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Tag: Brett Kavanaugh

  • How Justice Alito’s Retirement Might Upend the Midterms

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    Photo: Chip Somodevilla//Getty Images

    This week, there’s been a lot of attention focused on the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to its stunning decision blowing up the rationale for Donald Trump’s tariff agenda. In his bitter remarks about the decision, the president went out of his way to praise dissenters Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh.

    It’s Alito who could make some additional political news later this year. To understand why, you must step back to 2018, when Trump faced his first midterm election as president and the dynamics looked grim. He had lost the popular vote in 2016. His job-approval ratings had been underwater from the second week of his term in office. One of his two big first-term initiatives, legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare, had ended in dismal failure. And unsurprisingly, his party wound up losing 40 net U.S. House seats and control of that chamber.

    But at the same time, Republicans actually posted a net gain of two U.S. Senate seats and increased their majority from a fragile 51-to-49 margin to a more robust 53 to 47. Why? Well, according to many GOP spin-meisters, it was to a significant degree owing to “Kavanaugh’s revenge,” as CNBC reported at the time:

    Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., both credited the so-called Kavanaugh effect for Republican victories in key Senate races against red-state Democrats.

    Graham, in a thread of tweets Wednesday morning, said that the constituents of those Democratic incumbents who voted against Kavanaugh “held them responsible for being part of a despicable smear campaign orchestrated by the left.”

    The ”#KavanaughEffect,” Graham said, should be renamed ”#KavanaughsRevenge” …

    Republicans in critical states for the party were “highly offended” by the Democrats’ conduct during the confirmation proceedings, McConnell said, and the fallout from the process acted “like an adrenaline shot” for GOP turnout.

    Graham, as you may recall from his feral attacks on Senate Democrats during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, chaired the Judiciary Committee during that confirmation fight and contended that accusations of sexual assault against the soon-to-be Justice were blatantly unfair — nay, villainous. So it was natural for him to claim the hearings enraged both Republicans and swing voters and saved the Senate (an interpretation that also inflated his own importance, as it happens).

    It was a dubious interpretation of the midterms at the time, but the important thing is that many Republicans believed it. And that could feed a parallel development going into the 2026 midterms: a possible retirement by Kavanaugh’s senior and very right-wing colleague Samuel Alito.

    Alito has been on retirement watch for a while now. He’s 75 years old (and will turn 76 on April 1) and recently celebrated 20 years on the Supreme Court. And as the intrepid Court watcher Joan Biskupic noted in 2024 after he twice lost an initial majority on a case, Alito’s influence within the Court has been slipping, leaving him visibly frustrated:

    Alito has long given off an air of vexation, even as he is regularly in the majority with his conservative ideology. But the frustration of the 74-year-old justice has grown increasingly palpable in the courtroom. He has seldom faced this level of internal opposition.

    Overall, Alito wrote the fewest leading opinions for the court this term, only four, while other justices close to his 18-year seniority had been assigned (and kept majorities for) seven opinions each.

    His unique year in chambers was matched by the extraordinary public scrutiny for his off-bench activities, including lingering ethics controversies and a newly reported episode regarding an upside-down flag that had flown at this home in January 2021, after the pro–Donald Trump attack on the US Capitol. 

    There is also evidence that Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, would like him to step down from the bench so that both of them can openly express their political opinions.

    Thus, there’s been speculation, mostly from the political left, that an Alito retirement could happen before or immediately after the current Supreme Court term. The Nation’s legal expert Elie Mystal, then Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Michael Joseph Stern, drew attention to the odd timing of a new Alito book. Here’s the clue on which Mystal focused:

    [T]he book is scheduled to be released October 6, 2026. That’s a curious date. The Supreme Court starts its 2026–27 term on October 5, the first Monday of October. Alito’s book is set to drop the next day.

    It sure feels like Alito doesn’t plan on having a real job the Tuesday his book launches and instead thinks he’ll be free to run around the country promoting it.

    There’s also a political reason Alito might want to step down at this particular moment. He clearly cares about his legacy on the Court and wants to solidify the conservative majority for which he and Justice Clarence Thomas have served as the point of an ideological spear. Trump is leaving office in 2029, and it’s possible Republicans will lose their Senate majority in November. Confirmation of anyone remotely like Alito would be impossible with a Democratic Senate and difficult with a smaller majority than Republicans currently enjoy.

    Add in the “Kavanaugh’s revenge” theory of 2018, and you can see why Republicans might really want to press for an Alito retirement and then a good, savage Senate confirmation fight over a controversial nominee to succeed him, possibly 40-somethings like Andrew Oldham or Emil Bove, both Trump-nominated Circuit Court judges. If Alito was to retire at the end of the current term (perhaps announcing the retirement earlier), then the shape of the future Supreme Court could become a base-mobilizing issue for the GOP, all right — but potentially also one for Democrats.

    That leads us back to the idea that poor Kavanaugh’s persecution by Democrats “saved the Senate” in 2018. The alternative explanation is that Republicans had an insanely favorable Senate landscape that year in which three Democrats who lost (Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri) were doomed from the get-go by the rapidly rightward trends of their states, and a fourth, Florida’s Bill Nelson, lost by an eyelash in another red-trending state after being massively outspent by then-Governor Rick Scott.

    Even if you believe the Kavanaugh fight provided Republicans with a net benefit in 2018, there’s no reason to assume the same thing will happen in 2026, a year in which the Senate landscape is far less favorable to the GOP than it was in 2018 (according to the Cook Political Report, four of the seven competitive Senate races this year are on GOP turf). We also don’t know how the confirmation hearings for an Alito successor will turn out.

    But between Alito’s motives for retiring, the GOP’s fear that it could lose control of the confirmation process, and the “Kavanaugh’s revenge” mythology about 2018, don’t be surprised if there’s a Supreme Court fight this summer or fall. Democrats would be happy to bid farewell to the author of the infamous decision reversing Roe v. Wade. Even if it hurts rather than helps their midterm prospects, Alito’s right-wing fans will be happy to welcome a younger version of the cranky conservative onto a life-time seat on the Court.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • What to know about the Supreme Court arguments over Trump’s tariffs

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    Three lower courts have ruled President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose worldwide tariffs to be illegal. Now the Supreme Court, with three justices Trump appointed and generally favorable to muscular presidential power, will have the final word.In roughly two dozen emergency appeals, the justices have largely gone along with Trump in temporarily allowing parts of his aggressive second-term agenda to take effect while lawsuits play out.But the case being argued Wednesday is the first in which the court will render a final decision on a Trump policy. The stakes are enormous, both politically and financially.The Republican president has made tariffs a central piece of his economic and foreign policy and has said it would be a “disaster” if the Supreme Court rules against him.Here are some things to know about the tariffs arguments at the Supreme Court:Tariffs are taxes on importsThey are paid by companies that import finished products or parts, and the added cost can be passed on to consumers.Through September, the government has reported collecting $195 billion in revenue generated from the tariffs.The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but Trump has claimed extraordinary power to act without congressional approval by declaring national emergencies under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.In February, he invoked the law to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, saying that the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across the U.S. border amounted to a national emergency and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.In April, he imposed worldwide tariffs after declaring the United States’ longstanding trade deficits “a national emergency.”Libertarian-backed businesses and states challenged the tariffs in federal courtChallengers to Trump’s actions won rulings from a specialized trade court, a district judge in Washington and a business-focused appeals court, also in the nation’s capital.Those courts found that Trump could not justify tariffs under the emergency powers law, which doesn’t mention them. But they left the tariffs in place in the meantime.The appeals court relied on major questions, a legal doctrine devised by the Supreme Court that requires Congress to speak clearly on issues of “vast economic and political significance.”The major questions doctrine doomed several Biden policiesConservative majorities struck down three of then-President Joe Biden’s initiatives related to the coronavirus pandemic. The court ended the Democrat’s pause on evictions, blocked a vaccine mandate for large businesses and prevented student loan forgiveness that would have totaled $500 billion over 10 years.In comparison, the stakes in the tariff case are much higher. The taxes are estimated to generate $3 trillion over 10 years.The challengers in the tariffs case have cited writings by the three Trump appointees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, in calling on the court to apply similar limitations on a signal Trump policy.Barrett described a babysitter taking children on roller coasters and spending a night in a hotel based on a parent’s encouragement to “make sure the kids have fun.”“In the normal course, permission to spend money on fun authorizes a babysitter to take children to the local ice cream parlor or movie theater, not on a multiday excursion to an out-of-town amusement park,” Barrett wrote in the student loans case. “If a parent were willing to greenlight a trip that big, we would expect much more clarity than a general instruction to ‘make sure the kids have fun.’”Kavanaugh, though, has suggested the court should not apply the same limiting standard to foreign policy and national security issues.A dissenting appellate judge also wrote that Congress purposely gave presidents more latitude to act through the emergency powers law.Some of the businesses that sued also are raising a separate legal argument in an appeal to conservative justices, saying that Congress could not constitutionally delegate its taxing power to the president.The nondelegation principle has not been used in 90 years, since the Supreme Court struck down some New Deal legislation.But Gorsuch authored a dissent in June that would have found the Federal Communications Commission’s universal service fee an unconstitutional delegation. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined the dissent.“What happens when Congress, weary of the hard business of legislating and facing strong incentives to pass the buck, cedes its lawmaking power, clearly and unmistakably, to an executive that craves it?” Gorsuch wrote.The justices could act more quickly than usual in issuing a decisionThe court only agreed to hear the case in September, scheduling arguments less than two months later. The quick turnaround, at least by Supreme Court standards, suggests that the court will try to act fast.High-profile cases can take half a year or more to resolve, often because the majority and dissenting opinions go through rounds of revision.But the court can act quickly when deadline pressure dictates. Most recently, the court ruled a week after hearing arguments in the TikTok case, unanimously upholding a law requiring the popular social media app to be banned unless it was sold by its Chinese parent company. Trump has intervened several times to keep the law from taking effect while negotiations continue with China.

    WASHINGTON —

    Three lower courts have ruled President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose worldwide tariffs to be illegal. Now the Supreme Court, with three justices Trump appointed and generally favorable to muscular presidential power, will have the final word.

    In roughly two dozen emergency appeals, the justices have largely gone along with Trump in temporarily allowing parts of his aggressive second-term agenda to take effect while lawsuits play out.

    But the case being argued Wednesday is the first in which the court will render a final decision on a Trump policy. The stakes are enormous, both politically and financially.

    The Republican president has made tariffs a central piece of his economic and foreign policy and has said it would be a “disaster” if the Supreme Court rules against him.

    Here are some things to know about the tariffs arguments at the Supreme Court:

    Tariffs are taxes on imports

    They are paid by companies that import finished products or parts, and the added cost can be passed on to consumers.

    Through September, the government has reported collecting $195 billion in revenue generated from the tariffs.

    The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but Trump has claimed extraordinary power to act without congressional approval by declaring national emergencies under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

    In February, he invoked the law to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, saying that the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across the U.S. border amounted to a national emergency and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.

    In April, he imposed worldwide tariffs after declaring the United States’ longstanding trade deficits “a national emergency.”

    Libertarian-backed businesses and states challenged the tariffs in federal court

    Challengers to Trump’s actions won rulings from a specialized trade court, a district judge in Washington and a business-focused appeals court, also in the nation’s capital.

    Those courts found that Trump could not justify tariffs under the emergency powers law, which doesn’t mention them. But they left the tariffs in place in the meantime.

    The appeals court relied on major questions, a legal doctrine devised by the Supreme Court that requires Congress to speak clearly on issues of “vast economic and political significance.”

    The major questions doctrine doomed several Biden policies

    Conservative majorities struck down three of then-President Joe Biden’s initiatives related to the coronavirus pandemic. The court ended the Democrat’s pause on evictions, blocked a vaccine mandate for large businesses and prevented student loan forgiveness that would have totaled $500 billion over 10 years.

    In comparison, the stakes in the tariff case are much higher. The taxes are estimated to generate $3 trillion over 10 years.

    The challengers in the tariffs case have cited writings by the three Trump appointees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, in calling on the court to apply similar limitations on a signal Trump policy.

    Barrett described a babysitter taking children on roller coasters and spending a night in a hotel based on a parent’s encouragement to “make sure the kids have fun.”

    “In the normal course, permission to spend money on fun authorizes a babysitter to take children to the local ice cream parlor or movie theater, not on a multiday excursion to an out-of-town amusement park,” Barrett wrote in the student loans case. “If a parent were willing to greenlight a trip that big, we would expect much more clarity than a general instruction to ‘make sure the kids have fun.’”

    Kavanaugh, though, has suggested the court should not apply the same limiting standard to foreign policy and national security issues.

    A dissenting appellate judge also wrote that Congress purposely gave presidents more latitude to act through the emergency powers law.

    Some of the businesses that sued also are raising a separate legal argument in an appeal to conservative justices, saying that Congress could not constitutionally delegate its taxing power to the president.

    The nondelegation principle has not been used in 90 years, since the Supreme Court struck down some New Deal legislation.

    But Gorsuch authored a dissent in June that would have found the Federal Communications Commission’s universal service fee an unconstitutional delegation. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined the dissent.

    “What happens when Congress, weary of the hard business of legislating and facing strong incentives to pass the buck, cedes its lawmaking power, clearly and unmistakably, to an executive that craves it?” Gorsuch wrote.

    The justices could act more quickly than usual in issuing a decision

    The court only agreed to hear the case in September, scheduling arguments less than two months later. The quick turnaround, at least by Supreme Court standards, suggests that the court will try to act fast.

    High-profile cases can take half a year or more to resolve, often because the majority and dissenting opinions go through rounds of revision.

    But the court can act quickly when deadline pressure dictates. Most recently, the court ruled a week after hearing arguments in the TikTok case, unanimously upholding a law requiring the popular social media app to be banned unless it was sold by its Chinese parent company. Trump has intervened several times to keep the law from taking effect while negotiations continue with China.

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  • 8-year sentence for plot to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh

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    Sophie Roske, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to attempting to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022, was sentenced to eight years and one month in jail Friday, in Greenbelt, Maryland.

    Roske was arrested and charged under a male name but now goes by Sophie Roske, according to her defense attorneys. In April, she pleaded guilty to attempting to kill or kidnap a Supreme Court justice.

    The 97-month sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, who also ordered a lifetime of supervised release. 

    The judge noted Roske’s history of mental health issues and said Roske showed remorse, noting that she called the police on herself before attacking Kavanaugh, but said Roske’s conduct was “incredibly serious” and a “significant prison sentence” was warranted.

    “Anyone who thinks they can intimidate a judge and her family by threatening to harm or engage in violence against them will be caught and punished,” Boardman said, adding “whether the target audience sees this message, hears it,” is “frankly unknown.”

    In court, Roske briefly spoke, apologizing to Justice Kavanaugh. 

    “I sincerely apologize to the justice and his family for the considerable distress I have put them through,” Roske said, adding she was sorry for “contributing to the fear that judges feel while doing their job.” 

    Roske continued, calling her actions “selfish and misguided,” before adding, “I have been portrayed as a monster, and this tragic mistake I have made will follow me the rest of my life.”

    In September, prosecutors asked that Roske be sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for attempting the “preplanned, coldblooded murder” of Kavanaugh at his home in 2022. Roske was seen by U.S. Marshals getting out of a cab near Kavanaugh’s home in the early morning hours before walking up the street away from the home. But Roske then called an emergency line and reported having suicidal thoughts and a firearm in a suitcase. Roske then told the operator of coming from California to kill a “specific United States Supreme Court justice,” according to a court filing.

    Roske was then detained without incident, in possession of a black tactical chest rig and tactical knife, a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines and ammunition, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, screwdriver, nail punch, crow bar, pistol light, duct tape, hiking boots with padding on the outside of the soles, and other items, an affidavit said.

    In her plea agreement, Roske admitted to traveling from California, where she lived at the time, to Maryland, to attack Kavanaugh, and according to federal prosecutors, aimed to kill three members of the Supreme Court in order to “single-handedly alter the constitutional order for ideological ends.” 

    Roske, prosecutors said Friday, had “ramped up” plans for the attack after the leak of a draft of the Supreme Court decision ending the federal right to an abortion and leaving questions about its legality to the states. 

    “The defendant researched; planned; procured the tools for the planned killings; traveled across the entirety of the country with those tools, including a gun; and attempted to delete online evidence of motive and intent,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. 

    “The defendant’s objective — to target and kill judges to seek to alter a court’s ruling — is an abhorrent form of terrorism and strikes at the core of the United States Constitution and our prescribed system of government,” the government said.

    Roske also conducted Google searches for “how much force do you need to stab someone’s neck,” “most effective way to silently kill someone” and “how to break a lock,” according to the sentencing memorandum.

    Prosecutors said that a map saved in Roske’s Google account contained pins that marked what Roske believed were the homes of four sitting Supreme Court justices. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority.

    During Friday’s sentencing hearing, federal prosecutors displayed some of the materials Roske possessed when arrested, including zip ties, a tactical vest with pepper spray and a knife, a lock-pick set and a hammer. 

    Justice Department prosecutor Coreen Mao said Friday that Roske’s “singular, focused mission”  was “terrorism” and she had aimed to “affect the conduct of government,” citing Roske’s statements to law enforcement after arrest and internet searches for information about Supreme Court justices. 

    Roske’s attorneys did not dispute their clients actions leading up to the planned attack, but cited her years-long history of mental health issues and an attempted suicide as context to her behavior in planning the attack. Roske’s attorneys asked for a sentence of 8 years in prison and 25 years of supervised release. 

    Earlier this month, Roske wrote a letter to Boardman apologizing to Justice Kavanaugh for her actions.

    “I put them through a harrowing experience and for that I am truly sorry. I am very glad I did not continue,” Roske wrote. “I am also sorry for contributing to a trend of political violence in American politics.”

    Scott MacFarlane and

    Melissa Quinn

    contributed to this report.

    Jacob Rosen

    Jake Rosen is a reporter covering the Department of Justice. He was previously a campaign digital reporter covering President Trump’s 2024 campaign and also served as an associate producer for “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”

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  • Has Brett Kavanaugh Ever Hired a Day Laborer?

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    Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

    More than any other recent ruling in the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, known to critics as the “shadow docket” for the speed and darkness with how decisions are made, the order in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo has people who don’t normally follow these things up in arms. A friend from Peru messaged me, out of the blue, to try to make sense of it for him. “Please explain how the Supreme Court could come to this conclusion!” he implored.

    I couldn’t, for the simple reason that the court’s supermajority didn’t offer an explanation. That is, there was no reasoning to accompany an order that lifted a judge’s injunction that, for the better part of two months, sought to prevent federal agents from making indiscriminate stops and arrests of workers in the Los Angeles area — a campaign against work itself that has swept up people who are a threat to no one else but Stephen Miller: day laborers at Home Depot, car washers, garment-factory workers, farm workers, you name it. Not even fruteros are spared. (The government hasn’t been complying exactly, but that’s another discussion.)

    The judge’s ruling was common sense: Under the Fourth Amendment, which protects everyone against unreasonable searches and seizures, a person’s race or ethnicity, the language they speak, or the kinds of jobs they hold or seek cannot be the basis for immigration sweeps and detention. Yet a silent majority of the Supreme Court blocked that ruling, with no explanation. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, didn’t hold back: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job,” she wrote.

    Brett Kavanaugh, who just last week tried to assuage judges that the Supreme Court could be doing a better job explaining its work in the shadows, opted to shed some light on this latest decision. In the process, he laid bare his own ignorance about Los Angeles, immigrant workers, communities in which their work is valued, and what the rest of us have been seeing with our own eyes regarding these immigration raids. The tell is near the top of his concurring opinion, which no other justice joined and states as fact something that isn’t: “Illegal immigration is especially pronounced in the Los Angeles area, among other locales in the United States.”

    Anyone who knows even a little bit about Los Angeles, New York City, the District of Columbia, or other “locales” where immigrants breathe, live, work, and have families — many of them married to U.S. citizens, with children born here, or other deep roots — can attest that “illegal immigration,” the way Kavanaugh conceives of it, is a mirage. People with immigrant backgrounds simply exist in these cities and communities, and no one — except immigration authorities — goes around wondering who is or isn’t an immigrant, who does or doesn’t have papers, who crossed the border or flew in and overstayed their tourist visa. That just isn’t a thing. In many parts of California, there are people of Mexican descent whose families predated the Mexican-American War. Merely questioning their right to belong offends their very sense of self.

    Kavanaugh appears to deeply care about who belongs and who doesn’t, at one point referencing a trope that anti-immigration proponents like to advance — that there are people who “are not only violating the immigration laws but also jumping in front of those noncitizens who follow the rules and wait in line to immigrate into the United States through the legal immigration process.” A notion that is cut from the same cloth as the so-called good-immigrant-bad-immigrant binary.

    But even assuming that people cared about a person’s provenance, or whether they had authorization to be here, or carried identification with them, not only would the inquiry inevitably ensnare U.S. citizens, as has been the case; it would sweep far more than the modest, low-wage work and workers implicated by the Supreme Court’s decision. As Ahilan Arulanantham, an immigration scholar from Los Angeles, told me not too long ago, in Southern California specifically, “there are undocumented lawyers, there are undocumented accountants, there are undocumented doctors, lots of small-business owners, some people with advanced degrees.” In this reality, he added, the Trump administration’s onslaught “is felt actually throughout the social and economic fabric of the city.”

    Worse still, the way Kavanaugh imagines these immigration sweeps to be are detached from the reality of their violence and duration. Pointing to the Immigration and Nationality Act and its regulations, which otherwise allow the government to “briefly detain” a person if agents have “a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, that the person being questioned … is an alien illegally in the United States,” Kavanaugh thinks this dragnet of racial profiling allows people to experience a short inconvenience before they resume their daily activities. “If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go,” he writes. “If the individual is illegally in the United States, the officers may arrest the individual and initiate the process for removal.”

    As Sherrilyn Ifill, a civil-rights lawyer and the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund observed on Substack, just about everything Kavanaugh wrote in that rundown has no support in the factual record of the case, let alone the public record that we ourselves have had to bear witness to. “Every aspect of this description is belied by the reality that appears on our televisions and online every day.” She added: “But who are you going to believe — Justice Kavanaugh or your lying eyes? Kavanaugh’s description reads as though it were downloaded from the Department of Homeland Security’s website.”

    But even if this fantasy world that Kavanaugh imagines were true, there’s the added complication that no law supersedes the Constitution. As Justice Sotomayor points out in dissent, even if such a made-up statute existed, “no Act of Congress can authorize a violation of the Constitution,” and it is up to judges to “decide whether the Fourth Amendment allows” these kinds of unreasonable stops.

    All of this leads me to wonder: Has Brett Kavanaugh ever pulled up to a Home Depot to hire a day laborer to work on his backyard? Has he bought fresh-cut mangoes from a frutero? What about getting his car vacuumed and washed by an ensemble of workers? Does he leave a tip for the Central American hotel worker who cleans up his rooms? Has he gotten his hair cut by a Dominican barber? And can he imagine himself interacting with any of these workers, who may or may not be undocumented, during an ICE sweep that lands them in an unmarked vehicle, manned by masked agents of the state, subjecting them and their families to untold trauma until their release, which may not happen for days, if at all? Because I’ve done all of those things, and I can — and now I wonder if I might one day be swept up with them, too.

    If he can’t do that, then it might have been wiser to keep silent, like his colleagues in the majority did — and wait until the issue returns to the Supreme Court. Because the issue will return — if not in the same California case, in another one from New York, D.C., or another city where the president of the United States has been dreaming of a national police force, unbound by law.

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    Cristian Farias

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  • Kamala Harris is now Democratic presidential nominee, will face off against Donald Trump this fall

    Kamala Harris is now Democratic presidential nominee, will face off against Donald Trump this fall

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    WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris, a daughter of immigrants who rose through the California political and law enforcement ranks to become the first female vice president in U.S. history, formally secured the Democratic presidential nomination on Monday — becoming the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket.

    More than four years after her first attempt at the presidency collapsed, Harris’ coronation as her party’s standard-bearer caps a tumultuous and frenetic period for Democrats prompted by President Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate performance that shattered his own supporters’ confidence in his reelection prospects and spurred extraordinary intraparty warfare about whether he should stay in the race.

    Just as soon as Biden abruptly ended his candidacy, Harris and her team worked rapidly to secure backing from the 1,976 party delegates needed to clinch the nomination in a formal roll call vote. She reached that marker at warp speed, with an Associated Press survey of delegates nationwide showing she locked down the necessary commitments a mere 32 hours after Biden’s announcement.

    Harris’ nomination became official after a five-day round of online balloting by Democratic National Convention delegates ended Monday night. The party had long contemplated the early virtual roll call to ensure Biden would appear on the ballot in every state.

    An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted after Biden withdrew found 46% of Americans have a favorable view of Harris, while a nearly identical share has an unfavorable view of her. But more Democrats say they are satisfied with her candidacy compared with that of Biden, energizing a party that had long been resigned to the 81-year-old Biden being its nominee against former President Donald Trump, a Republican they view as an existential threat.

    Already Harris has telegraphed that she doesn’t plan to veer much from the themes and policies that framed Biden’s candidacy, such as democracy, gun violence prevention and abortion rights. But her delivery can be far fierier, particularly when she invokes her prosecutorial background to lambast Trump and his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records in connection with a hush money scheme.

    “Given that unique voice of a new generation, of a prosecutor and a woman when fundamental rights, especially reproductive rights, are on the line, it’s almost as if the stars have aligned for her at this moment in history,” said Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, who was tapped to succeed Harris in the Senate when she became vice president.

    A splash in Washington before a collapse in the 2020 primaries

    Kamala Devi Harris was born Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer scientist who emigrated to the United States from India when she was 19 years old, and Stanford University emeritus professor Donald Harris, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Jamaica. Her parents’ advocacy for civil rights gave her what she described as a “stroller’s-eye view” of the movement.

    She spent years as a prosecutor in the Bay Area before her elevation as the state’s attorney general in 2010 and then election as U.S. senator in 2016.

    Harris arrived in Washington as a senator at the dawn of the volatile Trump era, quickly establishing herself as a reliable liberal opponent of the new president’s personnel and policies and fanning speculation about a presidential bid of her own. Securing a spot on the coveted Judiciary Committee gave her a national spotlight to interrogate prominent Trump nominees, such as now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

    “I’m not able to be rushed this fast,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during a 2017 hearing as Harris repeatedly pressed him on potential conversations with Russian nationals. “It makes me nervous.”

    Harris launched her 2020 presidential campaign with much promise, drawing parallels to former President Barack Obama and attracting more than 20,000 people to a kickoff rally in her hometown. But Harris withdrew from the primary race before the first nominating contest in Iowa, plagued by staff dissent that spilled out into the open and an inability to attract enough campaign cash.

    Harris struggled to deliver a consistent pitch to Democratic voters and wobbled on key issues such as health care. She suggested she backed eliminating private insurance for a full government-run system — “Medicare for All” coverage — before releasing her own health care plan that preserved private insurance. Now, during her nascent general election campaign, Harris has already reversed some of her earlier, more liberal positions, such as a ban on fracking that she endorsed in 2019.

    And while Harris tried to deploy her law enforcement background as an asset in her 2020 presidential campaign, it never attracted enough support in a party that couldn’t reconcile some of her past tough-on-crime positions at a time of heightened focus on police brutality.

    Joining Biden’s team — and an evolution as vice president

    Still, Harris was at the top of the vice presidential shortlist when Biden was pondering his running mate, after his pledge in early 2020 that he would choose a Black woman as his No. 2. He was fond of Harris, who had forged a close friendship with his now-deceased son Beau, who had been Delaware’s attorney general when she was in that job for California.

    Her first months as vice president were far from smooth. Biden asked her to lead the administration’s diplomatic efforts with Central America on the root causes of migration to the United States, which triggered attacks from Republicans on border security and remains a political vulnerability. It didn’t help matters that Harris stumbled in big interviews, such as in a 2021 sit-down with NBC News’ Lester Holt when she responded dismissively that “I haven’t been to Europe” when the anchor noted that she hadn’t visited the U.S.-Mexico border.

    For her first two years, Harris also was often tethered to Washington so she could break tie votes in the evenly divided Senate, which gave Democrats landmark wins on the climate and health care but also constrained opportunities for her to travel around the country and meet voters.

    Her visibility became far more prominent after the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that dismantled Roe v. Wade, as she became the chief spokesperson for the administration on abortion rights and was a more natural messenger than Biden, a lifelong Catholic who had in the past favored restrictions on the procedure. She is the first vice president to tour an abortion clinic and speaks about reproductive rights in the broader context of maternal health, especially for Black women.

    Throughout her vice presidency, Harris has been careful to remain loyal to Biden while emphasizing that she would be ready to step in if needed. That dramatic transition began in late June after the first debate between Biden and Trump, where the president’s stumbles were so cataclysmic that he could never reverse the loss of confidence from other Democrats.

    Headed to the top of the ticket

    After Biden ended his candidacy July 21, he quickly endorsed Harris. And during the first two weeks of her 2024 presidential bid, enthusiasm among the Democratic base surged, with donations pouring in, scores of volunteers showing up at field offices and supporters swelling so much in numbers that event organizers have had to swap venues.

    The Harris campaign now believes it has a renewed opportunity to compete in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia — states that Biden had started to abandon in favor of shoring up the so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

    “The country is able to see the Kamala Harris that we all know,” said Bakari Sellers, who was a national co-chair of her 2020 campaign. “We really didn’t allow the country to see her” four years ago. Sellers said: “We had her in bubble wrap. What people are seeing now is that she’s real, she’s talented.”

    Yet Democrats are anticipating that Harris’ political honeymoon will wear off, and she is inevitably going to come under tougher scrutiny for Biden administration positions, the state of the economy and volatile situations abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Harris has also yet to answer extended questions from journalists nor sit down for a formal interview since she began her run.

    The Trump campaign has been eager to define Harris as she continues to introduce herself to voters nationwide, releasing an ad blaming her for the high number of illegal crossings at the southern border during the Biden administration and dubbing her “Failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal.”

    The Republican nominee’s supporters have also derisively branded Harris as a diversity hire, while Trump himself has engaged in ugly racial attacks of his own, wrongly asserting that Harris had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage and only recently played up her Black identity.

    His remarks are previewing a season of racist and sexist claims against the person who would be the first woman and the first person of South Asian heritage in the presidency.

    “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said while addressing the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

    In her response, Harris called it “the same old show — the divisiveness and the disrespect” and said voters “deserve better.”

    “The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts,” Harris said at a Sigma Gamma Rho sorority gathering in Houston. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us.”

    Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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  • EPA slashes federally protected waters by more than half after Supreme Court ruling | CNN Politics

    EPA slashes federally protected waters by more than half after Supreme Court ruling | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Environmental Protection Agency and US Army on Tuesday released a new rule that slashes federally protected water by more than half, following a Supreme Court decision in May that rolled back protections for US wetlands.

    The rule will invalidate an earlier definition of what constitutes the so-called waters of the United States, after the Supreme Court ruled Clean Water Act protections extend only to “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the United States in their own rights.”

    It could impact up to 63% of US wetlands by acreage and around 1.2 million to 4.9 million miles of ephemeral streams, an EPA spokesperson told CNN. An ephemeral stream is one that typically only has water flowing through it during and immediately after rain events.

    The decision excluded wetlands and smaller tributaries from being protected as they had been for the last 45 years. The new rule will take effect immediately, according to a press release from the agencies.

    EPA Administrator Michael Regan registered his displeasure with the spring SCOTUS decision but said the agency has worked swiftly to finalize it.

    “While I am disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Sackett case, EPA and Army have an obligation to apply this decision alongside our state co-regulators, Tribes, and partners,” Regan said in a statement. “We’ve moved quickly to finalize amendments to the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ to provide a clear path forward that adheres to the Supreme Court’s ruling. EPA will never waver from our responsibility to ensure clean water for all.”

    The newly finalized rule from the Biden administration means the US Army Corps of Engineers can resume issuing jurisdictional determinations that had been paused after the Supreme Court decision.

    The decision provoked an outcry among environmental groups and drew a rare rebuke from conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who dissented with the liberal justices. The majority had “rewritten the Clean Water Act” and ignored its text as well as “45 years of consistent agency practice,” Kavanaugh wrote.

    Kavanaugh also wrote that the lands to be regulated did not have to physically touch an adjacent waterway to constitute “waters of the United States,” but that they could include wetlands that are “separated from a covered water only by a man-made dike or barrier, natural river berm, beach dune or the like.” He noted that eight different administrations since 1977 had recognized such wetlands as being protected.

    The statutory text, Kavanaugh wrote, “does not require a continuous surface connection between those wetlands and covered waters.”

    “By narrowing the (Clean Water) Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands,” Kavanaugh wrote, “the court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”

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  • Federal court strikes down Alabama congressional map after legislature snubbed Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    Federal court strikes down Alabama congressional map after legislature snubbed Supreme Court | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal court blocked a newly drawn Alabama congressional map on Tuesday because it didn’t create a second majority-Black district as the Supreme Court had ordered earlier this year.

    In a unanimous decision from a three-judge panel, which had overseen the case before it reached the Supreme Court, the judges wrote that they were “disturbed” by Alabama’s actions in the case.

    The state had snubbed the Supreme Court’s order – a surprise 5-4 decision in June – that the maps should be redrawn. White voters currently make up the majority in six of the state’s seven congressional districts, although 27% of the state’s population is Black.

    “We are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires,” wrote the judges, two of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

    Alabama officials on Tuesday filed notice that they are appealing the ruling.

    “While we are disappointed in today’s decision, we strongly believe that the Legislature’s map complies with the Voting Rights Act and the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court,” the office of Alabama Attorney General Steven Marshall said in a statement. “We intend to promptly seek review from the Supreme Court to ensure that the State can use its lawful congressional districts in 2024 and beyond.”

    Alabama officials also asked the three-judge court to freeze its opinion invalidating the congressional map but said they will formally ask the Supreme Court for a stay on Thursday.

    This redistricting battle – and separate, pending litigation over congressional maps in states such as Georgia and Florida – could determine which party controls the US House of Representatives after next year’s elections. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority in the chamber.

    The three federal judges overseeing the Alabama case on Tuesday ordered a special master to submit three proposed maps that would create a second Black-majority district by September 25.

    The panel wrote that it was “not aware of any other case” in which a state legislature had responded to being ordered to a draw map with a second majority-minority district by creating one that the state itself admitted didn’t create the required district.

    “The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” and Alabama’s new map, they wrote, “plainly fails to do so.”

    JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, which has been fighting the case, praised the ruling: “Elected officials ignored their responsibilities and chose to violate our democracy. We hope the court’s special master helps steward a process that ensures a fair map that Black Alabamians and our state deserve.”

    This summer, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, had affirmed an earlier decision by the three-judge panel and ordered the state to redraw congressional maps to include a second majority-Black district or “something quite close to it.”

    The Supreme Court’s surprise decision in Alabama – coming after the right-leaning high court has chipped away at other parts of the Voting Rights Act in recent years – has given fresh hope to voting rights activists and Democrats that they could prevail in challenges to other maps they view as discriminating against minorities.

    But the new map approved by Alabama’s Republican-dominated legislature – and signed into law by GOP Gov. Kay Ivey – in July created only one majority-Black district and boosted the share of Black voters in a second district from roughly 30% to nearly 40%.

    The pending cases center on whether GOP state legislators drew congressional maps after the 2020 census that weakened the power of Black voters in violation of Section 2 of the historic Voting Rights Act.

    Republicans control all statewide offices in Alabama and all but one congressional seat. The single Black-majority congressional district is represented by Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell, the state’s first Black woman elected to Congress.

    Alabama officials have argued that the map as redrawn by state lawmakers was aimed at maintaining traditional guidelines for congressional redistricting, such as keeping together communities of interest. And they have signaled that they hope to sway one of the Supreme Court justices who sided with the majority in June.

    The state’s briefs before the three-judge panel referenced a concurring opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh – one of the two conservatives who sided with the liberal justices on the high court to vote against the original Alabama map – that questioned whether “race-based redistricting” can “extend indefinitely into the future.”

    The lower-court judges weren’t convinced by the state’s arguments.

    They wrote that after reviewing the concurrence, as well as a part of the Supreme Court’s ruling which Kavanaugh didn’t join, “We do not understand either of those writings as undermining any aspect of the Supreme Court’s affirmance; if they did, the Court would not have affirmed the injunction.”

    The judges also rejected Alabama’s argument that drawing a second Black-majority district would unconstitutionally constitute “affirmative action in redistricting.”

    “Unlike affirmative action in the admissions programs the Supreme Court analyzed in [this year’s affirmative action case], which was expressly aimed at achieving balanced racial outcomes in the makeup of the universities’ student bodies, the Voting Rights Act guarantees only ‘equality of opportunity, not a guarantee of electoral success for minority-preferred candidates of whatever race,’” the panel wrote.

    “The Voting Rights Act does not provide a leg up for Black voters – it merely prevents them from being kept down with regard to what is arguably the most ‘fundamental political right,’ in that it is ‘preservative of all rights’ – the right to vote.”

    Earlier, in a letter to state lawmakers, Marshall had argued that a separate Supreme Court ruling in June – after the high court’s Alabama redistricting decision came down – that ended affirmative action in college admissions meant that using a map in which “race predominates” would open up the state to claims that it was violating the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Justices Expand Supreme Court To 40 Right-Wing Buddies

    Justices Expand Supreme Court To 40 Right-Wing Buddies

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    WASHINGTON—Explaining that the move just made sense given the national importance of their rulings, the six conservative justices announced Friday that they had expanded the U.S. Supreme Court to include 40 of their right-wing buddies. “The Supreme Court is pleased to welcome a few stalwart conservative judges from the circuit courts, a dozen reactionaries from Harvard Law School, and my brother-in-law, an accountant,” said Chief Justice John Roberts, adding that he, along with Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas, had overruled the court’s three liberal members and sworn in 40 new conservative justices that morning. “We figured Biden or Congress would try to expand the court, given all that’s going on, and we were surprised when they didn’t—but hey, that’s typical Washington gridlock for you. Hanging out with the same nine people all the time is kind of a drag, so we decided to take it upon ourselves to call up the Heritage Foundation and get 15 recommendations. Neil also invited some of his golf buddies, Amy called a couple priests she knows through church, and for diversity, we let a couple of the guys bring their wives. It’ll be nice having Ginni here on the court, for Clarence’s sake. And as a bonus, this should give the Supreme Court a rock-solid right-wing majority that will last until the end of time.” At press time, the Supreme Court had ruled 46-3 to overturn gay marriage.

    Nude Justice Breyer Leaves Supreme Court After Turning In His Robes

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  • Brett Kavanaugh Rules Against Loan Forgiveness Plan Citing Precedent That All Debts Mysteriously Vanish

    Brett Kavanaugh Rules Against Loan Forgiveness Plan Citing Precedent That All Debts Mysteriously Vanish

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  • Supreme Court rejects Texas and Louisiana challenge to Biden deportation priorities | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court rejects Texas and Louisiana challenge to Biden deportation priorities | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court, in an 8-1 ruling on Friday, revived the Biden administration’s immigration guidelines that prioritize which noncitizens to deport, dismissing a challenge from two Republican state attorneys general who argued the policies conflicted with immigration law.

    The court said the states, Texas and Louisiana, did not have the “standing,” or the legal right, to sue in the first place in a decision that will further clarify when a state can challenge a federal policy in court going forward.

    The ruling is a major victory for President Joe Biden and the White House, who have consistently argued the need to prioritize who they detain and deport given limited resources. By ruling against the states, the court tightened the rules concerning when states may challenge federal policies with which they disagree. The Biden administration policy was put on pause by a federal judge nearly two years ago and the Supreme Court declined to lift that hold last year.

    Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote Friday’s majority opinion in the case.

    “In sum, the states have brought an extraordinarily unusual lawsuit,” Kavanaugh wrote, in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “They want a federal court to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policies so as to make more arrests. Federal courts have not traditionally entertained that kind of lawsuit; indeed, the States cite no precedent for a lawsuit like this.”

    Kavanaugh said that the executive branch has traditional discretion over whether to take enforcement actions under federal law. He said that if the court were to allow the states to bring the lawsuit at hand, it would “entail expansive judicial direction” of the executive’s arrest policy and would open the door to more lawsuits from states that think the executive is not doing enough to enforce the law in other areas such as drug and gun regulation and obstruction of justice laws.

    “We decline to start the Federal Judiciary down that uncharted path,” Kavanaugh said.

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the administration welcomes the court’s ruling and that his department looks forward to using the immigration guidelines.

    The guidelines “enable DHS to most effectively accomplish its law enforcement mission with the authorities and resources provided by Congress,” Mayorkas said.

    Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, wrote a concurring an opinion that concluded that the states also lacked standing, but for different reasons than the majority opinion. Justice Samuel Alito dissented.

    At the heart of the dispute was a September 2021 memo from Mayorkas that laid out priorities for the apprehension and removal of certain non-citizens, reversing efforts by former President Donald Trump to increase deportations.

    In his memo, Mayorkas stated that there are approximately 11 million undocumented or otherwise removable non-citizens in the country and that the United States does not have the ability to apprehend and seek to remove all of them. As such, the Department of Homeland Security sought to prioritize those who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security.  

    Kavanaugh’s opinion stressed that the standing doctrine “helps safeguard the Judiciary’s proper – and properly limited – role in our constitutional system.” He said that by ensuring a party has standing to sue, “federal courts prevent the judicial process from being used to usurp the powers of the political branches.”

    The majority did not address the underlying question of whether the administration had the authority to implement the policy.

    “We take no position on whether the executive branch here is complying with its legal obligations under §1226(c) and §1231(a)(2),” Kavanaugh wrote, referring to the relevant immigration statutes. “We hold only that the federal courts are not the proper forum to resolve this dispute.”

    Kavanaugh pointed out that five presidential administrations have determined that resource constraints necessitated prioritization in making immigration arrests.

    In his sole dissent, Alito wrote that this “sweeping executive power endorsed by today’s decision may at first be warmly received by champions of a strong Presidential power, but if presidents can expand their powers as far as they can manage in a test of strength with Congress, presumably Congress can cut executive power as much as it can manage by wielding the formidable weapons at its disposal.”

    “That is not what the Constitution envisions,” he wrote.

    Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst who filed an amicus brief in the immigration case, noted that Friday’s ruling was the second decision within the last week in which the court “held that red states lacked standing to challenge a federal policy – perhaps a signal of dissatisfaction with how liberally lower courts, especially the Fifth Circuit, have permitted these challenges to go forward.”

    “And it’s the second in the last two years in which it has reversed a nationwide injunction against a Biden immigration policy in a suit brought by Texas,” Vladeck said. “When states are the right plaintiffs to challenge federal policies is also one of the central issues before the court in the challenges to Biden’s student loan program – in which the court is expected to rule next week.”

    Kavanaugh’s opinion emphasized that, in “holding that Texas and Louisiana lack standing, we do not suggest that federal courts may never entertain cases involving the executive branch’s alleged failure to make more arrests or bring more prosecutions.”

    In court, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar stressed that Congress has never provided the funds to detain everyone, prompting different administrations to consider how to prioritize limited funds. She noted that the executive branch retains the authority to focus its “limited resources” on non-citizens who are higher priorities for removal and warned that if the states were to prevail, it would “scramble” immigration enforcement on the ground, leading to a totally unmanageable landscape. She said the states’ view in the case was a “senseless” way to run an immigration system.

    “I think that that is bad for the executive branch. I think it’s bad for the American public and I think it’s bad for Article Three courts,” she said.  

    The guidelines call for an assessment of the “totality of the facts and circumstances” instead of the development of a bright-line rule. The government lists aggravating factors weighing in favor of an enforcement action, including the gravity of the offense and the use of a firearm, but it also lists mitigating factors that include the age of the immigrant. 

    Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone, representing Texas and Louisiana, argued that the administration lacked the authority to issue the memo because it conflicts with existing federal law. He accused the government of treating immigration law in the area as “discretionary” and not “mandatory” and argued that the executive branch lacks the authority to “disregard” Congress’ instruction.

    “The states prove their standing at trial based on harms well recognized,” Stone said, emphasizing the costs incurred when the government “violates federal law.”

    A district court judge blocked the guidelines nationwide. “Using the words ‘discretion’ and ‘prioritization’ the executive branch claims the authority to suspend statutory mandates,” ruled Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump appointee on the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas. “The law does not sanction this approach.” 

    A federal appeals court declined to issue a stay of the decision, prompting the Biden administration to ask the Supreme Court for emergency relief last July. A 5-4 court ruled against the administration, allowing the lower court’s decision to remain in effect while the legal challenge played out.

    Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined her three liberal colleagues in dissent without providing any explanation for her vote.  

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court cleared the way on Wednesday for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to seek post-conviction DNA evidence to try to prove his innocence.

    Reed claims an all-White jury wrongly convicted him of killing of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old White woman, in Texas in 1998.

    Texas had argued that he had waited too long to bring his challenge to the state’s DNA procedures in federal court, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Now, he can go to a federal court to make his claim.

    The ruling was 6-3. Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the court and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

    Since Reed’s conviction, Texas courts had rejected his various appeals. Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Rihanna have expressed support, signing a petition asking the state to halt his eventual execution.

    The case puts a new focus on the testing of DNA crime-scene evidence and when an inmate can make a claim to access the technology in a plea of innocence. To date, 375 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row, according to the Innocence Project, a group that represents Reed and other clients seeking post-conviction DNA testing to prove their innocence.

    Kavanaugh, in his opinion Wednesday, said that the court agreed to hear the case because federal appeals courts have disagreed about when inmates can make such claims without running afoul of the statute of limitations. Kavanaugh said Reed could make the claim after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately denied his request for rehearing, rejecting an earlier date set out by the appeals court.

    “Significant systemic benefits ensue from starting the statute of limitations clock when the state litigation in DNA testing cases like Reed’s has concluded,” Kavanaugh said.

    He noted that if any problems with a defendant’s right to due process “lurk in the DNA testing law” the case can proceed through the appellate process, which could ultimately render a federal lawsuit unnecessary.

    Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

    Alito, joined by Gorsuch in his dissent, said Reed should have acted more quickly to bring his appeal. “Instead,” Alito wrote, “he waited until an execution date was set.”

    Alito charged Reed with making the “basic mistake of missing a statute of limitations.”

    Reed has been on death row for the murder of Stites.

    A passerby found Stites’ body near a shirt and a torn piece of belt. Investigators targeted Reed because his sperm was found inside her. Reed acknowledged the two were having an affair, but says that her fiancé, a local police officer named Jimmy Fennell, was the last to see her alive.

    Reed claims that over the last two decades he has discovered a “considerable body of evidence” demonstrating his innocence. Reed claims that the DNA testing would point to Fennell as the murder suspect. Fennell was later jailed for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody and Reed claims that numerous witnesses said he had threatened to strangle Stites with a belt if he ever caught her cheating on him. Reed seeks to test the belt found at the scene that was used to strangle Stites.

    The Texas law at issue allows a convicted person to obtain post-conviction DNA testing of biological material if the court finds that certain conditions are met. Reed was denied. He came to the Supreme Court in 2018 and was denied again. Now he is challenging the constitutionality of the Texas law arguing that the denial of the DNA testing violates his due process rights. 

    But the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals held that he waited too long to bring the claim. “An injury accrues when a plaintiff first becomes aware, or should have become aware, that his right had been violated.” The court said that he became aware of that in 2014 and that his current claim is “time barred.” 

    Reed’s lawyers argued that he could only bring the claim once the state appeals court had ruled, at the end of state court litigation. In court, Parker Rider-Longmaid said that the “clock doesn’t start ticking” until state court proceedings come to an end. He said Texas’ reading of the law would mean that other procedures in the appellate process are “irrelevant.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Conservative Political Action Conference is underway in Maryland. And the members of Congress, former government officials and conservative personalities who spoke at the conference on Thursday and Friday made false claims about a variety of topics.

    Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio uttered two false claims about President Joe Biden. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia repeated a debunked claim about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama used two inaccurate statistics as he lamented the state of the country. Former Trump White House official Steve Bannon repeated his regular lie about the 2020 election having been stolen from Trump, this time baselesly blaming Fox for Trump’s defeat.

    Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida incorrectly said a former Obama administration official had encouraged people to harass Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina inaccurately claimed Biden had laughed at a grieving mother and inaccurately insinuated that the FBI tipped off the media to its search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence. Two other speakers, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, inflated the number of deaths from fentanyl.

    And that’s not all. Here is a fact check of 13 false claims from the conference, which continues on Saturday.

    Marjorie Taylor Greene said the Republican Party has a duty to protect children. Listing supposed threats to children, she said, “Now whether it’s like Zelensky saying he wants our sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine…” Later in her speech, she said, “I will look at a camera and directly tell Zelensky: you’d better leave your hands off of our sons and daughters, because they’re not dying over there.”

    Facts First: Greene’s claim is false. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t say he wants American sons and daughters to fight or die for Ukraine. The false claim, which was debunked by CNN and others earlier in the week, is based on a viral video that clipped Zelensky’s comments out of context.

    19-second video of Zelensky goes viral. See what was edited out

    In reality, Zelensky predicted at a press conference in late February that if Ukraine loses the war against Russia because it does not receive sufficient support from elsewhere, Russia will proceed to enter North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries in the Baltics (a region made up of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) that the US will be obligated to send troops to defend. Under the treaty that governs NATO, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. Ukraine is not a NATO member, and Zelensky didn’t say Americans should fight there.

    Greene is one of the people who shared the out-of-context video on Twitter this week. You can read a full fact-check, with Zelensky’s complete quote, here.

    Right-wing commentator and former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon criticized right-wing cable channel Fox at length for, he argued, being insufficiently supportive of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Among other things, Bannon claimed that, on the night of the election in November 2020, “Fox News illegitimately called it for the opposition and not Donald J. Trump, of which our nation has never recovered.” Later, he said Trump is running again after “having it stolen, in broad daylight, of which they [Fox] participate in.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. On election night in 2020, Fox accurately projected that Biden had won the state of Arizona. This projection did not change the outcome of the election; all of the votes are counted regardless of what media outlets have projected, and the counting showed that Biden won Arizona, and the election, fair and square. The 2020 election was not “stolen” from Trump.

    NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND - MARCH 03: Former White House chief strategist for the Trump Administration Steve Bannon speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on March 03, 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland. The annual conservative conference entered its second day of speakers including congressional members, media personalities and members of former President Donald Trump's administration. President Donald Trump will address the event on Saturday. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    Bannon has a harsh message for Fox News at CPAC

    Fox, like other major media outlets, did not project that Biden had won the presidency until four days later. Fox personalities went on to repeatedly promote lies that the election was stolen from Trump – even as they privately dismissed and mocked these false claims, according to court filings from a voting technology company that is suing Fox for defamation.

    Rep. Jim Jordan claimed that Biden, “on day one,” made “three key changes” to immigration policy. Jordan said one of those changes was this: “We’re not going to deport anyone who come.” He proceeded to argue that people knowing “we’re not going to get deported” was a reason they decided to migrate to the US under Biden.

    Facts First: Jordan inaccurately described the 100-day deportation pause that Biden attempted to impose immediately after he took office on January 20, 2021. The policy did not say the US wouldn’t deport “anyone who comes.” It explicitly did not apply to anyone who arrived in the country after the end of October 2020, meaning people who arrived under the Biden administration or in the last months of the Trump administration could still be deported.

    Biden did say during the 2020 Democratic primary that “no one, no one will be deported at all” in his first 100 days as president. But Jordan claimed that this was the policy Biden actually implemented on his first day in office; Biden’s actual first-day policy was considerably narrower.

    Biden’s attempted 100-day pause also did not apply to people who engaged in or were suspected of terrorism or espionage, were seen to pose a national security risk, had waived their right to remain in the US, or whom the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement determined the law required to be removed.

    The pause was supposed to be in effect while the Department of Homeland Security conducted a review of immigration enforcement practices, but it was blocked by a federal judge shortly after it was announced.

    Rep. Ralph Norman strongly suggested the FBI had tipped off the media to its August search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort in Florida for government documents in the former president’s possession – while concealing its subsequent document searches of properties connected to Biden.

    Norman said: “When I saw the raid at Mar-a-Lago – you know, the cameras, the FBI – and compare that to when they found Biden’s, all of the documents he had, where was the media, where was the FBI? They kept it quiet early on, didn’t let it out. The job of the next president is going to be getting rid of the insiders that are undermining this government, and you’ve gotta clean house.”

    Facts First: Norman’s narrative is false. The FBI did not tip off the media to its search of Mar-a-Lago; CNN reported the next day that the search “happened so quietly, so secretly, that it wasn’t caught on camera at all.” Rather, media outlets belatedly sent cameras to Mar-a-Lago because Peter Schorsch, publisher of the website Florida Politics, learned of the search from non-FBI sources and tweeted about it either after it was over or as it was just concluding, and because Trump himself made a public statement less than 20 minutes later confirming that a search had occurred. Schorsch told CNN on Thursday: “I can, unequivocally, state that the FBI was not one of my two sources which alerted me to the raid.”

    Brian Stelter, then CNN’s chief media correspondent, wrote in his article the day after the search: “By the time local TV news cameras showed up outside the club, there was almost nothing to see. Websites used file photos of the Florida resort since there were no dramatic shots of the search.”

    It’s true that the public didn’t find out until late January about the FBI’s November search of Biden’s former think tank office in Washington, which was conducted with the consent of Biden’s legal team. But the belated presence of journalists at Mar-a-Lago on the day of the Trump search in August is not evidence of a double standard.

    And it’s worth noting that media cameras were on the scene when Biden’s beach home in Delaware was searched by the FBI in February. News outlets had set up a media “pool” to make sure any search there was recorded.

    Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a former college and high school football coach, said, “Going into thousands of kids’ homes and talking to parents every year recruiting, half the kids in this country – I’m not talking about race, I’m just talking about – half the kids in this country have one or no parent. And it’s because of the attack on faith. People are losing faith because, for some reason, because the attack [on] God.”

    Facts First: Tuberville’s claim that half of American children don’t have two parents is incorrect. Official figures from the Census Bureau show that, in 2021, about 70% of US children under the age of 18 lived with two parents and about 65% lived with two married parents.

    About 22% of children lived with only a mother, about 5% with only a father, and about 3% with no parent. But the Census Bureau has explained that even children who are listed as living with only one parent may have a second parent; children are listed as living with only one parent if, for example, one parent is deployed overseas with the military or if their divorced parents share custody of them.

    It is true that the percentage of US children living in households with two parents has been declining for decades. Still, Tuberville’s statistic significantly exaggerated the current situation. His spokesperson told CNN on Thursday that the senator was speaking “anecdotally” from his personal experience meeting with families as a football coach.

    Tuberville claimed that today’s children are being “indoctrinated” in schools by “woke” ideology and critical race theory. He then said, “We don’t teach reading, writing and arithmetic anymore. You know, half the kids in this country, when they graduate – think about this: half the kids in this country, when they graduate, can’t read their diploma.”

    Facts First: This is false. While many Americans do struggle with reading, there is no basis for the claim that “half” of high school graduates can’t read a basic document like a diploma. “Mr. Tuberville does not know what he’s talking about at all,” said Patricia Edwards, a Michigan State University professor of language and literacy who is a past president of the International Literacy Association and the Literacy Research Association. Edwards said there is “no evidence” to support Tuberville’s claim. She also said that people who can’t read at all are highly unlikely to finish high school and that “sometimes politicians embellish information.”

    Tuberville could have accurately said that a significant number of American teenagers and adults have reading trouble, though there is no apparent basis for connecting these struggles with supposed “woke” indoctrination. The organization ProLiteracy pointed CNN to 2017 data that found 23% of Americans age 16 to 65 have “low” literacy skills in English. That’s not “half,” as ProLiteracy pointed out, and it includes people who didn’t graduate from high school and people who are able to read basic text but struggle with more complex literacy tasks.

    The Tuberville spokesperson said the senator was speaking informally after having been briefed on other statistics about Americans’ struggles with reading, like a report that half of adults can’t read a book written at an eighth-grade level.

    Rep. Jim Jordan claimed of Biden: “The president of the United States stood in front of Independence Hall, called half the country fascists.”

    Facts First: This is not true. Biden did not denounce even close to “half the country” in this 2022 speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. He made clear that he was speaking about a minority of Republicans.

    In the speech, in which he never used the word “fascists,” Biden warned that “MAGA Republicans” like Trump are “extreme,” “do not respect the Constitution” and “do not believe in the rule of law.” But he also emphasized that “not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans.” In other words, he made clear that he was talking about far less than half of Americans.

    Trump earned fewer than 75 million votes in 2020 in a country of more than 258 million adults, so even a hypothetical criticism of every single Trump voter would not amount to criticism of “half the country.”

    Rep. Scott Perry claimed that “average citizens need to just at some point be willing to acknowledge and accept that every single facet of the federal government is weaponized against every single one of us.” Perry said moments later, “The government doesn’t have the right to tell you that you can’t buy a gas stove but that you must buy an electric vehicle.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. The federal government has not told people that they can’t buy a gas stove or must buy an electric vehicle.

    The Biden administration has tried to encourage and incentivize the adoption of electric vehicles, but it has not tried to forbid the manufacture or purchase of traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines. Biden has set a goal of electric vehicles making up half of all new vehicles sold in the US by 2030.

    There was a January controversy about a Biden appointee to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., saying that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and that “any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the commission as a whole has not shown support for a ban, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a January press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

    Rep. Ralph Norman claimed that Biden had just laughed at a mother who lost two sons to fentanyl.

    “I don’t know whether y’all saw, I just saw it this morning: Biden laughing at the mother who had two sons – to die, and he’s basically laughing and saying the fentanyl came from the previous administration. Who cares where it came from? The fact is it’s here,” Norman said.

    Facts First: Norman’s claim is false. Biden did not laugh at the mother who lost her sons to fentanyl, the anti-abortion activist Rebecca Kiessling; in a somber tone, he called her “a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl.” Rather, he proceeded to laugh about how Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had baselessly blamed the Biden administration for the young men’s deaths even though the tragedy happened in mid-2020, during the Trump administration. You can watch the video of Biden’s remarks here.

    Kiessling has demanded an apology from Biden. She is entitled to her criticism of Biden’s remarks and his chuckle – but the video clearly shows Norman was wrong when he claimed Biden was “laughing at the mother.”

    Rep. Kat Cammack told a story about the first hearing of the new Republican-led House select subcommittee on the supposed “weaponization” of the federal government. Cammack claimed she had asked a Democratic witness at this February hearing about his “incredibly vitriolic” Twitter feed in which, she claimed, he not only repeatedly criticized Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh but even went “so far as to encourage people to harass this Supreme Court justice.”

    Facts First: This story is false. The witness Cammack questioned in this February exchange at the subcommittee, former Obama administration deputy assistant attorney general Elliot Williams, did not encourage people to harass Kavanaugh. In fact, it’s not even true that Cammack accused him at the February hearing of having encouraged people to harass Kavanaugh. Rather, at the hearing, she merely claimed that Williams had tweeted numerous critical tweets about Kavanaugh but had been “unusually quiet” on Twitter after an alleged assassination attempt against the justice. Clearly, not tweeting about the incident is not the same thing as encouraging harassment.

    Williams, now a CNN legal analyst (he appeared at the subcommittee hearing in his personal capacity), said in a Thursday email that he had “no idea” what Cammack was looking at on his innocuous Twitter feed. He said: “I used to prosecute violent crimes, and clerked for two federal judges. Any suggestion that I’ve ever encouraged harassment of anyone – and particularly any official of the United States – is insulting and not based in reality.”

    Cammack’s spokesperson responded helpfully on Thursday to CNN’s initial queries about the story Cammack told at CPAC, explaining that she was referring to her February exchange with Williams. But the spokesperson stopped responding after CNN asked if Cammack was accurately describing this exchange with Williams and if they had any evidence of Williams actually having encouraged the harassment of Kavanaugh.

    Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana boasted about the state of the country “when Republicans were in charge.” Among other claims about Trump’s tenure, he said that “in four years,” Republicans “delivered 3.5% unemployment” and “created 8 million new jobs.”

    Facts First: This is inaccurate in two ways. First, the economic numbers for the full “four years” of Trump’s tenure are much worse than these numbers Kennedy cited; Kennedy was actually referring to Trump’s first three years while ignoring the fourth, which was marred by the Covid-19 pandemic. Second, there weren’t “8 million new jobs” created even in Trump’s first three years.

    Kennedy could have correctly said there was a 3.5% unemployment rate after three years of the Trump administration, but not after four. The unemployment rate skyrocketed early in Trump’s fourth year, on account of the pandemic, before coming down again, and it was 6.3% when Trump left office in early 2021. (It fell to 3.4% this January under Biden, better than in any month under Trump.)

    And while the economy added about 6.7 million jobs under Trump before the pandemic-related crash of March and April 2020, that’s not the “8 million jobs” Kennedy claimed – and the economy ended up shedding millions of jobs in Trump’s fourth year. Over the full four years of Trump’s tenure, the economy netted a loss of about 2.7 million jobs.

    Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and an adviser to his 2020 campaign, claimed that the last time a CPAC crowd was gathered at this venue in Maryland, in February 2020, “We had the lowest unemployment in American history.” After making other boasts about Donald Trump’s presidency, she said, “But how quickly it all changed.” She added, “Under Joe Biden, America is crumbling.”

    Facts First: Lara Trump’s claim about February 2020 having “the lowest unemployment in American history” is false. The unemployment rate was 3.5% at the time – tied for the lowest since 1969, but not the all-time lowest on record, which was 2.5% in 1953. And while Lara Trump didn’t make an explicit claim about unemployment under Biden, it’s not true that things are worse today on this measure; again, the most recent unemployment rate, 3.4% for January 2023, is better than the rate at the time of CPAC’s 2020 conference or at any other time during Donald Trump’s presidency.

    Multiple speakers at CPAC decried the high number of fentanyl overdose deaths. But some of the speakers inflated that number while attacking Biden’s immigration policy.

    Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, claimed that “in the last 12 months in America, deaths by fentanyl poisoning totaled 110,000 Americans.” He blamed “Biden’s open border” for these deaths.

    Rep. Scott Perry claimed: “Meanwhile over on this side of the border, where there isn’t anybody, they’re running this fentanyl in; it’s killing 100,000 Americans – over 100,000 Americans – a year.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that there are more than 100,000 fentanyl deaths per year. That is the total number of deaths from all drug overdoses in the US; there were 106,699 such deaths in 2021. But the number of overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, primarily fentanyl, is smaller – 70,601 in 2021.

    Fentanyl-related overdoses are clearly a major problem for the country and by far the biggest single contributor to the broader overdose problem. Nonetheless, claims of “110,000” and “over 100,000” fentanyl deaths per year are significant exaggerations. And while the number of overdose deaths and fentanyl-related deaths increased under Biden in 2021, it was also troubling under Trump in 2020 – 91,799 total overdose deaths and 56,516 for synthetic opioids other than methadone.

    It’s also worth noting that fentanyl is largely smuggled in by US citizens through legal ports of entry rather than by migrants sneaking past other parts of the border. Contrary to frequent Republican claims, the border is not “open”; border officers have seized thousands of pounds of fentanyl under Biden.

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  • Supreme Court OKs overtime pay for $200,000-a-year oil rig worker

    Supreme Court OKs overtime pay for $200,000-a-year oil rig worker

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    The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an energy company employee who earned more than $200,000 a year still qualified for overtime pay under a New Deal-era federal law meant to protect blue-collar workers.

    By a 6-3 vote, the justices sided with Michael Hewitt, who was a “tool-pusher” supervising 12 to 14 workers on an offshore oil rig. Tool-pushers supervise drilling and oversee well maintenance activities, as well as making sure the rig has all the tools and equipment it needs, according to energy staffing company Brunel.

    Hewitt was paid a minimum of $963 for any day he worked as part of an unusual schedule on the oil rig.

    Between 2014 and 2017, Hewitt was paid more than $200,000 a year by his employer, Helix Energy Solutions Group. But Hewitt earned no overtime, even when he worked more than 80 hours a week, as sometimes happened.

    Business groups had told the court that a ruling for Hewitt would turn the Fair Labor Standards Act on its head by encouraging highly trained and well-paid workers to sue under a law that was meant to address substandard wages and dangerously long hours.

    In an opinion by Justice Elena Kagan, the court held that Hewitt qualified for overtime pay under the FLSA, despite a provision of the law that exempts “bona fide executives.” Under Labor Department regulations, employees making more than $100,000 a year generally don’t have to be paid overtime.

    Hewitt prevailed, Kagan wrote, because the company paid him by the day and not weekly. The regulation at issue “applies solely to employees paid by the week (or longer); it is not met when an employer pays an employee by the day, as Helix paid Hewitt,” Kagan wrote.

    In dissent, Justice Brett Kavanaugh lamented the court’s “head-scratching assertion” that Hewitt wasn’t guaranteed a weekly minimum in any week he worked even as he was “guaranteed to receive $963 for any day that he worked.” Justice Samuel Alito joined Kavanaugh’s dissent and Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented separately.

    The case is Helix Energy Solutions Group v. Hewitt, 21-984.

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  • Brett Kavanaugh touts “great relations” among all 9 Supreme Court justices, downplays divided court’s slow pace

    Brett Kavanaugh touts “great relations” among all 9 Supreme Court justices, downplays divided court’s slow pace

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    Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh discussed a range of topics during an appearance at the University of Notre Dame’s law school this week, including the relationships among the justices.

    “My experience with the court – in my four and a half years and at this moment – is there are great relations among all nine justices, both personally and professionally. … We only get tough cases. We disagree on some of those. I think that’s more nuanced than sometimes is portrayed,” he said of the court, which is now divided 6-3 between conservatives and liberals.

    Kavanaugh said that the justices traditionally eat lunch together after every oral argument and other case discussions, so they spend a lot of time with each other talking about things other than work.

    “That is a lot of lunches. So you talk about things that you do with other people in your life. We talk about our kids, movies, books, war stories … again and again,” Kavanaugh said. “You become friends.”


    Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh: 2023 Notre Dame Law Review Federal Courts Symposium by
    Notre Dame Law School on
    YouTube

    Kavanaugh also said the public shouldn’t read anything into the high court’s historically slow start to releasing opinions.

    Every year the justices begin hearing cases in October and generally finish their work by the end of June before going on a summer break. This term, however, they went more than three months without resolving any cases in which they heard arguments. On Monday, the justices finally announced a unanimous decision in one case and dismissed another.

    Some observers wondered whether the slow pace could be the result of a variety of factors: a change in the court’s makeup with the addition of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, less consensus on a deeply divided bench or the consequences of last term’s leak of a draft opinion in the case that overturned a half-century of abortion rights.

    Kavanaugh downplayed the court’s slow pace.

    “I am confident they’ll all be out by the end of June. So I don’t think anyone needs to worry. … It’s just a coincidence of which mix of cases were in October and November,” Kavanaugh said during an appearance at the University of Notre Dame’s law school on Monday, the same day the term’s first opinion was announced. Kavanaugh was at the law school and not on the bench to hear Justice Amy Coney Barrett announce the opinion in a veterans disability case.

    Kavanaugh was not asked during the appearance about last term’s abortion decision leak, though he mentioned it obliquely, calling last term a “difficult year at the court.” Kavanaugh, who ultimately voted in favor of overturning abortion rights, was the target of protests and an assassination threat after the leak.

    Kavanaugh was also not asked about a new documentary that looks into the sexual misconduct allegations against him that surfaced during his 2018 confirmation hearing. Kavanaugh denied those allegations.

    Kavanaugh also weighed in on a recent controversy over U.S. News & World Report law school rankings that led to a boycott by a number of top programs.

    “I think those ratings are very problematic. They’re based on things, from what I understand, that are very amorphous, very subjective, very word-of-mouth factors that don’t correlate well with education you’re actually receiving,” said Kavanaugh, who attended Yale Law School, the first to withdraw from the rankings.

    Though Kavanaugh spoke at Notre Dame on Monday, a video of the appearance was first made public Thursday. He talked with Notre Dame law school dean G. Marcus Cole during a conversation that lasted about an hour.

    The court is currently on a break. The justices will return to the bench at the end of February when they’ll hear arguments in cases involving President Joe Biden’s student loan cancellation program, two important internet cases and another case about pandemic-era limits on asylum known as Title 42.

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  • Kavanaugh says he’s ‘optimistic’ about the Supreme Court and trashes US News law school rankings | CNN Politics

    Kavanaugh says he’s ‘optimistic’ about the Supreme Court and trashes US News law school rankings | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Justice Brett Kavanaugh said this week that he is “optimistic” about the court, his colleagues, and the country in the first-known public comments any justice has made off the bench since the release of an investigative report into the leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade.

    Kavanaugh, speaking at Notre Dame Law School, did not directly reference the leak investigation, but he said that while judges get a lot of criticism and “heat” at times, he aspires to be an optimist.

    “I’m optimistic about the court, I’m optimistic about the country, I’m optimistic about my colleagues,” he said.

    Separately, the justice also presented a dissent of US News & World Report’s law school rankings.

    His comments were delivered on Monday but only released publicly on Thursday in a video from Notre Dame.

    Kavanaugh reminisced about his time working as a lawyer at the White House during the George W. Bush administration and he said he learned from the former president not to worry about “today’s criticism, just stay optimistic about the future.”

    Kavanaugh also said that the unusually long lag in the release of the court’s first opinion of the term was simply due to a “coincidence” concerning “which mix of cases” were argued in October and November.

    The court only released its first opinion this week – breaking recent tradition.

    Court watchers had speculated that the reason the court had waited much longer than usual to issue an opinion this term was that it was anticipating the release of the investigative report. That report was ultimately produced on January 19, with the justices announcing that the Marshal of the court had been unable to identify the person responsible for the leak.

    Kavanaugh suggested there was no connection between the report and the lag in opinions.

    Kavanaugh also said that the relationships between justices were good despite an array of divisive opinions that were released last term, including the abortion decision, that largely broke down along ideological lines.

    “We work well together, we get along together,” he said.

    And he praised his two most recent colleagues. He said that he had been charged with throwing a dinner for Justice Amy Coney Barrett to welcome her to the bench and he called her an “unusually good person.” He said that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is always “fully prepared” and off to a “great start.”

    The leak of the draft opinion last spring triggered protests across the country. In June, a man was arrested in Kavanaugh’s neighborhood and later charged with attempted murder of a Supreme Court justice. Kavanaugh has never made any public remarks about the incident.

    Gail Curley, the marshal of the Supreme Court who was tasked last term with investigating the leak, said in her report that her team conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 Supreme Court employees. The employees were asked to sign affidavits, under penalty of perjury, to affirm that they did not disclose the draft opinion and had provided all “pertinent information” related to the disclosure of the draft.

    In a separate statement Curley clarified that she had spoken to all nine justices, found nothing to implicate them or their spouses, and declined to require them to sign affidavits.

    Kavanaugh also launched into a lengthy criticism of US News & World Report’s ranking of law schools after being asked.

    The publication announced earlier this month that it was changing the formula used to determine its list of best law schools after several prestigious institutions – including Kavanaugh’s own Yale Law School – decided to bow out of the famed rankings.

    “I think those ratings are very problematic. I think they’re based on things, from what I understand, that are very amorphous, very subjective, very word-of-mouth. Factors that don’t correlate well with the education that you’re actually receiving,” Kavanaugh said.

    “And I find them highly problematic. The reputation score – that’s kind of a joke, isn’t it? I mean that’s – who, who has the knowledge of all the different scores that’s judged to give anything approaching a good analysis of that?” the justice added.

    “I should probably stop but I’m going to say it anyway,” Kavanaugh added. “They look at some – you know, how much money is spent on this versus that and the library. You know, does that really show whether a student’s getting a better education at school A or school B?”

    Asked if he takes the publication’s rankings into account when he’s looking at law clerks, Kavanaugh replied: “No.”

    In a letter to law school deans published earlier this month, the publication announced that it would place less importance on surveys that ask academic administrators, lawyers and judges to rate the quality of institutions and more emphasis on measures such as bar exam pass rates and employment outcomes. The changes stem from conversations with more than 100 law school deans and representatives, according to the letter.

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  • Brett Kavanaugh Fast Facts | CNN

    Brett Kavanaugh Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

    Birth date: February 12, 1965

    Birth place: Washington, DC

    Birth name: Brett Michael Kavanaugh

    Father: Everett Edward Kavanaugh Jr., president of a trade association

    Mother: Martha Kavanaugh, teacher, prosecutor and judge

    Marriage: Ashley (Estes) Kavanaugh

    Children: Liza and Margaret

    Education: Yale College, B.A., 1987, graduated cum laude; Yale Law School, J.D., 1990

    Religion: Roman Catholic

    Regularly taught courses on separation of powers and on the Supreme Court at Harvard Law School.

    Kavanaugh finished the Boston Marathon in 2010 and in 2015.

    1990-1991 – Law clerk to Judge Walter Stapleton of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

    1991-1992 – Clerks for Judge Alex Kozinski of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

    1992-1993 – Attorney with the Solicitor General’s Office at the Department of Justice.

    1993-1994 – Serves as law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy.

    1994-1997 and 1998 – Associate counsel for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater investigation, which leads to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

    1997-1998 and 1999-2001 – Partner at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, DC.

    2001-2003 – Serves as associate counsel and then senior associate counsel to President George W. Bush.

    July 25, 2003 – Bush nominates Kavanaugh to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the Senate doesn’t vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination for almost three years.

    July 2003-May 2006 – Serves as assistant and staff secretary to Bush.

    May 26, 2006 – The Senate confirms Kavanaugh to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals by a vote of 57-36.

    May 30, 2006 – Sworn in by Kennedy.

    July 9, 2018 – President Donald Trump announces Kavanaugh as his nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Kennedy’s retirement.

    September 4-7, 2018 – Confirmation hearings are held on Capitol Hill. A Senate Judiciary Committee vote is tentatively slated for the week of September 17.

    September 16, 2018 – The Washington Post publishes an article about a California psychology professor who accuses Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her when they were both teenagers at a house party during the early 1980s. Christine Blasey Ford says she initially sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein about the incident when Kavanaugh’s name was included on a shortlist for the Supreme Court. Ford tells the newspaper she initially did not want to go public but she decided to talk on the record because her letter to Feinstein had been leaked to the media. Kavanaugh denies that such an incident ever took place.

    September 23, 2018 – The New Yorker magazine publishes a report about a second allegation of sexual misconduct, prompting Feinstein to call for a postponement of confirmation proceedings. The magazine article centers on a college classmate from Yale, Deborah Ramirez who says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while a group of students were drinking at a party in a dorm during the 1983-1984 academic year. Kavanaugh denies the allegation and a White House spokeswoman dismisses the claim as uncorroborated.

    September 27, 2018 – Kavanaugh and Ford testify during an all-day hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    September 28, 2018 – GOP Senator Jeff Flake, a member of the Judiciary Committee, agrees to vote yes, paving the way to a floor vote but he says the FBI should reopen its background investigation of Kavanaugh and spend a week looking into claims made by Kavanaugh’s accusers. Trump later agrees to direct the FBI to reopen its background check but the probe will be limited in scope and must be completed in a week.

    October 3, 2018 – The FBI completes its supplemental background check and sends the information to the Senate late in the day.

    October 4, 2018 – The Wall Street Journal publishes an op-ed by Kavanaugh in which argues that he is an independent, impartial judge. He expresses regret for a few of his statements during the September 27 hearing, explaining that he was frustrated and emotional. He pledges, going forward, that litigants and colleagues will be treated with respect. The same day, retired Justice John Paul Stevens says that Kavanaugh’s comments during his confirmation hearings suggest bias. Stevens says Kavanaugh should not serve on the Supreme Court.

    October 6, 2018 – The Senate confirms Kavanaugh with a 50-48 vote. He is sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts during a private ceremony. The vote takes place amid public protests for and against Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

    September 14, 2019 – The New York Times publishes an article adapted from a forthcoming book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh” that contains a new allegation of college sexual misconduct. According to the report, the FBI did not investigate the new allegation and the bureau did not speak with witnesses to verify Ramirez’s original claim.

    July 2020 – An exclusive CNN report says Kavanaugh urged his colleagues in a series of private memos this spring to consider avoiding decisions in major disputes over abortion and Democratic subpoenas for Trump’s financial records, according to multiple sources familiar with the inner workings of the court.

    October 28, 2020 – Kavanaugh tweaks a line in his controversial opinion on Wisconsin mail-in voting, after he received criticism for incorrectly saying Vermont had not changed its election rules due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

    July 22, 2021 – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse releases a letter from the FBI disclosing that it received more than 4,500 tips on a phone line in 2018 as part of a background investigation Kavanaugh and provided “relevant” ones to former President Trump’s White House counsel.

    October 1, 2021 – The Supreme Court announces that Kavanaugh has tested positive for Covid-19. This is the first publicly known case of coronavirus among the high court’s justices. Kavanaugh was fully vaccinated, according to the court.

    June 8, 2022 – Nicholas John Roske is arrested near Kavanaugh’s house, after calling emergency authorities to say he was having suicidal thoughts, had a firearm in his suitcase, and had traveled from California “to kill a specific US Supreme Court Justice.” The Justice Department charges him with attempting to kidnap or murder a US judge.

    January 20, 2023 – “Justice,” a documentary examining the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival.

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  • Sundance doc looks into Brett Kavanaugh investigation

    Sundance doc looks into Brett Kavanaugh investigation

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    PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — A new documentary looks into the sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and raises questions about the depth of the FBI investigation in 2018.

    “Justice,” from filmmaker Doug Liman, debuted Friday night at the Sundance Film Festival to a sold-out theater surrounded by armed guards.

    The film, made under intense secrecy, focuses on allegations made by Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez that were detailed in a New Yorker article in 2018. Ramirez alleged that at a gathering with friends when she was a freshman in 1983, Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her. Kavanaugh has denied those claims. “Justice” also plays a taped recording of a tip given to the FBI from another Yale classmate, Max Stier, that describes a similar incident that the FBI never investigated.

    The Stier report was previously detailed in 2019 by New York Times reporters Robin Pogebrin and Kate Kelly as part of their book “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.” But the details of it came under scrutiny. After the story was posted online but before it was in the print edition, the Times revised the story to add that the book reported that the woman supposedly involved in the incident declined to be interviewed, and that her friends say she doesn’t recall the incident.

    Stier was not directly interviewed for the film and declined the filmmakers’ request to comment on the contents. An unnamed person whose voice was manipulated for anonymity provided the Stier tape to the filmmakers.

    Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in October of 2018 after a narrow 50-48 roll call following a wrenching debate over sexual misconduct. He strenuously denied the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford, who says he sexually assaulted her when they were teens.

    Many people referenced in the film, from Kavanaugh himself to several of Ramirez’s friends who were allegedly there, similarly declined to speak or never responded.

    “Justice” is especially critical of the FBI investigation that took place after the hearings. Through FOIA requests the filmmakers found that there were some 4,500 tips sent to the tipline that went uninvestigated.

    One of Ramirez’s friends from Yale who was interviewed for the film provided text messages in which a mutual friend admits to being contacted by “Kavanaugh’s people” and participated in the narrative that Ramirez didn’t remember things correctly.

    Blasey Ford appears in new footage only in the first several moments of “Justice,” asking Liman, a filmmaker known for “Swingers” and “The Bourne Identity,” why he’s making this film — a question that he doesn’t quite answer.

    In a Q&A after the film, Liman said he was simply outraged after watching her testimony in 2018. The making of the film, which they self-financed, was shrouded in secrecy. Everyone signed nondisclosure agreements, Liman said, and they even had code names for those who agreed to participate. He said that people are “terrified” and that those who came forward are “heroes.”

    Most of the focus is on telling Ramirez’s story — where she came from, how she ended up at Yale and what kind of person she is and was. Several academics specializing in trauma, as well as lawyers, help explain why memory of traumatic events is reliably fractured and how those gaps can be weaponized by prosecutors.

    “Justice’s” surprise inclusion in the festival was announced on Thursday, the first day of the festival, but it quickly became one of the most anticipated films in a slate of over 100. At least part of the reason for something like “Justice” to debut at Sundance is to drum up buzz and secure a distributor. As many of the lawyers in the film say, the stakes are whether or not Kavanaugh perjured himself under oath.

    Asked what he wants to happen when audiences see “Justice,” Liman said, “I kind of feel like the job ends with the film and what happens afterwards in beyond my control.”

    Standing beside him, his producer Amy Hardy said she disagreed. Hardy said she hopes it triggers outrage and leads to “a real investigation with subpoena powers.”

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    Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr: www.twitter.com/ldbahr.

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    For more coverage of the Sundance Film Festival, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/sundance-film-festival

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