that trump our own. In one of the most intimate and life-defining aspects of our existence, we find ourselves not quite treated as adults, not allowed to make our own choices, not trusted to know our own interests and not valued in our own right. In pregnancy, women are now less citizens than they are subjects.In his majority opinion ending the constitutional right to abortion, Samuel Alito asserts that he’s not hurting women on the basis of their sex at all, that he is merely handing the issue “back to the states”, as if any state law banning or restricting abortion did not inherently make women less equal. But Alito asserted that women who did not like the Dobbs decision could simply vote to reverse its effects in their own states, and hope that a majority of other voters agreed with them that they should be full citizens with self-determination. “Women are not without electoral or political power,” Alito said, perhaps somewhat regretfully. If they didn’t like the status of second-class citizenship to which his ruling had consigned them, why didn’t they simply vote themselves out of it? Maybe we will. During the midterm elections, American women can vote en masse to restore reproductive freedom.Of course, voting will not be sufficient to restore abortion rights and women’s full citizenship in America. For that, we will need a revival of an organized and radical feminist movement, committed to local engagement, long-term relationship – and institution-building and direct action. The seeds of that movement are already beginning to germinate in the local abortion funds, clandestine mutual-aid efforts and grassroots mobilizations that have helped fill the well of need in the wake of Dobbs. And of course, voting is not easy for everyone – it has been made less easy, and less meaningful, by the actions of the same supreme court.But the midterm elections represent an immediate opportunity for American women to exercise that political power of which Alito spoke. The elections can preserve Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, which can stave off Republican ambitions to ban abortion nationwide; if the majorities are large enough, they may even be able to fulfill Joe Biden’s promise to reinstate Roe by statute. Voting for Democratic governors, attorneys general and state legislators can blunt or reverse the impact of state abortion bans and misogynist laws: a local election, for many women voters, means a choice between a district attorney who will prosecute patients and providers of abortions, and one who will not.Alito’s whole opinion drips with contempt, but the line about American women – that we are “not without electoral and political power” – felt like a dare. American women do have power, perhaps more than Samuel Alito realizes. It’s time to call his bluff.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionAbortionWomenRoe v WadeUS supreme courtLaw (US)HealthcommentReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      A Young American Woman Loses Faith After Dobbs Ruling

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Trump allies saw Clarence Thomas as key to efforts to challenge 2020 election

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      Trump allies saw Clarence Thomas as key to efforts to challenge 2020 electionEmails show ex-president’s attorney saying justice was ‘our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion’ by 6 January In a last desperate attempt to delay or disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential race, allies of Donald Trump sought to appeal to conservative supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas, new emails show.The emails, recently obtained by the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, show that members of Trump’s legal team considered Thomas to be “key” to their efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results.“We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,” Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in an email sent on 31 December 2020. Chesebro, who is now facing the threat of potential disciplinary action over his work supporting Trump’s election denialism, argued Thomas represented “our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress”.January 6 marked the day that Congress was scheduled to convene to certify Biden’s victory, but lawmakers’ work on that day was disrupted by a group of Trump’s supporters storming the Capitol. The ensuing violence resulted in the deaths of seven people, according to a bipartisan Senate report.The emails from Chesebro, which were first reported by Politico, were turned over to the January 6 committee after Trump lawyer John Eastman unsuccessfully attempted to fight a subpoena for his communications. US district judge David O Carter ruled late last month that several of Eastman’s documents should be made public, as they demonstrated how Trump’s allies participated in a “knowing misrepresentation of voter-fraud numbers in Georgia when seeking to overturn the election results in federal court”.Carter, an appointee of Bill Clinton who previously said it was “more likely than not” that Trump had committed a crime in his efforts to overturn the 2020 results, ruled that Eastman’s emails “sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States”.“The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” Carter wrote in his decision.The newly released messages indicate that Eastman agreed with Chesboro’s plan to involve Thomas and expressed hope that a favorable ruling from the supreme court would help to “kick the Georgia legislature into gear”, potentially preventing Biden from claiming his earned electoral votes. Three counts of Georgia’s 2020 ballots confirmed that Biden defeated Trump in the battleground state by roughly 12,000 votes.The release of the emails represented only the latest legal setback for Eastman, who repeatedly invoked his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination when he testified before the January 6 committee. FBI agents seized Eastman’s phone in June, as part of a justice department investigation of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and the Trump lawyer’s appeals to reclaim the device have failed.The latest batch of emails do not include any correspondence from Thomas, although the justice’s wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, has become entangled in the January 6 committee’s investigation.Thomas voluntarily spoke to January 6 investigators in late September, after her communications with Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, were made public. In her text messages with Meadows, Thomas repeatedly urged the Trump adviser to stand firm in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, even after it became clear that Biden had won.“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” Thomas wrote in a text message sent on 10 November, after news networks had called the election for Biden. “You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”Thomas also lobbied legislators in Arizona and Wisconsin, encouraging them to help overturn Biden’s victories in the two battleground states, according to emails obtained by the Washington Post earlier this year.Speaking to January 6 investigators behind closed doors, Thomas indicated that she still believes Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, committee chair Bennie Thompson told reporters. In her opening statement before the committee, Thomas also insisted that she did not discuss efforts to overturn the election results with her husband, saying they have “an ironclad rule” not to speak about cases pending before the supreme court.“It is laughable for anyone who knows my husband to think I could influence his jurisprudence – the man is independent and stubborn, with strong character traits of independence and integrity,” Thomas said in the statement, which was obtained by the New York Times.Nonetheless, the mention of Thomas’s name in the emails between Chesebro and Eastman will likely intensify calls for the conservative justice to recuse himself from cases related to January 6. So far, those calls have gone ignored.TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

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      US supreme court blocks handover of Trump’s tax returns to Congress

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      US supreme court blocks handover of Trump’s tax returns to CongressRight-dominated court will weigh the former president’s appeal against release sought by Democratic-controlled House The US supreme court’s chief justice, John Roberts, on Tuesday put a temporary hold on the handover of Donald Trump’s tax returns to a congressional committee.Roberts’s order gives the supreme court time to weigh the legal issues in the former president’s emergency appeal to the high court, filed on Monday.Without court intervention, the US treasury department could have provided the tax returns to the Democratic-controlled House ways and means committee as early as Thursday.Prosecutors accuse Trump Organization of ‘greed and cheating’ in tax fraud trialRead moreRoberts gave the committee until 10 November to respond. The chief justice handles emergency appeals from Washington DC, where the fight over Trump’s taxes has been going on since 2019.Lower courts ruled that the committee has broad authority to obtain tax returns and rejected Trump’s claims that it was overstepping.If Trump can persuade the nation’s highest court to intervene in this case, he could delay a final decision until the start of the next Congress in January. If Republicans recapture control of the House after the 8 November midterms, they could drop the records request.The temporary delay imposed by Roberts is the third such order issued by justices in recent days in cases related to Trump.The court separately is weighing US senator Lindsey Graham’s emergency appeal to avoid having to testify before a Georgia grand jury that is investigating potential illegal interference by Trump and his allies in the 2020 election in the state.Also before the court is an emergency appeal from Arizona Republican party chairperson Kelli Ward to prevent the handover of phone records to the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.The House Ways and Means panel and its Democratic chairperson, Richard Neal of Massachusetts, first requested Trump’s tax returns in 2019 as part of an investigation into the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audit program and tax law compliance by the former president. A federal law says the IRS “shall furnish” the returns of any taxpayer to a handful of top lawmakers.The US justice department, under the Trump administration, had defended a decision by the treasury secretary at the time, Steven Mnuchin, to withhold the tax returns from Congress. Mnuchin argued that he could withhold the documents because he concluded they were being sought by Democrats for partisan reasons. A lawsuit ensued.After Joe Biden took the Oval Office, the committee renewed the request, seeking Trump’s tax returns and additional information from 2015-2020. The White House took the position that the request was a valid one and that the treasury department had no choice but to comply. Trump then attempted to halt the handover in court.The Manhattan district attorney at the time, Cyrus Vance Jr, obtained copies of Trump’s personal and business tax records as part of a criminal investigation. That case, too, went to the supreme court, which rejected Trump’s argument that he had broad immunity as president.Trump had most recently sought the justices’ intervention in a legal dispute stemming from the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August. The court rejected that appeal.TopicsUS supreme courtDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson grills lawyer in case seeking to end affirmative action

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson grills lawyer in case seeking to end affirmative actionNewest member of US supreme court seems to reject idea that affirmative action in university admissions is unconstitutional The newest US supreme court justice and the bench’s first Black woman, Ketanji Brown Jackson, made a clarion call in favor of keeping race as one of many factors in US higher education admissions, as America’s highest court heard oral arguments on the issue of affirmative action.The court is hearing two back-to-back cases brought against the University of North Carolina (UNC) and Harvard University by a conservative activist group, Students for Fair Admissions, but has not ruled.The group aims to block colleges from diversifying their student bodies by taking race into consideration alongside academic achievement and multiple other elements, essentially claiming that such a policy gives an unfair leg-up to African American and Hispanic students, who are underrepresented on campus, and discriminates against white and Asian American students.US students on why affirmative action is crucial: ‘They need our voices’Read moreA supporter of affirmative action, Cecilia Polanco, previously told the Guardian that: “A lot of the assumption is that someone less qualified than me took my place. That’s not what affirmative action does. It offers support to students who are just as qualified and may have different life experiences.”With a 6-3 conservative super-majority now on the court, affirmative action is deemed to be in jeopardy.Jackson has somewhat controversially recused herself from the case being heard second, against Harvard, because she attended it, though other current supreme court justices also attended Harvard but have not recused themselves.But Jackson spoke out stridently on Monday in the first case, involving UNC at Chapel Hill, when arguments were heard at the supreme court in Washington, where protesters on both sides gathered outside.Against Patrick Strawbridge, a lawyer for the plaintiff, Jackson said: “You haven’t demonstrated or shown one situation in which all they [the universities] look at is race. They’re looking at the full person.”Strawbridge said affirmative action violates the US constitution’s equal protection guarantees and federal non-discrimination statutes.Jackson said: “What I’m worried about is that the rule that you’re advocating, that in the context of a holistic review process, the university can take into account and value all of the other background and personal characteristics of other applicants, but they can’t value race … that seems to me to have the potential of causing more of an equal protection problem than it’s actually solving.”The justice was nominated in February by Joe Biden upon Stephen Breyer’s retirement. She was confirmed by the US Senate in April and had already been making an impact in the court’s new term.‘It means the world to us’: Black lawmakers’ euphoria greets Jackson confirmationRead moreOn Monday she explained her reasoning to Strawbridge by giving a hypothetical example of two aspiring students applying to UNC.She said: “The first applicant says, ‘I’m from North Carolina, my family has been in this area for generations since before the civil war, and I would like you to know that I will be the fifth generation to graduate from University of North Carolina. I now have that opportunity to do that. And in my family background, it’s important to me that I get to attend this university – I want to honor my family’s legacy by going to this school.’She continued: “The second applicant says ‘I’m from North Carolina. My family has been in this area for generations since before the civil war, but they were slaves and never had a chance to attend this venerable institution. As an African American, I now have that opportunity and given my family background it’s important to me to attend this university. I want to honor my family legacy by going to this school.’“Now, as I understand your no-race-conscious admissions rule, these two applicants would have a dramatically different opportunity to tell their family stories and to have them count.”Jackson added: “The first applicant would be able to have his family background considered and valued by the institution as part of its consideration of whether or not to admit him, while the second one wouldn’t be able to because his story is in many ways bound up with his race and with the race of his ancestors.“So I want to know, based on how your rule would likely play out in scenarios like that, why excluding consideration of race in a situation in which the person is not saying that his race is something that has impacted him in a negative way – he just wants to have it honored, just like the other person has their personal background family story honored – why is telling him no not an equal protection violation?”Strawbridge said the university could take into account factors such as whether a student would be the first generation in their family to attend and whether they may be economically disadvantaged, but he said that race should not be relevant these days.TopicsUS supreme courtUS politicsUS universitiesnewsReuse this content More

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      Paul Pelosi attack: suspect federally charged with assault and attempted kidnapping – as it happened

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      The justice department has announced charges against David DePape, who was arrested on Friday for allegedly breaking in to House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco residence and assaulting her husband, Paul Pelosi.DePape will face a charge of assault on a family member of a US official in retaliation for their work, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, the justice department said. He will also face a charge of attempting to kidnap a US official over their work, for which he could face a maximum of 20 years in prison.Following DePape’s early Friday morning arrest for the attack, which left Paul Pelosi needing surgery for a skull fracture along with other injuries, San Francisco’s police chief announced DePape was being held on suspicion of several charges, including attempted murder. The city’s district attorney is expected to formally level charges against him today, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.Closing summaryHere’s what happened today:
      The supreme court began hearing arguments in two cases that its conservative majority could use to end affirmative action. The AP reported that several members of the conservative bloc, who are known foes of the policy, showed no indication of changing their minds about it during ongoing oral arguments.
      The justice department announced charges against David DePape, who allegedly broke in Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco residence and assaulted her husband, Paul Pelosi. The charges include assault and attempted kidnapping. More charges are expected form the San Francisco’s district attorney.
      Donald Trump reportedly asked the supreme court to stop House lawmakers from getting his tax returns.
      Biden will reunite with Barack Obama in Philadelphia on Saturday to campaign for the state’s Democratic nominees for Senate and governor.
      Democrats have a slight advantage in three crucial Senate races, and are in a dead heat for a fourth, according to a New York Times poll.
      – Chris Stein and Gabrielle CanonIn the midst of midterms fervor, some Republicans have also used the attack as a chance to tout their “tough on crime” agendas.Texas Congressman Lance Gooden tried to blame Democrats for the attack, responding defensively to evidence that DePape may have been spurred to violence by far-right rhetoric. Others include Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican candidate Kari Lake, and former president Donald Trump, who all blamed Democrats for not doing more to crack down on violent crime..@KariLake @ her event today:“Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in DC — apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.”The crowd burst into laughter and the moderator was laughing so hard he covered his face with his notes. From @KateSullivanDC— Kyung Lah (@KyungLahCNN) October 31, 2022
      From Forbes:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Americans’ concerns about crime have increased over the past year, particularly among Republicans, leading GOP candidates to make the issue a central focus of their midterm campaigns. Nearly 80% of respondents in a recent Gallup poll said they believe crime is rising nationally, while 56% think crime is rising where they live.While there’s an increasing perception of worsening crime, there’s isn’t strong data to support it. Forbes also highlighted how murder rates dropped 2.4% in the largest US cities this year, according to Major Cities Chiefs Association and violent crimes dipped 1% per FBI statistics.But political divisiveness and aggressive rhetoric is fueling new concerns about the increase in attacks against public officials from both parties.Let’s keep pretending that we don’t know the motivation for the attack on Paul Pelosi pic.twitter.com/3ySXnsD3FD— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) October 31, 2022
      The New York Times reports that there’s been a tenfold increase in threats of political violence since Trump’s election and representatives are increasingly worried about their safety.“I wouldn’t be surprised if a senator or House member were killed,” Senator Susan Collins told the New York Times. “What started with abusive phone calls is now translating into active threats of violence and real violence.”In the aftermath of the attack, conservatives and divisive online personalities have floated conspiracy theories questioning the attack against Paul Pelosi and have helped fuel new rounds of misinformation. From Rolling Stone:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Because DePape had a history of blogging about far-right ideas and even dabbled in QAnon conspiracy theories, the GOP has scrambled to deny that this was an attempted assassination of a leading Democrat. Some have gone as far as peddling a conspiracy theory of their own. An “opinion” piece in the fake news publication the Santa Monica Observer falsely claimed that DePape was a sex worker hired by Pelosi and the two had gotten into a physical dispute. The piece was amplified by, among others, Elon Musk, who later deleted his tweeted link without explanation or apology.”San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told reporters Sunday that there is no evidence of a connection between the two men and details released by FBI officials Monday also counter the conspiratorial claims. Musk, the new owner of Twitter, has come under criticism for spreading the misinformation, sparking concerns that he will do little to curb conspiracies amplified on the social media site. Elon Musk’s Paul Pelosi tweet proves he has no business running Twitter | Robert ReichRead more“If Musk’s tweet doesn’t raise bright red warning signs all over the world about his judgment and character, just days after he took over one of the planet’s largest and most influential media machines, I don’t know what will,” Robert Reich, the former US secretary of labor wrote in an editorial for the Guardian. “That Musk would choose this tragedy to demonstrate the disgusting extremes such hateful lies can reach is another indictment of his character and judgment.”During the terrifying ordeal, Paul Pelosi was able to dial 9-1-1 from a bathroom, court documents show, and officials have highlighted how the quick actions of the dispatcher may have saved his life. With the line open after placing the emergency call, the dispatcher could hear the conversation between assailant David DePape and Pelosi. Two minutes later, the police arrived.“I truly believe, based on what I know, that it was lifesaving,” San Francisco District Attorney Brook Jenkins told ABC News. Jenkins is expected to file additional charges on Monday afternoon. Nancy Pelosi is far from the only Washington politician facing threats. Earlier today, Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell detailed just how menacing the atmosphere has become:.@RepSwalwell (D-CA) says his chief of staff spends 10 hours per week dealing with threats to him and his staff:”We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in security for myself and my staff. It almost rewards people who want to make threats.” pic.twitter.com/kvfA1GENb1— The Recount (@therecount) October 31, 2022
      The San Francisco Chronicle has more details about David DePape, who is now facing federal charges over Friday’s attack on Paul Pelosi.“He has been homeless. This person really does suffer from mental illness and that is probably why he was there at 2am,” DePape’s longtime partner Oxane “Gypsy” Taub told the Chronicle in an interview. She said DePape used drugs and struggled with mental illness, to the point that he thought “he was Jesus for a year.”The story paints a picture of DePape’s erratic life and bouts of homelessness that led to him being consumed by conspiracy theories, culminating in his attack on the Democratic House speaker’s husband.Here’s more from the Chronicle:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Taub remembered DePape, 42, as a “shy and sweet” person who once supported her well-documented fight against San Francisco’s public nudity laws. “David never appeared nude in any of my events even though he was encouraged to,” she said. “He was uncomfortable.”
      When the pair met in Hawaii in 2000, she said, DePape “didn’t know anything about politics,” but came to share her fervor for many progressive causes — though Taub also espoused conspiracy theories about the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
      “I don’t think he became a Trump supporter,” Taub said Sunday. “He was against the government, but if anything he was opposed to the shadow government, against the people who really run the government and use politicians as puppets. Like Trump was a puppet. David and I were against the shadow government.”
      Authorities say DePape, who most recently lived in Richmond, broke into the Pelosi home in San Francisco early Friday morning looking for the House speaker but found her husband alone. It’s not clear whether the intruder drove to the home or traveled there another way.The justice department’s complaint for its charges against David DePape contains harrowing details of the assault on Paul Pelosi.Here is what San Francisco police officers found when they responded to a 911 call at the Pelosi residence:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}At 2:31 a.m., San Francisco Police Department (“SFPD”) Officer Colby Wilmes responded to the Pelosi residence, California and knocked on the front door. When the door was opened, Pelosi and DePape were both holding a hammer with one hand and DePape had his other hand holding onto Pelosi’s forearm. Pelosi greeted the officers. The officers asked them what was going on. DePape responded that everything was good. Officers then asked Pelosi and DePape to drop the hammer. DePape pulled the hammer from Pelosi’s hand and swung the hammer, striking Pelosi in the head. Officers immediately went inside and were able to restrain DePape.Police found zip ties in the Pelosi residence that they said belonged to DePape, as well as retrieved from his backpack “a roll of tape, white rope, one hammer, one pair of rubber and cloth gloves, and a journal.”Here’s what Paul Pelosi told a police officer as he was going to the hospital:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Pelosi stated he had never seen DePape before. Pelosi was asleep when DePape came into Pelosi’s bedroom and stated he wanted to talk to “Nancy.” When Pelosi told him that Nancy was not there, DePape stated that he would sit and wait. Pelosi stated that his wife would not be home for several days and then DePape reiterated that he would wait. Pelosi was able to go into the bathroom which is when he was able to call 9- 1-1. Pelosi stated that when the officers arrived, that was when DePape struck him with the hammer.Here is what DePape told San Francisco police in an interview following his arrest:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}DePape stated that he was going to hold Nancy hostage and talk to her. If Nancy were to tell DePape the “truth,” he would let her go, and if she “lied,” he was going to break “her kneecaps.” DePape was certain that Nancy would not have told the “truth.” In the course of the interview, DePape articulated he viewed Nancy as the “leader of the pack” of lies told by the Democratic Party. DePape also later explained that by breaking Nancy’s kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other Members of Congress there were consequences to actions. The complaints adds that DePape “explained that he did not leave after Pelosi’s call to 9-1-1 because, much like the American founding fathers with the British, he was fighting against tyranny without the option of surrender. DePape reiterated this sentiment elsewhere in the interview.”The justice department has announced charges against David DePape, who was arrested on Friday for allegedly breaking in to House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco residence and assaulting her husband, Paul Pelosi.DePape will face a charge of assault on a family member of a US official in retaliation for their work, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, the justice department said. He will also face a charge of attempting to kidnap a US official over their work, for which he could face a maximum of 20 years in prison.Following DePape’s early Friday morning arrest for the attack, which left Paul Pelosi needing surgery for a skull fracture along with other injuries, San Francisco’s police chief announced DePape was being held on suspicion of several charges, including attempted murder. The city’s district attorney is expected to formally level charges against him today, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.Donald Trump has filed an emergency petition to the supreme court, asking it to halt the release of six years of his tax returns to the House ways and means committee, Bloomberg Law reports.The Internal Revenue Service was on 3 November expected to turn over the documents to the Democratic-led committee, after the former president lost repeated lower court decisions to stop Congress from seeing the returns.Trump defied political norms and refused to turn over his tax filings during his first run for the presidency in 2016, saying they were being audited. He maintained that stance throughout his presidency and afterwards.Here’s more on the petition, from Bloomberg Law:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The case presents “important questions about the separation of powers that will affect every future President,” Trump’s lawyers argued. Allowing the House Ways and Means Committee to obtain a president’s tax returns would “render the office of the Presidency vulnerable to invasive information demands from political opponents in the legislative branch,” they added.
      Trump’s lawyers also questioned the committee’s reasons for why it wanted his financial records, claiming the true purpose was to release Trump’s tax documents “to the public for the sake of exposure.” They argued that the judges who initially heard the case showed too much deference to the committee and ran afoul of a balancing test laid out earlier by the Supreme Court in a fight over Congress’ access to Trump’s financial records, Trump v Mazars.
      Trump’s request to stop the committee from immediately getting the documents will go to Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts, who handles emergency matters out of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, could act on Trump’s request by himself or circulate it to the other justices for a vote.The six-justice conservative majority on the supreme court has shown skepticism towards universities’ race-based admissions policies during oral arguments today, the Associated Press reports.The court is hearing two cases concerning the University of North Carolina and Harvard University, in which the court’s six conservative justices could potentially ban the use of race as a factor in college admissions, a practice known as affirmative action.Such a decision would be the latest example of the court overturning longstanding precedent, after five of its nine justices earlier this year struck down Roe v Wade and allowed states to ban abortion.The AP reports that several members of the conservative bloc are known foes of the policy, and showed no indication of changing their minds about it during ongoing oral arguments in the two cases.Here’s more from the AP’s story:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}During arguments in the first of two cases, the court sounded split along ideological lines on the issue of affirmative action.
      Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s second Black justice who has a long record of opposition to affirmative action programs, noted he didn’t go to racially diverse schools. “I’ve heard the word ‘diversity’ quite a few times and I don’t have a clue what it means,” the conservative justice said at one point. At another point he said: “Tell me what the educational benefits are?”
      Justice Amy Coney Barrett, another conservative, pointed to one of the court’s previous affirmative action cases and said it anticipated an end to the use of affirmative action, saying it was “dangerous, and it has to have an end point.” When, she asked, is that end point?
      Justice Samuel Alito likened affirmative action to a race in which a minority applicant gets to “start five yards closer to the finish line.” But liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Hispanic justice, rejected that comparison saying what universities are doing is looking at students as a whole.
      Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s newest justice and its first Black female, also said that race was being used at the University of North Carolina as part of a broad review of applicants along 40 different factors.
      “They’re looking at the full person with all of these characteristics,” she said.
      Justice Elena Kagan called universities the “pipelines to leadership in our society” and suggested that without affirmative action minority enrollment will drop.
      “I thought part of what it meant to be an American and to believe in American pluralism is that actually our institutions, you know, are reflective of who we are as a people in all our variety,” she said.
      The Supreme Court has twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 19 years, including just six years ago.Republican and Democratic political leaders condemned Friday’s attack on Paul Pelosi, husband to speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. But one of Donald Trump’s sons used it as an opportunity for insults, Martin Pengelly reports:In the aftermath of the attack on Paul Pelosi, amid rising concern over rightwing figures stoking violence against political opponents, Donald Trump Jr posted online a crude meme featuring a hammer, the weapon used to attack the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, on Friday.“OMG,” the former president’s son wrote next to the picture, which also had the caption “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready”.The internet backlash was swift but Trump Jr, a full-time provocateur and surrogate for his father, doubled down equally swiftly – posting another, this time clearly homophobic, meme which appears to reference a baseless conspiracy theory about the assault.Donald Trump Jr posts crude memes making light of attack on Paul PelosiRead moreOhio congressman Brad Wenstrup is grieving after his niece died among more than 150 people killed in a crowd crush during Halloween celebrations in South Korea.Wenstrup was the uncle of 20-year-old University of Kentucky nursing student Anne Marie Gieske, who was killed as a crowd of mostly young people flooded Itaewon’s narrow, sloping streets on Saturday. In a statement from his office, the Republican member of the US House of Representatives said he and his wife, Monica, were mourning their niece, whom he described as “a gift from God to our family”.“We loved her so much,” Wenstrup said.Gieske’s parents, Dan and Madonna Gieske, added: “We are completely devastated and heartbroken over the loss of Anne Marie. She was a bright light loved by all. “Anne’s final gift to us was dying in the state of sanctifying grace. We know we will one day be reunited with her in God’s kingdom.”Anne Marie Gieske was one of at least two young Americans to die in South Korea’s worst-ever crowd crush. The other was Steven Blesi, also 20 and a foreign exchange student from Georgia’s Kennesaw State University who was out celebrating having finished some academic exams.Blesi’s father, Steve, told the New York Times that learning of his son’s death was like being stabbed “a hundred million times simultaneously”.Wenstrup has represented Ohio in the US House since 2013. He is running for re-election against Democratic challenger Samantha Meadows during the 8 November midterms.Voters won’t just elect lawmakers and governors in the 8 November elections. In Michigan, they’ll choose whether or not to allow a 90-year-old abortion ban to go into effect. Poppy Noor reports from Ann Arbor:In the spring of this year, Julie Falbaum’s 20-year-old son walked into a frat party filled with about 50 of his peers, holding a stack of petitions. They were for a campaign to protect abortion.“Who wants to be a dad?” he yelled. Like a park-goer throwing bread to pigeons, he chucked the forms around the room and watched as dozens of young men swarmed to sign them.The campaign to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution was already under way here even before Roe fell, and it has become an embittered battle in Michigan – to keep a 90-year-old abortion ban off the books. Campaigners fear that ban would criminalise doctors and pregnant people and deny essential medical care, such as miscarriage medication, now that the constitutional right to abortion no longer exists in the US.The battle in Michigan has brought death threats and vandalism from pro-choice militants. On the anti-choice side, it has involved dirty tactics from the Republican party, which tried to block a petition brought by nearly 800,000 Michiganders over formatting errors, and has peddled a wide campaign of misinformation.Julie Falbaum, a campaigner for the yes campaign on Proposal 3, which would establish reproductive rights, believes her son’s story – that he managed to collect so many signatures at a frat party without a campaign plan – is reflective of a broad coalition of support for “Prop 3”, which is supported by men and women, young people and older people, Republicans and Democrats.“I see Michigan as pivotal to the future of democracy in the United States,” says Deirdre Roney, 60, who travelled from Los Angeles to campaign for the ballot in Detroit, where she grew up. Explaining that Detroit is the biggest voting bloc in Michigan, and that Michigan is one of the swingiest states in the country, she adds: “This is a blueprint. If this passes in Michigan, other states can use it.”‘This is a blueprint’: abortion rights ballot proposal takes off in MichiganRead moreJoe Biden will this afternoon mull levying a tax on energy companies’ profits in a speech planned for 4:30 pm. The last-minute address comes as Democrats look to reclaim credibility with voters on their handling of the economy ahead of next week’s midterm elections, which will decide the balance of power in Congress for the coming two years.Here’s what else happened today:
      Biden will reunite with Barack Obama in Philadelphia on Saturday to campaign for the state’s Democratic nominees for Senate and governor.
      Democrats have a slight advantage in three crucial Senate races, and are in a dead heat for a fourth, according to a New York Times poll.
      The supreme court is hearing arguments in two cases that its conservative majority could use to end affirmative action.
      In his speech this afternoon on oil companies’ record profits, Joe Biden will discuss whether to impose a windfall tax on energy firms, the Associated Press reports.Citing a person familiar with the matter, Biden will raise the possibility of a tax aimed specifically at energy companies’ profits as a way to encourage them to lower prices at the pump.The president is set to speak at 4:30 pm eastern time to “respond to reports over recent days of major oil companies making record-setting profits even as they refuse to help lower prices at the pump for the American people,” the White House announced earlier today. Rising gas prices have been a major drag on Biden and his Democratic allies’ public support ahead of the 8 November midterms, where polls indicate the state of the economy is voters’ top issue.Wisconsin isn’t just the site of one of the Democratic party’s few chances to add to their majority in the Senate – it’s also pivotal to the future of American democracy, the state’s party chair says.In a lengthy Twitter thread, Ben Wikler lays out what’s at stake in the governorship and statehouse races in the perennial swing state:In this moment, a tiny change in votes in Wisconsin could start a domino effect that could shape the future of American history. For worse, or better.— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
      Wisconsin is a policy laboratory. If the GOP makes their control voter-proof here, they’ll take those policies nationwide. Read this important story for details. But recognize, too, that this week could open the door to dismantling their control. https://t.co/wjh4jG6iq6— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
      First, the nightmare scenario: Mandela Barnes and Tony Evers could lose, and Ron Johnson and Tim Michels could win. Republicans could get a veto-proof supermajority in our state legislature. What would happen?— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
      Wisconsin’s been the tipping point state in the last two presidential elections. Both of those elections came down to less than a percentage point. If democracy breaks even further in Wisconsin, the Electoral College math gets grim—fast. https://t.co/IahUX86yxl— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
      Tim Michels, running for governor of Wisconsin, has explicitly said that his first priority will be to “fix” the election system by signing all of the voter suppression and election subversion laws that Governor Evers, our Democratic incumbent, has vetoed.https://t.co/a0vgjS18fi— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
      If Tim Michels rigs our elections, he will likely do it before the April 4, 2023 state Supreme Court election, which will determine the balance of power on Wisconsin’s highest court. The state court could uphold the rigging before the 2024 presidential. https://t.co/txmqPCowSn— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
      Gov Evers, on the other hand, supports fair elections and has been a brick wall to save our democracy—refusing to concede to Republican attacks and allowing the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission to do its job.— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
      If Tim Michels can scrap the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission and install radical Republicans—as he has promised—every rule governing how elections function could be shaped to advance the GOP’s partisan agenda. https://t.co/9DcK3c3CUa— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
      But if that’s not enough to give Trump a victory, and Trump still loses 2024, Michels could refuse to certify the election.In fact, when asked about it directly, he *only* committed to certifying the election *if* he can fix the election system first. pic.twitter.com/3mo5xWkYWj— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
      To win the electoral college majority in 2024, we’ll need Wisconsin.And if we lose the governor’s race now, the path to having a free, fair, and secure presidential election becomes stunningly bleak.— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
      Bernie Sanders is heading to Wisconsin to drum up support for Democratic candidates, the Associated Press reports:.@BernieSanders announces four stops in Wisconsin this week to support Democratic candidates and drive turnoutSanders plans to be in Eau Claire, La Crosse and Madison on Friday and in Oshkosh on SaturdayHis visit comes after former President @BarackObama was in Milwaukee— Scott Bauer (@sbauerAP) October 31, 2022
      The state is home to one of Democrats’ other Senate pickup opportunities this year, with lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes trying to unseat incumbent Republican Ron Johnson. Polls have generally shown Johnson with the advantage here.It’s also home to a very tight governors race, where Democratic incumbent Tony Evers is up for a second term against GOP challenger Tim Michels. More