ReportWire

Tag: us federal court system

  • Anita Hill says Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade is indicator of what could happen to individuals’ civil rights | CNN Politics

    Anita Hill says Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade is indicator of what could happen to individuals’ civil rights | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Americans should not just consider how the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade impacts women’s rights, but also how it affects individuals’ civil rights, Anita Hill said in an interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace.

    Asked by Wallace if the decision by Justice Clarence Thomas to vote in the 5-4 majority in favor of overturning the landmark ruling makes it harder for her to reconcile his time on the high court, Hill said the decision was about a “shrinking of rights.”

    Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment in testimony during his 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Thomas has denied the allegations.

    She told Wallace that the conservative Thomas is not the only one on the bench who wants to assess access to contraception and protections for gender identity, adding that “the votes are there to move us in that direction.”

    “I believe that’s why we should – how we should be looking at Dobbs, not just as an indicator of what is going to happen on reproductive rights, but also what will happen to us as a country in terms of how much we value the civil rights of individuals and especially marginalized people,” she said on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” which is set to air on CNN on Sunday night.

    Since June – when the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, holding that there is no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion – several states have moved to enshrine abortion protections in their constitutions. And after Thomas’ concurring opinion on the decision where he called for rulings on contraception, same-sex marriage and other rights to be revisited, President Joe Biden signed an executive order aiming to safeguard access to abortion care and contraceptives.

    The Senate on Tuesday passed legislation to protect same-sex and interracial marriage, called the Respect for Marriage Act, in a landmark bipartisan vote amid concern the Supreme Court might overturn its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage. The House would need to approve the legislation before sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.

    Hill also told Wallace she was “shocked” to get a call from Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, who she said in 2010 left a voicemail message requesting an apology from the law professor.

    “I had really no idea what to make of it. But I knew this, I knew that I did not want to entertain that kind of call either on the voicemail or face to face, that it was not something that clearly, I was not going to apologize for 1991,” Hill said. “And I didn’t in fact believe that the call was a sincere attempt to reconcile anything, and that I was going to do what I needed to do to stop it from happening.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The fine print of the Respect for Marriage Act | CNN Politics

    The fine print of the Respect for Marriage Act | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]

    A version of this story first ran in July. It also appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Let’s start with the positive: Republicans and Democrats are coming together to protect same-sex marriage from the Supreme Court. The Respect for Marriage Act, which safeguards the right to same-sex marriage nationwide, passed the House with bipartisan support earlier this week and now awaits a Senate vote.

    The Respect for Marriage Act codifies marriages and came about amid worries among Democrats that the same conservative majority on the Supreme Court that took away the right to abortion will target same-sex marriage in the future.

    The version that overcame a filibuster in the Senate passed the Senate Tuesday. A dozen Republican senators from across the country voted with Democrats before Thanksgiving to limit debate and move toward a final vote.

    RELATED: Meet the 12 Republicans who voted to consider the Respect for Marriage Act

    It next goes to the House for approval before President Joe Biden can sign it into law.

    But there is a fair amount of fine print.

    First, the bill does not require all states to allow same-sex marriage, even though that is the current reality under the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Rather, if the Supreme Court overturned Obergefell and previous state prohibitions on same-sex marriage came back into effect, the Respect for Marriage Act would require states and the federal government to respect marriages conducted in places where it is legal.

    There are religious exceptions. Republican supporters have emphasized the elements in this Senate version that protect nonprofit and religious organizations from having to provide support for same-sex marriages.

    “I will be supporting the substitute amendment because it will ensure our religious freedoms are upheld and protected, one of the bedrocks of our democracy,” said West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito in a statement after helping break the filibuster.

    It took months of behind-the-scenes effort to bring 10-plus Republicans on board.

    This is all academic right now. The bill is only being passed in case the now-solidly conservative Supreme Court, which has taken delight in upending precedent, were to revisit the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that created a national right to marriage for same-sex couples.

    Two of the justices who voted in favor of that ruling have been replaced by Republican-appointed conservatives, which means that if the case were heard today, there’s a real likelihood it would be decided differently.

    While Justice Samuel Alito seemed to want to wall off the abortion rights precedent upended by the Supreme Court earlier this year, CNN’s Ariane de Vogue has written about how the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization could affect issues like marriage. Read her story.

    Here’s a brief history of marriage equality playing a role in prior election years:

    Today, it’s Republicans and Democrats, along with a Democratic president, working together to protect same-sex marriage from a government institution.

    During that time, public support for same-sex marriage grew from about a quarter of the public in the year the Defense of Marriage Act was enacted to 71% in Gallup polling this year.

    The issue has played a role in multiple US elections, including, arguably, the one that just took place.

    Here’s a brief history of marriage equality playing a role in prior election years:

    In 1996, Republican majorities in the House and Senate sensed a political opening after then-President Bill Clinton failed to allow gay people to openly serve in the military.

    They were also trying to get ahead of a Hawaii court decision that could have legalized same-sex marriage in that state. Fearing every state might have to recognize same-sex unions, Republicans pushed the Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA.

    It declared marriage as between one man and one woman and allowed states to refuse to recognize marriages. It also withheld federal benefits from married same-sex couples. In 2013, a part of DOMA was found to be unconstitutional.

    DOMA had broad approval. Democrats like then-Sen. Joe Biden voted for the bill. Current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and many other Democrats whose names you’d recognize, were among the 342 who voted for the bill in the House.

    Current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among the 67 members to vote “no,” along with Rep. Steve Gunderson, who at the time was the House’s only openly gay Republican.

    In 2004, placing anti-gay-marriage amendments on ballots in key states like Ohio was smart politics. It helped George W. Bush win reelection to the White House and the GOP gain seats in the US Senate.

    Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The Democratic candidate, John Kerry, also opposed same-sex marriage at the time.

    In 2008, even as more in his party began to publicly support marriage equality, Obama continued his opposition.

    He has more recently said and written that he always personally supported same-sex marriage rights. His campaign aide David Axelrod has written that Obama made a calculated decision to oppose gay marriage.

    “He grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’” Axelrod wrote in a memoir.

    In 2012, following the lead of then-Vice President Biden, Obama officially evolved on the issue and said he now supported marriage equality. It was a big moment.

    A few years later, in 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide.

    “I’m fine with it,” Trump said in 2016 during an interview with “60 Minutes.”

    He’d go on to brag about being a champion for gay rights, although many LGBTQ activists would disagree.

    The politicians of the ’90s have largely evolved with the country.

    But one of the Supreme Court’s relics from the ’90s, Justice Clarence Thomas, recently questioned the 2015 marriage decision he opposed. As a result, Republicans and Democrats are coming together again, in less than a generation, to undo what they did in 1996, and try to guarantee marriage as a right for all Americans.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Supreme Court hears Texas’ challenge to Biden immigration and deportation policies | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court hears Texas’ challenge to Biden immigration and deportation policies | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court on Tuesday will consider the Biden administration’s discretion on removing non-citizens in a challenge brought by two Republican state attorneys general who say the Department of Homeland Security is skirting federal immigration law.

    The case, brought by Texas and Louisiana, is the latest salvo from conservative states who have all but declared war on the Biden administration on immigration and have gone as far as busing undocumented immigrants to Democrat-led states in an effort to raise alarm about the issue.

    At the heart of the dispute is a September 2021 memo from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that laid out priorities for the arrest, detention and deportation of certain non-citizens, reversing efforts by former President Donald Trump to increase deportations.

    In court papers, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar stressed that Congress has never provided the funds to detain everyone, prompting administrations to consider how to prioritize limited funds.

    “Especially given perennial constraints on detention capacity, the Executive retains authority to focus its limited resources on those non-citizens who are higher priorities for apprehension,” she wrote.

    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.

    Lawyers for Texas and Louisiana argued that the government lacked the authority to issue the memo because it conflicts with federal law. They point to immigration law that holds that some immigrants “shall” be taken into custody or removed.

    “When Congress required the Executive to act, the Executive lacks the authority to disregard that instruction,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued in court papers. He also charged that the guidelines violate the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that governs how an agency can issue regulations.

    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 plays out.

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

    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 that pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security.

    Prelogar noted that the lower court holding against the government “runs counter to longstanding practice spanning multiple administrations” and emphasized that the guidelines are not binding orders compelling action, but instead, are an attempt to utilize available resources while leaving ultimate discretion to the judgment of individual immigration officials.

    “The guidelines simply tell federal officials how to enforce federal law in a field that the Constitution commits to the federal government,” Prelogar wrote.

    As a threshold matter, she urged the justices to dismiss the challenge, arguing that the states don’t have the legal right – or standing – to bring the challenge because they can’t show the necessary direct injury. Prelogar said if the lawsuit were allowed to go forward, any state could sue the federal government about “virtually any policy.”

    In a separate dispute, Arizona, Montana and Ohio also sued the Biden administration. A district court judge issued a nationwide injunction blocking the guidelines, but the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals put that decision on hold.

    “Federal law gives the National Government considerable authority over immigration policy,” the court held. It also expressed skepticism about whether the guidance directly injured the states.

    Paxton argued to the Supreme Court that the states have the legal right to bring the lawsuit because they bear costs related to law enforcement activities as well as health care and education costs of the non-citizens.

    Critics also say that Texas is guilty of “judge shopping” the case at hand by filing it where it had a 100% chance of drawing a Trump-appointed district judge who has previously issued nationwide injunctions concerning other immigration policies.

    “So far, Texas has taken the lead in 29 different lawsuits against the Biden administration, on immigration,” said CNN analyst Steve Vladeck who is a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. In a friend of the court brief filed opposing Texas, Vladeck noted that none of those cases had been filed where the Texas government is located in Austin.

    “This case is the latest battlefield in what has become an all-out war by red state attorneys general against virtually every Biden related policy,” Vladeck said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Supreme Court counsel says Justice Samuel Alito didn’t violate ethics standards | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court counsel says Justice Samuel Alito didn’t violate ethics standards | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court legal counsel said there is no evidence that Justice Samuel Alito violated ethics standards, according to a letter on Monday in response to questions from congressional Democrats about allegations that Alito revealed the outcome of a 2014 decision before it was released.

    “There is nothing to suggest that Justice Alito’s actions violated ethics standards,” wrote Ethan Torrey, legal counsel for the Supreme Court. “Relevant rules balance preventing gifts that might undermine public confidence in the judiciary and allowing judges to maintain normal personal friendships.”

    Torrey pushed back on allegations from an evangelical minister, Rev. Rob Schenck, published in The New York Times earlier this month. The story alleged that there had been an earlier Supreme Court breach in a landmark religious liberty case years before last term’s leak of a draft of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

    “Justice Alito has said that neither he nor Mrs. Alito” told Gayle Wright, a guest at his home years ago, “about the decision in the Hobby Lobby case, or about the authorship of the opinion from the court,” Torrey wrote.

    Torrey also said Alito and his wife became acquainted with Wright and her now-deceased husband because of their support for the Supreme Court Historical Society, and “they had a casual and purely social relationship.”

    “The Justice never detected any effort on the part of the Wrights to obtain confidential information or to influence anything he did in either an official or private capacity,” Torrey wrote.

    Wright previously denied Schenk’s claims in an interview with CNN.

    The letter was in response to questions Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Henry Johnson posed to Torrey and Chief Justice John Roberts for answers last week after the Times story ran.

    The congressmen had asked Roberts to “assist our investigation” into the allegations and warned that the new allegations suggest “that the orchestrators of this judicial lobby campaign may have used their access to certain justices to secure confidential information about pending cases that only deepens our concerns about the lack of adequate ethical and legal guardrails at the court.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • GOP-led states press Supreme Court to keep Biden student debt forgiveness on hold | CNN Politics

    GOP-led states press Supreme Court to keep Biden student debt forgiveness on hold | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    A collection of Republican-led states argued on Wednesday that the Supreme Court should keep President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness policy on hold while the litigation around it plays out, pointing to fact that the Biden administration has extended its pause on student loan payments.

    The Republican states, which have already obtained an appeals court order blocking the implementation of the controversial program, said the extension showed that there would be no harm inflicted by the court order being left in place.

    “The Department [of Education] can point to no emergency or imminent harm because, just yesterday, the agency extended the payment pause on student loans until the summer of 2023,” they wrote in the new filing.

    Federal student loan payments were set to resume in January after a years-long pandemic pause. But the Biden administration said Tuesday that it is extending the pause until 60 days after the pending litigation over the forgiveness program is resolved. If the program has not been implemented and the litigation has not been resolved by June 30, payments will resume 60 days after that.

    The Wednesday filing by the states came in response to a request from the Biden administration that the Supreme Court lift the hold that has been placed on the student debt relief program, which would forgive up to $20,000 in loans for individual borrowers who earned less than $125,000 in either 2020 or 2021.

    The Republican states accused the Biden administration of relying “on the COVID-19 pandemic” as “a pretext to mask the President’s true goal of fulfilling his campaign promise to erase student-loan debt.”

    The policy was set to begin going into effect earlier this fall, but was blocked by the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals in a lawsuit brought by Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina.

    They claim that in rolling out the program, Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona went beyond the authority he has under law to cancel individual debts. They also argue that the department violated administrative law in how it launched the policy.

    The states defended the appeals court order blocking the relief program, telling the Supreme Court on Wednesday that they will suffer the types of harm that make it appropriate for a court to intervene.

    This procedural threshold – known as standing – has been a legal obstacle for many opponents of the program who have tried to block it in court, including challengers whose requests for Supreme Court intervention were previously denied. The states in the new filing argue that they’ll suffer a loss of tax revenue and other kinds of injuries if the debt relief program goes into effect.

    The states also pointed to the ruling from a federal judge in Texas in a separate case that struck down the student debt relief policy, which the administration has appealed to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling will remain in effect even if the Supreme Court lifts the hold placed by the 8th Circuit, the states noted in their filing Wednesday.

    The Biden administration has indicated it will take that case to the Supreme Court as well if the 5th Circuit leaves in place the ruling striking it down.

    In the request it put before the Supreme Court, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that leaving the program on hold “leaves millions of economically vulnerable borrowers in limbo, uncertain about the size of their debt and unable to make financial decisions with an accurate understanding of their future repayment obligations.”

    Prelogar told the Supreme Court that the program was a lawful endeavor “to ensure that borrowers affected by a national emergency are not worse off in relation to their student loans.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Anti-abortion activists say Trump will still need to win them over in 2024 | CNN Politics

    Anti-abortion activists say Trump will still need to win them over in 2024 | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Anti-abortion proponents who believe Donald Trump’s crowning achievement was the overturning of Roe v. Wade say the newly declared 2024 contender will still have to earn their support in the upcoming Republican presidential primary – and he may be off to a rocky start.

    In his more-than-hour-long speech announcing his candidacy, the former president omitted any mention of his anti-abortion credentials or his appointment of three of the conservative Supreme Court justices who ultimately abolished federal abortion protections. Within hours, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a leading anti-abortion group, released a statement pointedly dismissing candidates “who shy away from this fight.”

    Though the group did not mention Trump by name, its message was clear: No matter what he did to advance the anti-abortion cause during his first term, he must continue to prove his commitment as he seeks a second term or risk losing some conservative coalition support.

    Trump “raised the bar very high for what it meant to be a pro-life president,” SBA president Marjorie Dannenfelser told CNN in an interview this week. For that reason, Dannenfelser said, she was “surprised” the former president didn’t do more to tout his anti-abortion bona fides in his campaign announcement.

    “It’s a deep moral failure not to step up in the most important moment for our movement and if you think you can breeze through Iowa and South Carolina without a strong pro-life national vision, you’re just wrong,” she said, naming two of the early voting states that can buoy or tank a presidential candidate’s bid.

    Others said Trump, who has confided to aides that he believes the abortion issue may be hurting Republican candidates, passed on a layup by touting some of his core achievements in the conservative policy sphere but declining to mention his first-term efforts to limit abortion access. Instead, Trump highlighted his deliverance of tax cuts and deregulatory and counterterrorism actions by his administration as he addressed throngs of loyalists in the ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago estate on Tuesday.

    “For sure it was a missed opportunity,” said Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life. “President Trump has done many, many things we are grateful for but regardless, whoever gets our vote will have to earn it.”

    “We expect to be courted in the primary process and the person we want to get behind will be unapologetic in speaking up to defend the pre-born and calling for federal protections,” Hawkins said.

    The demand among leading abortion opponents for unflinching advocates comes as Trump, whose muted reaction to the overturning of Roe did not go unnoticed among anti-abortion conservatives, is expected to face primary challengers whose advancement of anti-abortion efforts date much further back than his own and may be more willing to embrace more stringent restrictions on abortion access in the months to come, possibly at the federal level. Trump has also found himself weakened in the wake of midterm defeats as some deep-pocketed GOP donors and elected Republicans call for the party to move on from him, underscoring the importance of keeping the conservative grassroots in his corner.

    “He does not want to risk any loss in the pro-life, evangelical or Catholic spheres,” Dannenfelser said.

    “I think Republicans who are running away from the issue right now are wrong,” added Tom McClusky, director of government affairs at CatholicVote, an advocacy organization that opposes abortion and spent $9.7 million in the 2020 presidential contest to boost Trump over Joe Biden.

    Trump’s apparent lack of interest in promoting his anti-abortion achievements is not new, McClusky added, saying that “he didn’t mention all that unless prodded during his presidency.” After the Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights this summer – kicking authority on the issue to state governments – Trump took a brief victory lap, declaring in a statement that the landmark ruling wouldn’t have happened without him “nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court.”

    Meanwhile, other elements of Trump’s reaction to the ruling raised questions among abortion opponents about his support for new laws restricting the procedure, particularly after the former president had previously sidestepped questions about whether he supported a controversial Texas law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for life-threatening medical emergencies.

    “This brings everything back to the states where it has always belonged,” Trump told Fox News in the wake of the June 24 Dobbs decision.

    At a September campaign rally in Ohio for then-Senate GOP hopeful J.D. Vance, Trump once again affirmed his believe that abortion rights or restrictions should be determined “in the states,” adding that “Republicans have to get smart with that issue.”

    “It’s turned over to the states and it’s working out… The places where it’s not working out, it will work out,” Trump said.

    But if he repeats that in the primary, Trump could land himself in hot water with anti-abortion groups that have been championing efforts to legislate abortion at the federal level.

    “One thing that will not be satisfactory and a disqualifier is any candidate who says this is a state issue,” said Dannenfelser, who has remained in touch with Trump since he left office.

    Others simply want to see Republican presidential candidates – including Trump – talking about abortion as much as possible in the months to come. Prior to the midterms elections, however, Trump expressed concern to advisers that the reversal of Roe would backfire on GOP candidates by injecting a jolt of energy into the Democratic base, according to two people familiar with his comments.

    One of those sources said Trump has since griped to aides that his prediction was right, partly blaming the GOP’s underwhelming midterm performance on the attention abortion received from voters. CNN exit poll data found that 61 percent of voters were displeased with the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and about seven in 10 of those voters backed Democratic candidates running for Congress.

    A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

    “A lot of folks seemed skittish about talking about abortion immediately after Roe’s reversal. We believe that it’s dangerous for Republicans not when you talk about it but when you don’t talk,” said Hawkins.

    Democrats have similarly taken note of Trump’s caution around the abortion subject, noting that they will continue to highlight his record.

    “It’s no surprise Donald Trump is terrified about talking about his own record of paving the way for abortion bans across the country,” said Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, adding that “Democrats will remind voters how [Trump] said there should be ‘some form of punishment’ for women who get an abortion’” during his 2016 presidential campaign.

    With Trump kicking off the 2024 primary earlier this week, several abortion opponents have said they have already been impressed with at least one of his potential rivals – former Vice President Mike Pence – and are closely watching to see how others handle the issue as they near possible campaigns of their own.

    That includes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, potentially Trump’s leading foe if he mounts a campaign, who signed a 15-week abortion ban into law this past April but hasn’t committed to including additional legislative restrictions in an upcoming special session of the Florida state legislature, despite calls from abortion opponents to do so.

    “We would like to see him do more and see him speak more loudly,” said Hawkins, who remains hopeful that DeSantis’ sweeping reelection victory will embolden him “to take on additional measures in this coming legislative session.”

    Pence, for his part, has long charted a political identity with anti-abortion advocacy at its core since his days as a conservative congressman from Indiana. Just weeks after the Dobbs decision was handed down, the former vice president traveled to South Carolina to deliver a speech outlining a Republican policy blueprint for “post-Roe America.” He and his wife Karen have also been quietly raising funds for crisis pregnancy centers across the country and in keynote remarks at a gala for Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America in September, Pence also appeared to endorse Republican efforts to shepherd a national abortion ban through Congress.

    “I welcome any and all efforts to advance the cause of life in state capitals or in the nation’s capital,” Pence said at the time.

    At a CNN town hall this week, Pence praised the Dobbs decision, saying it gave “the American people a new beginning for life.” While suggesting that laws around abortion had been “returned to the states and the American people, where it belongs,” Pence also said he remains hopeful that all 50 states will eventually “stand for the sanctity of life.”

    Marc Short, a top adviser to the former vice president, said Pence will continue to train a spotlight on the issue whether or not he decides to run for president in 2024.

    “He’s always said we now have to take our case to the American people in a winsome way, while others have said, ‘just stop talking about it,’” Short said, adding that abortion “has never been a comfortable issue for President Trump and one he thinks of as a political loser.”

    While Pence’s intense focus on the issue has scored him points with abortion opponents, Short said it has also rankled some donors who don’t want to see third rail issues “highlighted as much [or] don’t necessarily agree with his position.” Pence, who is in the midst of promoting his new book “So Help Me God” that chronicles his time as vice president, has “loyal supporters who don’t necessarily share his views on life” but continue to support him because they consider him “a role model in public service,” Short said.

    After federal abortion rights were overturned, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – another possible 2024 contender – tweeted that conservatives would soon see “which politicians supported the pro-life cause to win elections, and which actually believed it.” But in a September interview with the Sioux City Journal during one of several visits he has made to Iowa, Pompeo also declined to offer support for Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds’ push to outlaw abortion after six weeks in her state.

    “Iowa will sort through it for itself, the state of Kansas will sort through it for itself,” said Pompeo, a former congressman from Kansas, which earlier this year rejected a proposed state constitutional amendment that could have paved the way for a statewide ban on abortion. Pompeo described the vote as “very confusing.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Opinion: The judge blocking student loan relief for millions is wrong about the law | CNN

    Opinion: The judge blocking student loan relief for millions is wrong about the law | CNN

    [ad_1]

    Editor’s Note: Steve Vladeck is a CNN legal analyst and a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. He is the author of the upcoming book “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    The legal battles over President Joe Biden’s student loan debt relief program heated up on Thursday, when the Fort Worth, Texas-based Judge Mark Pittman, a Trump appointee, struck down the program and issued a nationwide injunction purporting to block it across the country.

    Biden’s program aims to provide eligible low- and middle-income borrowers $10,000 in federal student loan forgiveness – or up to $20,000 if they also received a Pell grant while in college. Before the program was put on hold, it had already received 26 million applications.

    But for Pittman, the central problem with the program is that its sheer economic size required clearer authorization from Congress than that provided by the 2003 statute on which the executive branch is relying. Invoking the Supreme Court’s new and deeply contested “major questions doctrine,” Pittman’s ruling would, if left intact, make it impossible for the program to be rescued without Congress stepping in.

    But the biggest problem with Pittman’s ruling isn’t its substance; it’s why he allowed the case to be brought in the first place. Every other challenge to the Biden program that’s been brought thus far (and there have been a bunch) have been thrown out by trial courts – the term courts use as a shorthand for whether the dispute before them is the kind of controversy over which the Constitution allows them to exercise judicial power.

    In a nutshell, a case’s standing has three elements: That the plaintiff shows an “injury in fact”; that the injury is “fairly traceable” to the defendant’s allegedly wrongful conduct; and that the courts are able to provide at least some redress for their injuries.

    Although standing is a technical doctrine, it’s also an important one. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a 2007 opinion, “No principle is more fundamental to the judiciary’s proper role in our system of government.”

    Basically, the idea is that it’s not the federal courts’ job to answer hypothetical questions or resolve policy disputes. Only if a party can show how they’ve been harmed by the challenged policy in a manner that is concrete and particularized – real and discrete – will they (usually) be allowed to challenge it.

    If the complaint is just that the government is acting unlawfully in a way that doesn’t affect plaintiffs personally, that’s a matter to be resolved through the political process – not a judicial one. As Justice Antonin Scalia put it 30 years ago, “vindicating the public interest (including the public interest in Government observance of the Constitution and laws) is the function of Congress and the Chief Executive.”

    That’s why, until Thursday, each court to rule on a lawsuit challenging the Biden student loan debt relief program had dismissed the suit for lack of standing, like the St. Louis-based federal district court in a suit brought by six red states. Whether the plaintiffs were taxpayers or states, the problem was the same: Like it or hate it, when the government hands out a benefit to a class of individuals, that doesn’t usually injure other individuals discretely.

    Instead, objections to the Biden program present the classic kind of “generalized grievance” that the Supreme Court has long held federal courts lack the constitutional authority to resolve – like when a taxpayer tried to sue the CIA in an attempt to force the agency to provide a public accounting of its (allegedly unlawful) expenditures.

    Against that backdrop, Judge Pittman’s holding that the two plaintiffs in his case had standing just doesn’t hold up. For both of them – Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor – Pittman tied their standing to the fact that they are partly or fully ineligible for the program. The injury they suffered, in Pittman’s view, is that they were unable to argue for more expansive eligibility criteria that would’ve included them – not that the program itself is unlawful. That reasoning, such as it is, is especially ironic for two reasons.

    First, Pittman recognized later in the same opinion that the Biden administration didn’t need to provide Brown and Taylor with an opportunity to argue for expanded eligibility criteria – because the law the program is based on is exempt from the administrative law requirement known as “notice-and-comment rulemaking.” So they had standing based on an injury Pittman held … didn’t exist.

    Second, the rest of Pittman’s analysis – that there was no means by which the Biden administration could have expanded the eligibility criteria, since the program itself is, in his view, unlawful – makes it impossible for Brown or Taylor to show how their injuries could have been redressed by the courts. Indeed, Pittman’s ruling blocking the program on a nationwide basis provides Brown and Taylor with precisely … nothing.

    The Biden administration has already announced its intent to appeal Pittman’s ruling to the ultra-conservative US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and it’s likely that whoever loses there will take the matter to the Supreme Court. So Pittman is unlikely to have the last word. But it’s still worth taking a step back and reflecting on the lengths to which Pittman went to find standing in a context in which every other court to date has held it doesn’t exist.

    Part of what Pittman might be chafing against is the idea that the federal government could take any action that might be immune to judicial review (during one hearing in the case, he compared Congress’ delegation of authority to the executive branch under the relevant statute to the infamous 1933 Enabling Act in Germany). But the federal government takes actions courts can’t review. Indeed, it’s the conservatives on the Supreme Court who have spent much of the past 40 years tightening the requirements for standing – and making it harder for plaintiffs to challenge allegedly wrongful government action. Reasonable minds can dispute – and have disputed – those precedents, but they’ve become the foundation of contemporary federal courts doctrine.

    In that respect, Pittman’s ruling, and the public discourse surrounding the student loan debt relief program more generally, is also a helpful reminder that not every policy dispute should lead to litigation – and that it’s not the job of the courts to resolve every contentious issue in American politics.

    For if Justice Alito was right that “no principle is more fundamental to the judiciary’s proper role in our system of government” than the idea that courts can only decide cases that present actual, justiciable controversies between adverse parties, then that principle ought to prevail even against the most strenuous (if not well-taken) objections to the government policy being challenged. Otherwise, the courts aren’t acting as courts; they’re just taking sides in policy debates that no one elected them to resolve.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • With the fate of affirmative action in the hands of the Supreme Court, these graduates are fighting to save it | CNN

    With the fate of affirmative action in the hands of the Supreme Court, these graduates are fighting to save it | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    For nearly 60 years, institutions of higher education have been able to give limited preference to people of color and women with admissions.

    The practice, advocates say, has afforded marginalized people a fair chance to attend colleges and universities that may have otherwise overlooked them. It has also been a tool to prevent discrimination at institutions, many of which historically only admitted White students.

    Now the fate of affirmative action is in the hands of the conservative majority Supreme Court. On Monday, justices will hear arguments for two cases at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

    The challenges are being spearheaded by conservative activist Edwin Blum who filed the lawsuits in 2014.

    The Harvard challenge cites Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits schools receiving federal funds from discriminating based on race. The UNC lawsuit also claims Title VI grounds, as well as a violation of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the law, which covers state institutions.

    The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights is among the groups that will be defending the constitutionality of affirmative action before the Supreme Court.

    Genevieve Bonadies Torres, associate director for the Educational Opportunities Project for the committee, said affirmative action has led to college campuses becoming more diverse. In return, Black and brown students are able to achieve “profound economic mobility” and uplift their communities, Torres said.

    “What we know from both experience and research is that when colleges stop considering race, they have seen steep declines in the number of Black and Hispanic students who gain access,” Torres said. “Students of color are less likely to apply once they stop considering race because they see them as less inclusive and welcoming.”

    Torres said in 2015 students at both Harvard and UNC got involved in the cases by submitting letters and testifying about their experience on each campus and the importance of diversity.

    CNN spoke with three of the college graduates involved about why they believe affirmative action should be upheld.

    Cecilia Polanco grew up in a working-class family to parents who immigrated to the United States from El Salvador. Polanco said her father worked construction and her mother was a seamstress who also cleaned homes to provide for their family.

    She said her parents allowed her to focus on school because they wanted a better life for her. Neither had the opportunity to finish school in El Salvador.

    Polanco said she worked twice as hard and took AP courses in high school. She knew that as a Latina child of immigrants, she didn’t have the same resources as her White counterparts.

    In 2011, Polanco was selected as a Morehead-Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill which offered her a full ride scholarship.

    Polanco said she believes affirmative action helped “level the playing field” so that students of color like herself could receive such a prestigious scholarship.

    “If we had a more equitable and just society, we wouldn’t need something like affirmative action,” Polanco said. “But we do because our society is unjust.”

    Polanco recounted being one of few students of color in some of her college classes and reading hurtful comments online from people who said she only got into UNC because the school had to meet a diversity quota.

    But she didn’t let it deter her. She ultimately became a staunch advocate for affirmative action and was eager to contribute to the court case.

    Now Polanco works as a community organizer in Durham, North Carolina where she focuses on philanthropy, racial equity and youth organizing.

    “I think affirmative action helps see the ways in which I didn’t have some of the same opportunities as other people, as my White counterparts,” Polanco said. “There are many valuable life experiences that I had that made me a valuable asset to UNC.”

    Polanco plans to be in Washington D.C. today as the Supreme Court hears arguments in the case. She believes the high court will ultimately uphold the practice.

    “I’m definitely feeling optimistic,” Polanco said. “I feel like I’d be surprised if it went the other way.”

    Andrew Brennen said he has always faced reminders that he is Black.

    Andrew Brennen

    From high school peers asking why he didn’t fit the stereotypical Black teen to being one of few Black students in his classes at UNC, Brennen said he never felt completely accepted.

    He recounted one class discussion about affirmative action at UNC when a White student questioned whether some Black students were fully qualified to be at the university. Brennen also witnessed the protests on UNC’s campus when the “Silent Sam” Confederate statue was toppled.

    With college campuses still battling racism, Brennen fears that overturning affirmative action could only make matters worse.

    “The evidence is pretty clear that when admissions officers are not able to take race into account, diversity on campus suffers,” Brennen said. “These efforts to hold folks accountable for the history and current day racism on campus are led by students of color. And the reality is that our schools need to be as diverse as the workplaces and societies that we are supposed to be preparing to move into.”

    Brennen said he was eager to offer his perspective when the North Carolina Justice Center asked him to write a letter in support of affirmative action for the case.

    Brennen, the son of two attorneys, credited affirmative action for the success of his family. His parents, he said, both grew up poor but were able to attend law school and pursue legal careers.

    Brennen said his parents instilled the importance of education in him and taught him how affirmative action had helped many Black families prosper.

    Brennen graduated from UNC in 2019 with a degree in political science. He now works for a social change venture.

    “There are people out there who want to exploit the fact that affirmative action somehow means that your White kid is going to suffer,” Brennen said. “I think that hugely mischaracterizes what affirmative action is doing.”

    Affirmative action, he said, gives everyone, regardless of race, a fair shot at a quality education and success.

    Brennen said he worries that the conservative majority Supreme Court won’t agree.

    “While I’m confident that our attorneys are making strong, constitutionally-backed, precedent-based arguments in support of affirmative action, I’m nervous that this court doesn’t care,” Brennen said.

    Thang Diep experienced confusion over his identity throughout his childhood.

    Diep said he immigrated with his family from Vietnam to the U.S. (Los Angeles) at the age of 8 and didn’t speak much English. As he gradually learned the language, he still had a thick accent and classmates teased him throughout the grade school. Some would call him Chinese when really he was Vietnamese. As Diep settled into American life, he watched his father travel back and forth to Vietnam for work so he could still provide for the family. Diep’s mom didn’t work and stayed home.

    Thang Diep

    When it came time to apply for colleges, Harvard was not on Diep’s radar.

    “It seemed out of reach and this impossible thing,” Diep said.

    But three days before the admissions application was due, his mother encouraged him to take a chance and apply. Diep said in his admissions essay, he wrote about his struggles with racial identity and fitting in during grade school.

    Diep ultimately was accepted and studied neuroscience at Harvard.

    When Diep was asked to write a letter in support of affirmative action while attending Harvard, Diep jumped at the opportunity. He believed Asian Americans, particularly Southeast Asian Americans, had been left out of the conversation and wanted the world to know that they too support affirmative action. Asian Americans, he said, are not a monolith. Contrary to the “model minority” stereotype, some Asian Americans come from working- class families like he did, Diep said.

    “I think we live in society where race plays a critical role in our experiences and what access to resources we have,” Diep said. “One way we can make the education system better is to acknowledge and take into account these barriers.”

    Diep now works for a nonprofit that works to combat domestic violence.

    Diep said he will be in Washington D.C. rallying around affirmative action with other college graduates and students. He said he stands in solidarity with all communities of color that are fighting to keep affirmative action.

    “I feel like there is some sense of optimism,” Diep said. “I hope that this will become an educational opportunity to spread awareness about the impact.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Federal appeals court pauses Texas social media law’s enforcement amid looming Supreme Court petition | CNN Business

    Federal appeals court pauses Texas social media law’s enforcement amid looming Supreme Court petition | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    A federal appeals court has agreed to suspend enforcement of Texas’ social media law restricting content moderation, in the face of a looming request by tech industry groups for the Supreme Court to review the case.

    In an order on Wednesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of its earlier mandate that had paved the way for the Texas law, known as HB 20, to take effect.

    HB 20 aims to expose social media platforms including Meta, YouTube and Twitter to new private lawsuits, as well as suits by the state’s attorney general, over the companies’ decisions to remove or reduce the visibility of user content they deem objectionable.

    The law is viewed as a challenge to decades of First Amendment precedent, which holds the government may not compel private entities to host speech.

    In a filing leading up to Wednesday’s order, the technology groups challenging the Texas law said they planned to ask for the Supreme Court to rule on HB 20, and that Texas did not oppose the motion for a stay.

    The Supreme Court has already indicated it is open to regulating social media platforms, agreeing this month to hear two cases that could indirectly narrow the scope of the tech industry’s all-important liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

    Some justices, including conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have explicitly cited the role and power of social media platforms as reasons the Court should step in.

    Last month, Florida’s attorney general called on the Supreme Court to review a social media law in that state that is similar to Texas’ legislation. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals had earlier blocked Florida’s law, saying it was likely unconstitutional.

    That finding created a split with the Fifth Circuit’s decision to uphold Texas’ law, making it even more likely for the Supreme Court to take up the matter.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Supreme Court to take critical eye to Andy Warhol’s silkscreens of Prince | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court to take critical eye to Andy Warhol’s silkscreens of Prince | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court will consider Wednesday whether the late Andy Warhol infringed on a photographer’s copyright when he created a series of silkscreens of the musician Prince.

    The case marks a rare foray for the court into the world of visual arts and has attracted the attention of those in the art world who say an appeals court decision against Warhol calls into question the legitimacy of generations of artists who have drawn inspiration from preexisting works.

    Museums, galleries, collectors, and experts have also weighed in asking the justices to balance copyright law with the First Amendment in a way that will protect artistic freedom.

    Central to the case is the so called “fair use” doctrine in copyright law that permits the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances.

    In the case at hand, a district court ruled in favor of Warhol, basing its decision on the fact that the two works in question had a different meaning and message. But an appeals court reversed – ruling that a new meaning or message is not enough to qualify for fair use.

    Now the Supreme Court must come up with the proper test.

    “Fair Use protects the First Amendment rights of both speakers and listeners by ensuring that those whose speech involves dialogue with preexisting copyrighted works are not prevented from sharing that speech with the world,” a group of art law professors who support the Andy Warhol Foundation told the justices in court papers.

    Lawyers for the Warhol Foundation contend that the artist created the “Prince Series” – a set of portraits that transformed a preexisting photograph of the musician Prince– in order to comment on “celebrity and consumerism.”

    They said that in 1984, after Prince became a superstar, Vanity Fair commissioned Warhol to create an image of Prince for an article called “Purple Fame.”

    At the time, Vanity Fair licensed a black and white photo that had been taken by Lynn Goldsmith in 1981 when Prince was not well known. Goldsmith’s picture was to be used by Warhol as an artist reference.

    Goldsmith – who specializes in celebrity portraits and earns money on licensing – had taken the picture initially while on assignment for Newsweek. Her photos of Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley are all a part of the court’s record.

    Vanity Fair published the illustration based on her photo – once as a full page and once as a quarter page – accompanied by an attribution to her. She was unaware that Warhol was the artist for whom her work would serve as a reference, but she was paid a $400 licensing fee. The license stated “no other usage rights granted.”

    Unbeknownst to Goldsmith, Warhol went on to create 15 additional works based on her photograph. At some point after Warhol’s death in 1987, the Warhol Foundation acquired title to and copyright of the so-called “Prince Series.”

    Fans pay tribute to Prince

    In 2016, after Prince died, Conde Nast, Vanity Fair’s parent company, published a tribute using one of Warhol’s Prince Series works on the cover. Goldsmith was not given any credit or attribution for the image. And she received no payment.

    Upon learning about the series, Goldsmith recognized her work and contacted the Warhol Foundation advising it of copyright infringement. She registered her photo with the US Copyright Office.

    The Warhol Foundation – believing that Goldsmith would sue – sought a “declaration of noninfringement” from the courts. Goldsmith countersued with a claim of copyright infringement.

    A district court ruled in favor of the Warhol Foundation, concluding that the use of the photograph with no permission and no fee constituted fair use.

    Warhol’s work was “transformative,” the court said, because it communicated a different message from Goldsmith’s original work. It held that the Prince Series can “reasonably be perceived to have transformed Prince from a vulnerable, uncomfortable person to an iconic, larger-than-life figure.”

    The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals however, reversed and said that the use of the pictures did not necessarily fall under fair use.

    The appeals court said the district court was wrong to assume the “role of art critic” and base its test for fair use on the meaning of the artistic work. Instead, the court should have looked at the degree of visual similarity between the two works.

    Under that standard, the court said, the Prince Series was not transformative, but instead “substantially similar” to the Goldsmith photograph and therefore not protected by fair use.

    It based its ruling on the fact that a secondary work, even if it adds “new expression” to a source material, can be excluded from fair use. The appeals court said the secondary work’s use of the original source material has to have a “fundamentally different and new” artistic purpose and character “such that the secondary work stands apart from the raw material used to create it.” The court emphasized that the primary work does not have to be barely recognizable within the secondary work, but that at a minimum it must ” comprise something more than the imposition of another artist’s style on the primary work.”

    The court said that the “overarching purpose and function” of the Goldsmith photo and the Warhol prints is identical because they are “portraits of the same person.”

    “Critically, the Prince Series retains the essential elements of the Goldsmith Photograph without significantly adding to or altering those elements, ” the court concluded.

    In appealing the case on behalf of the Warhol Foundation, lawyer Roman Martinez argued that the appeals court had gone badly wrong by forbidding courts from considering the meaning of the work as a part of a fair use analysis.

    He warned the court that if it were to embrace the reasoning of the appeals court, it would upend settled copyright principles and chill creativity and expression “at the heart of the First Amendment.”

    According to Martinez, copyright law is designed to foster innovation and sometimes builds on the achievements of others.

    Martinez stressed that the fair use doctrine – “which dates back at least to the 19th century” – reflects the recognition that a rigid application of the copyright statute would “stifle the very creativity which that laws was designed to foster.”

    He noted that Warhol’s works are currently found in collections across the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian collection and the Tate Modern in London. From 2004 through 2014 Warhol auction sales exceeded $3 billion.

    Martinez said Warhol made substantial changes by cropping Goldsmith’s image, resizing it, altering the angle of Prince’s face while changing tones, lighting and detail.

    “While Goldsmith portrayed Prince as a vulnerable human, Warhol made significant alterations that erased the humanity from the image, as a way of commenting on society’s conception of celebrities as products, not people,” Martinez argued and added, “the Prince series is thus transformative.”

    Lisa Blatt, a lawyer for Goldsmith, told the justices a very different story.

    “To all creators, the 1976 Copyright Act enshrines a longstanding promise: Create innovative works, and copyright law guarantees your right to control if, when and how your works are viewed, distributed, reproduced or adapted,” she wrote.

    She said that creators and multibillion-dollar licensing industries “rely on that premise.”

    She said that the Andy Warhol Foundation should have paid Goldsmith’s copyright fees. Blatt argued that Warhol’s work was almost identical to Goldsmith’s own.

    “Fame is not a ticket to trample other artists’ copyrights,” she said.

    The Biden administration is supporting Goldsmith in the case.

    Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar noted, for example, that book-to-film adaptations often introduce new meanings or messages, “but that has never been viewed as an independently sufficient justification for unauthorized copying.” She said that Goldsmith’s ability to license her photograph and earn fees has been “undermined” by the Warhol Foundation.

    The Art Institute of Chicago and other museums told the court that the appeals court decision has caused uncertainty not only for the work of arts themselves but the market for copies of works the museum creates through catalogues, documentaries and websites.

    Smokey Robinson on Prince: ‘He was a genius’

    Lawyers for the museums also noted that the lower court opinion “failed to consider” longstanding artistic traditions of using elements of pre-existing works in new works and asked the Supreme Court to revisit the appeals court ruling.

    In the Baroque era, for example, Giovanni Panini painted modern Rome (pictured in court papers) depicting a gallery showing famous art. Included are copies of preexisting works including Michelangelo’s Moses, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s statutes of Constantine, David, Apollo and Daphne and his fountains of Piazza Navona. Contemporary artists also continue to leverage preexisting artwork, the museums argued. The street artist Banksy, for example, painted a piece, “Girl with a Pierced Eardrum” onto a building in Bristol. It was in reference to Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” from 1665.

    “All of these works would not be considered transformative under the Second’s circuit’s” approach, the museums argued.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump goes to Supreme Court over Mar-a-Lago search and seizure of documents | CNN Politics

    Trump goes to Supreme Court over Mar-a-Lago search and seizure of documents | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the dispute over materials marked as classified the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate this summer.

    His emergency request with the Supreme Court is the latest example of the former President seeking to involve the justices in investigations that entangle him – at a time when the high court’s legitimacy in politically explosive cases is under intense scrutiny.

    Trump is specifically asking the court to ensure that the more than 100 documents marked as classified are part of the special master’s review. The request, if granted, could bolster the former President’s attempt to challenge the search in court and have the documents returned to him.

    Trump’s emergency application to the Supreme Court comes after the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Justice Department and said that the department’s criminal investigation into the documents marked as classified could continue. The probe’s use of the records had been put on hold by a district judge in Florida, who granted a Trump request for a third-party review of the materials obtained in the Mar-a-Lago search.

    The appeal puts the political spotlight back on to the Supreme Court.

    Earlier this year, he asked the justices to block the release of documents from his White House to congressional US Capitol attack investigators. The high court rejected the request.

    The Supreme Court, with its current conservative majority, is already viewed by the American public as partisan following a string of controversial rulings this year, including overturning Roe v. Wade, and will likely make the Mar-a-Lago search even more of an issue in the upcoming congressional mid-term elections.

    Trump appointed three of the current justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

    In addition, the justice who receives Supreme Court emergency requests out of Florida is conservative Clarence Thomas, although he is almost guaranteed to refer the petition to the full court to consider.

    Thomas’ wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, promoted efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and has testified before the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack.

    CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said the appeal is intended to delay the Justice Department’s investigation into the former President, if possible.

    “This is part of the delay strategy,” Honig said on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” noting Trump lost at the appeals court. “So either he accepts that loss and those documents don’t go to the special master and they go right over to DOJ, or his only remaining recourse is to try to get the Supreme Court to take it, and that’s the course he’s taking now.”

    Honig said it’s a “close call” if the court will take up the case.

    “The Supreme Court typically likes to stay out of messy, political disputes,” Honig said. “On the other hand, when it comes to sort of unique, novel issues of constitutional law, of separation of power, of issues like executive privilege and classification of documents, that’s sort of why the Supreme Court exists – to adjudicate those high level disputes between branches that involve sort of core constitutional principles.”

    This story is breaking and will be updated.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Supreme Court rearranges its seating chart as Jackson takes the bench | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court rearranges its seating chart as Jackson takes the bench | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Tradition is a long-held value at the US Supreme Court, where the nine justices’ adherence to a myriad of historic rules makes the inner workings of America’s highest court reliably consistent even as its decisions sometimes send shock waves through the country.

    Some of those treasured rules will soon be on display as the court’s newest member, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, takes her seat on the bench for oral arguments. Although Jackson was administered her official oaths last spring, her investiture ceremony sealed her position on the bench days before the court’s new term begins on Monday, October 3.

    The addition of Jackson will cause the court to invoke one of its closely held traditions: the rearrangement of where the justices are seated on the bench when a new justice joins its ranks.

    In the courtroom, justices are seated by seniority, with the chief justice in the middle. “The senior associate justice sits to his right, the second senior to his left, and so on, alternating right and left by seniority,” according to the court.

    This means that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas will occupy the same seat this term that they did last term. But the remaining justices will be shuffled around, with Jackson seated to Roberts’ left on the end, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the court in late 2020, seated on the opposite end, and the other five justices taking new seats depending on when they joined the court.

    On Friday, Jackson also participated in other court traditions, including sitting in the historic John Marshall Bench Chair at the beginning of the ceremony, as is customary for all new justices.

    President Joe Biden attended the Friday morning ceremony. It is customary before the event for the president to chat privately with the justices in a conference room and to sign the court’s oversized guest book.

    After the ceremony, Jackson took the traditional walk down the 36 marble steps at the front of the columned building accompanied by the chief justice.

    Although the justices will take new seats this term, much of the public won’t ever see them in those positions because photography is not allowed in the courtroom. But Roberts has announced that after more than two years of pandemic-related restrictions, members of the public will be allowed back into the courtroom, though he has yet to lay out details.

    Before October, the justices will likely discuss whether the court will continue to allow a live audio feed of oral arguments, a practice that began during the pandemic that enables the public to follow along in real time.

    Continuing that practice could allow court watchers across the country to get an understanding of Jackson’s style on the bench as she participates in oral arguments during her first term.

    In the new term, the justices will consider issues including voting rights, immigration, affirmative action, environmental regulations and religious liberty — areas where the solid conservative majority can easily control the outcomes.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Ginni Thomas tells January 6 committee she didn’t discuss election activities with Justice Clarence Thomas | CNN Politics

    Ginni Thomas tells January 6 committee she didn’t discuss election activities with Justice Clarence Thomas | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, stressed that her election activities were separate from her husband’s role on the high court during her Thursday meeting with the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    Thomas addressed her dynamic with her husband through a prepared statement at the onset of the four and a half hour meeting with the panel, two sources familiar told CNN.

    “Regarding the 2020 election, I did not speak with him at all about the details of my volunteer campaign activities,” Thomas said under oath in her opening statement obtained by CNN. “And I did not speak with him at all about the details of my post-election activities, which were minimal, in any event. I am certain I never spoke with him about any of the legal challenges to the 2020 election, as I was not involved with those challenges in any way.”

    Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who chairs the January 6 committee, told CNN that Thomas answered “some questions” in her interview with the panel and reiterated her belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

    “Yes,” the chairman said when asked if Thomas said she still believes the election was stolen. “She said that.”

    Thompson would not divulge what the committee asked about, including whether she addressed her text messages with then-President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. In her prepared remarks, Thomas asserted that her husband was “completely unaware” of her texts with Meadows until the media reported on them.

    When asked if Thomas tried to clear up her previous statements, as her lawyer said, Thompson told CNN, “We didn’t accuse her of anything.”

    Thompson said that overall, “at this point we are glad she came in.” And asked whether the panel will incorporate the interview into its next, currently unscheduled hearing, he said, “If there’s something of merit.”

    When entering her voluntary interview on Thursday morning, Thomas declined to tell CNN why she felt the need to speak to the committee and instead said, “Thank you for being here.”

    She declined to say whether she spoke with her husband about her beliefs that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. “Thank you for your question, I look forward to answering members,” she told CNN.

    Thomas’ prepared remarks, however, stressed, “that my husband has never spoken with me about pending cases at the Court. It’s an iron clad rule in our home.”

    “Additionally, [Justice Thomas] is uninterested in politics. And I generally do not discuss with him my day-to-day work in politics, the topics I am working on, who I am calling, emailing, texting, or meeting,” she added.

    Thomas’ attorney, Mark Paoletta, confirmed the voluntary interview last week.

    “She was happy to cooperate with the Committee to clear up the misconceptions about her activities surrounding the 2020 elections,” Paoletta said in a statement after Thursday’s interview. “As she has said from the outset, Mrs. Thomas had significant concerns about fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election. And, as she told the Committee, her minimal and mainstream activity focused on ensuring that reports of fraud and irregularities were investigated.”

    Members of the panel have long said they are interested in speaking with Thomas, particularly after CNN first reported text messages she exchanged with Meadows prior to January 6 about overturning the election.

    But in the months after those messages emerged, there had been little indication that compelling her to testify was a top priority for the panel despite subsequent evidence that Thomas also encouraged state lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate electoral win.

    Thomas attended the rally that preceded the attack on the US Capitol, as she said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, where she stressed that her and her husband’s professional lives are kept separate. She also said that she had left the gathering before the protesters turned violent.

    She has also been publicly critical of the House January 6 investigation, calling on House GOP leaders to boot from their conference the two Republicans serving on the select committee.

    Thompson also told CNN that the panel had yet to reschedule its next hearing, after postponing it on Wednesday because of Hurricane Ian. The Mississippi Democrat said he doubts the hearing will take place next week.

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments Thursday.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • How Congress lost control of the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    How Congress lost control of the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]

    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court holds more power than it used to and, thanks to its “shadow docket,” can make consequential decisions that affect every American without so much as a written decision.

    That’s my takeaway from a fascinating and educational new book by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas who is also a CNN contributor.

    I talked to Vladeck about “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which publishes on May 16. Excerpts of our conversation, conducted by phone, are below.

    WOLF: Can you explain to people what you mean by “shadow docket”?

    VLADECK: The term is not mine. It was coined by University of Chicago law professor Will Baude in 2015.

    Will meant it really as this umbrella term. Not as a pejorative, but just as a description of the fact that the vast majority of rulings that the Supreme Court hands down that we don’t pay attention to.

    They’re not the fancy decisions on the merits docket. They’re not the cases where the court hears oral arguments and writes these lengthy rulings with concurrences and dissents.

    The typical shadow docket ruling is an unsigned, unexplained order. And most of them are banal. But not all of them.

    Will’s insight, which I have rather shamelessly appropriated, is that there’s a lot of really important stuff that happens through unsigned, unexplained orders. Just because they’re unsigned and unexplained doesn’t mean that we ought not to care about them, talk about them, study them and try to divine broader patterns from them.

    WOLF: You write about how the court, without explaining itself, either invalidated or influenced congressional maps in the last election in three states: Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana. Right now, Republicans have a four-seat majority in the House. Do you feel like those decisions determined the outcome of who was going to control the House?

    VLADECK: I think it’s close. We’re talking about two decisions from the court in cases from Alabama and Louisiana, and then those decisions were directly followed in Georgia.

    There’s no question that, but for the court’s interventions, at least three House seats in the current Congress would likely have been controlled by Democrats as opposed to Republicans.

    What I think is really hard to say is what other effects might have followed. The New York Times has suggested that those decisions affected control of as many as seven to 10 House seats. That, I think, is a little more circumstantial.

    There’s no question that the decisions in the Alabama and Louisiana cases helped to give the Republicans the majority they currently have in the House. Whether they actually directly affected control, I think is a close call.

    WOLF: Justice Samuel Alito is unapologetic about use of the shadow docket. Chief Justice John Roberts and other conservatives dislike it. How have things changed in recent months? Has it been used more or less since you stopped writing this book?

    VLADECK: With regard to what I think is the problematic behavior on the shadow docket, I think we have seen less of that in the current term. And actually, I think we can see patterns of that go all the way down to October 2021, when Justice (Amy Coney) Barrett wrote this very, very cryptic concurrence in a case about the Covid vaccine mandate for Maine health care workers.

    It was delphic in what it said, but signaled a bit of a break between Barrett and (Brett) Kavanaugh, who joined that opinion, and Justices (Clarence) Thomas, Alito and (Neil) Gorsuch in how often they were going to be willing to vote to intervene on the shadow docket and what kinds of cases they were willing to intervene in.

    Last week, the stay in the Oklahoma death penalty case, Richard Glossip, there were no dissents from that intervention. Even the mifepristone ruling in April, there are only two public dissents.

    One of the really interesting stories here is the court really does seem to have moderated at least some of its behavior. Part of that, I think, is because to at least some degree, the median justices have become convinced that some of the court’s prior behavior is problematic.

    WOLF: Do you have thoughts on motivations behind the rise of the shadow docket, which you pegged to the seating of Justice Barrett and this new conservative supermajority? Do you think that there was some concerted effort by the more conservative justices to exploit this?

    VLADECK: I think the short answer is no. But I know that there are going to be folks who disagree.

    The book tries to unpack some of this chronologically, because I think the story makes a lot of sense when told in sequence.

    Starting in 2017, the court was confronted with an unprecedented flurry of emergency applications from the Trump administration. It reacted to those applications iteratively, one at a time, without actually stepping back and looking at the whole waterfront, so the court actually kept digging itself in deeper and deeper.

    Had the justices actually taken a step back and asked whether this was a practice they wanted to condone, they might not have said yes. And I think with each new intervention, with each successive case, what had previously been extraordinary became ordinary.

    Without there necessarily having been any deliberateness or malice, the conservative majority just routinized the types of interventions that had until 2017 been completely unroutine.

    It’s only when we get to the Covid cases in 2020 and 2021 that now it starts to look like some of this is willful, because it’s only in those cases where we see the court deciding legal questions on the shadow docket through emergency applications that were in front of the justices already on the merits docket.

    There was nothing stopping the court from using merits cases to reach these questions about religious liberty, and the court did it through the shadow docket anyway.

    I really think it started as just an unstructured off-the-cuff reaction to unusually aggressive behavior by the Trump administration and then just sort of morphed into something else as time went on.

    WOLF: You point to the Obergefell decision (legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide) to argue that the court had already spoken on same-sex marriage through years of inaction. There was a patchwork of marriage laws the court had tolerated for a number of years. Reading that made me think we’re returning to that with abortion rights. And certainly with guns. The patchwork nature of rights in this country is growing not shrinking, despite the gay marriage decision.

    VLADECK: I think it’s grown in some respects and is shrinking and others. The more that the Supreme Court constitutionalizes things, the less of a patchwork we have.

    If you look at the Second Amendment context, I think it’s actually less of a patchwork, because more and more variances in how localities regulate guns are being struck down by the courts for violating the federal Constitution. Versus contests where the court is stepping away from constitutional enforcement, like abortion. It’s more contextual than sort of categorical.

    WOLF: I’ve done a lot of writing about the filibuster, which is this custom that has evolved to be a major part of the US government and slowed or stalled legislation in Congress. Your descriptions of how the court has evolved reminded me of that. You argue the justices have essentially grabbed power from Congress over the last 100 years or so to gain more control over their docket.

    VLADECK: When we look at the court today, we see a court that controls virtually all of its docket, a court that decides not just which cases it’s going to hear, but which issues it’s going to decide within the cases it chooses to hear.

    For most of us, we’ve never known anything different. And so we just assume that that’s how the court is supposed to operate.

    The reality is totally different. Until 1891, and really in practice until 1925, virtually all of the court’s docket was mandatory – the court had to decide any case over which it had jurisdiction.

    That made it a lot harder for the justices to have an agenda. It made it a lot harder for the justices to target particular disputes and look around for cases. The rise of certiorari, of docket discretion, is actually a thoroughly untold but undeniable part of the story of why today’s Supreme Court is so powerful, despite the founders’ views that this would be the least dangerous branch.

    The court today actually has a ton of power. Some of that story is about a power grab.

    But a fair amount of the story is about acquiescence and abdication by Congress, which gave the court the certiorari power in the first instance; which never reined it in, even as the court has seemed to used it to claim more and more power; and which in 1988 took all the brakes off of certiorari and said, yep, just about all the court’s docket is going to be discretionary – and which has done absolutely nothing since then to exercise any modicum of control over the court’s docket.

    That’s why the story that the book tries to tell is not just a story about the court. It is a story about the separation of powers and how the shadow docket is in some respects just a symptom of the broader disease of separation of powers dysfunction that we’re seeing right now.

    WOLF: You come back to that 1988 law repeatedly in the book. I wonder what you think Congress should do now to change the court. There are proposals to change the number of justices, to change the terms of justices. What would be your prescription?

    VLADECK: My prescription is sort of even sillier, which is I would just start by doing something. To me, the problem is that Congress has gotten completely out of the business of exercising any leverage over the courts, so much so that when Chief Justice Roberts was invited to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he responds and says that would raise the separation of powers concern.

    No it wouldn’t! Justices testify all the time. Or at least they did historically, and no one ever thought that was unconstitutional.

    There are specific things Congress can do, but the real thing Congress needs to do is just more than nothing. Exercise more control over the court’s docket. Use the budget, if necessary, as a cudgel.

    If nationwide injunctions are a problem that’s responsible for why the court is behaving in this way, make it easier for parties to appeal nationwide injunctions directly to the court without having to go through the emergency application process.

    There are so many things Congress could do. The problem is that we’re stuck in this post-1988 mindset that it is not Congress’ job. When we look at the court today, we look at the ethics issues, the docket issues, the legitimacy debates – a lot of what’s going on here is a court that’s just not remotely checked and not worrying about being checked.

    And this is why I’m a bit more circumspect about adding seats to the court or term limits. I don’t think changing the composition of the court changes the basic problem, which is the power dynamic, the Madisonian idea in Federalist 51, that ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

    That doesn’t change just because you have different bodies in those seats. The way that changes is Congress reasserts its clear constitutional prerogatives over the court. And that’s part of the story the book tries to tell.

    WOLF: You also talked quite a bit about this idea that the court gets most of its power from the legitimacy it has in the public. What should it do to restore its legitimacy?

    VLADECK: “Restore” is a little strong. I have not given up on the court. But I think there’s a lot that the justices can do to at least give a sense that they actually care about public perception, and that they should care about public perception.

    First, I think it would be nice if the justices would stop attacking critics as seeking to delegitimize the court. If you think the criticisms are unfair, then respond on the substance as opposed to attacking the people who are criticizing.

    When it comes to the shadow docket specifically, I think the justices can commit internally to norms about writings providing some rationale whenever the court’s going to grant emergency relief and actually upset the status quo.

    I think the court can commit to taking pains to make sure in each case that it’s explaining how the relevant criteria for emergency relief are met, that it’s explaining why it disagrees with lower courts, who in many cases are writing lengthy opinions that are getting quashed in a sentence.

    More generally, the justices could emulate better behavior when it comes to emergency applications and what the court’s role is in responding to them.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Biden’s student loan forgiveness program was rejected by the Supreme Court. Here’s what borrowers need to know | CNN Politics

    Biden’s student loan forgiveness program was rejected by the Supreme Court. Here’s what borrowers need to know | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program Friday, blocking millions of borrowers from receiving up to $20,000 in federal student debt relief, just months before student loan payments are set to restart after a yearslong pause.

    Biden had announced the student loan forgiveness program last August, but it never took effect, having been tied up in the courts for months.

    Later Friday, the president announced that his administration will pursue another pathway to providing some student debt relief, which is based on a different law than the one the now-defunct student loan forgiveness program was linked to.

    This pathway requires the Department of Education to undertake a formal rule-making process, which typically takes months. Details were not released Friday on who might benefit if that process is successful.

    Biden also announced that the administration will take steps to ease the transition period for borrowers when monthly student loan repayments resume in October. This “on-ramp” period will help borrowers avoid penalties if they miss a payment during the first 12 months.

    The Biden administration has made it easier for many borrowers to seek federal student loan forgiveness from several existing debt cancellation programs.

    New rules set to take effect in July could broaden eligibility for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which is aimed at helping government and nonprofit workers.

    And a new income-driven repayment plan proposal is meant to lower eligible borrowers’ monthly payments and reduce the amount they pay back over time. The administration said this plan was finalized Friday and borrowers will be able to take advantage of it this summer, before loan payments are due.

    The Department of Education has also made it easier for borrowers who were misled by their for-profit college to apply for student loan forgiveness under a program known as borrower defense to repayment, as well as for those who are permanently disabled.

    Altogether, the Biden administration has approved more than $66 billion in targeted loan relief to nearly 2.2 million borrowers.

    Regardless of the way the Supreme Court ruled on the one-time forgiveness program, the Biden administration had said that student loan payments will be due starting in October.

    Most student loan borrowers have not been required to make payments on their federal student loans since March 2020, when Congress passed a sweeping aid program to help people struggling financially because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Since then, the pause has been extended eight times – under both the Trump and Biden administrations.

    A law passed in early June that addresses the debt ceiling prohibits another extension of the pause.

    But the Biden administration said Friday that it will provide a 12-month on-ramp period for borrowers reentering payment.

    “Borrowers who can make payments should do so as payments will resume and interest will accrue,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

    “But the on-ramp to repayment will help borrowers avoid the harshest consequences of missed, partial, or late payments like negative credit reports and having loans referred to collection agencies,” he added.

    Borrowers will not be reported to credit bureaus, be considered in default or referred to collection agencies for late, missed or partial payments during the on-ramp period, according to a fact sheet from the White House.

    Student loan experts recommend that borrowers reach out to their student loan servicer with any questions about their loans as soon as possible.

    After such a long pause, many borrowers may be confused about how much they owe, when to pay and how. Millions of borrowers will have a different servicer handling their student loans since the last time they made a payment.

    Borrowers should also reach out to their servicer if they are worried they will not be able to afford their monthly payment. They may be eligible for an income-driven repayment plan, which set payments based on income and family size, but require borrowers to submit some paperwork.

    Federal student loan borrowers can check the FSA website for updates on resuming payments.

    Borrowers will also have to reauthorize the automatic debit from their accounts to pay their monthly loan bill even if they authorized the withdrawals before the pause began.

    The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators warns that borrowers may need to have patience when contacting their student loan servicer, which might be overwhelmed with a high volume of inquiries at this time.

    “It is possible you may not reach your servicer via phone the first time you call, and you may need to call a few times before getting connected,” the group says.

    No debt had been canceled, even though the Biden administration had received about 26 million applications for relief last year and approved 16 million of them.

    The forgiveness program, estimated to cost $400 billion, would have fulfilled a campaign promise of Biden’s to cancel some student loan debt. But a group of Republican-led states and other conservative groups took the administration to court over the program, claiming that the executive branch does not have the power to so broadly cancel student debt in the proposed manner.

    Critics also point out that the one-time student loan forgiveness program does nothing to address the cost of college for future students and could even lead to an increase in tuition. Some Democrats joined Republicans in voting for a bill to block the program. Both the Senate and the House passed the measure, but Biden vetoed the bill in early June.

    Under Biden’s student loan forgiveness proposal, individual borrowers who made less than $125,000 in either 2020 or 2021 and married couples or heads of households who made less than $250,000 a year would have seen up to $10,000 of their federal student loan debt forgiven.

    If a qualifying borrower also received a federal Pell grant while enrolled in college, the individual would have been eligible for up to $20,000 of debt forgiveness.

    Pell grants are awarded to millions of low-income students each year, based on factors including their family’s size and income and the cost charged by their college. These borrowers are also more likely to struggle to repay their student debt and end up in default.

    The administration estimated that roughly 20 million borrowers would have seen their entire federal student loan balance wiped away.

    An independent analysis from the Penn Wharton Budget Model found that about two-thirds of the student debt cancellation would have gone to households making $88,000 a year or less.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • CNN projects Republican Carolyn Carluccio will advance to fall Pennsylvania Supreme Court race against Democrat Daniel McCaffery | CNN Politics

    CNN projects Republican Carolyn Carluccio will advance to fall Pennsylvania Supreme Court race against Democrat Daniel McCaffery | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Republican voters in Pennsylvania made a candidate supported by the GOP establishment their nominee for an open state Supreme Court seat, rejecting another Republican contender more closely aligned with former President Donald Trump’s wing of the party.

    CNN projected the victory of Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas Judge Carolyn Carluccio in Tuesday’s primary, which marks a rebound for the more traditional elements of the GOP in this presidential battleground state. She will defeat Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough, who briefly halted the certification of the state’s election results in 2020, and had the backing of a key Trump ally, Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano in this election.

    Mastriano had pushed the falsehood in his failed 2022 bid for governor that election fraud led to Trump’s 2020 loss in the state. Last year, the Trump-endorsed Mastriano bested the Republican field to win his party’s nomination in the governor’s race, only to suffer a double-digit defeat to Democrat Josh Shapiro in the general election.

    Carluccio now will face Democrat Superior Court Judge Daniel McCaffery in the fall.

    The Republican and Democratic nominees are vying for an open seat on Pennsylvania’s high court, following the death of former Chief Justice Max Baer, a Democrat, last year.

    The outcome of November’s election will not tip the partisan balance on the high court, where Democrats currently hold a 4-2 majority on the seven-member body, but it could narrow the gap and start to lay the foundation for a shift in power in future election cycles, experts say.

    “It could create a situation where, very shortly, the partisan balance on this court could be up for grabs,” said Douglas Keith, who researches judicial elections at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school.

    State supreme courts are the final arbiters on key issues, ranging from election ground rules to abortion policies. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has upheld the state’s no-excuse mail voting law, and last year selected the state’s congressional map, breaking an impasse between the then-Republican controlled legislature and the state’s Democratic governor.

    Justices on Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court serve 10-year terms. After the first election, they run in so-called retention elections without opponents.

    Much of the attention in the Pennsylvania contest centered on the GOP primary between Carluccio and McCullough, who halted certification of the 2020 results – including Joe Biden’s victory in the state – in a ruling that was swiftly overturned by the state Supreme Court.

    McCullough, who lost a 2021 bid for the Supreme Court, calls herself “a strict constitutionalist judge,” and touted her rulings against pandemic restrictions and the state’s mail-in voting law in the campaign.

    But Carluccio had the backing of the state Republican Party and a national GOP group that’s active in judicial elections, the Republican State Leadership Committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative, which has weighed in with $600,000 in advertising to boost Carluccio.

    In a statement to CNN this week, Carluccio said she would leave “personal and political opinions at the door and look at each case without bias and only determine the constitutionality of what’s before me.”

    Carluccio said she hasn’t questioned the outcome of any election, but she said she is concerned by what she called the “conflicting, and sometimes unclear,” decisions on the state’s mail-in voting law in recent years by the state Supreme Court.

    In 2019, the state legislatures passed a no-excuse mail-in voting law, known as Act 77, with bipartisan support. But it has become the target of criticism from some Republicans after it was employed in the contentious 2020 election that saw Biden flip the state. The high court has weighed in on aspects of the law multiple times. In 2020, for instance, the court ruled that ballots in two counties with missing dates on the outside of the ballot return envelope could be counted. In the 2022 election, however, the court ordered that mail ballots with missing or improper dates on the return envelopes should be kept out of the count and deadlocked on the underlying legal questions.

    “Our election laws must be applied consistently across all counties, regardless of the election year,” Carluccio said in her statement. “And, when part of our electorate has concerns about the integrity of our elections, rather than dismiss their concerns, the response should be bold transparency in the administration of our elections.”

    The modest spending in the under-the-radar Pennsylvania high court race stood sharp contrast to the record-setting spending that candidates and outside groups plowed into a Wisconsin Supreme Court election last month that, in the end, flipped control of that state’s high court to liberals. (A Kantar Media/CMAG analysis for the Brennan Center found that the ad spending for the Wisconsin high court seat hit $28.8 million as of early April, and some estimates put the likely final tally of all spending in that election even higher.)

    In an interview ahead of Tuesday’s election, Penn State political scientist Michael Nelson said the GOP primary represented a “good opportunity to get a sense of where the energy in the party is, what segment of the party is able to get their people to go on the polls on a random Tuesday in May when there hasn’t been wall-to-wall television advertising.”

    “Given that the Mastriano wing of the Republican Party was so dominant in the elections last fall, it will be interesting to see whether they can keep up that momentum or whether the standard-issue conservative wing of the party is able to rebound,” he added.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • HHS secretary says ‘everything is on the table’ amid calls to ignore medication abortion ruling | CNN Politics

    HHS secretary says ‘everything is on the table’ amid calls to ignore medication abortion ruling | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Sunday said “everything is on the table” following a Texas federal judge’s ruling to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication abortion drug mifepristone.

    In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” the secretary would not say whether he believes the FDA should ignore the ruling and keep the drug on the market, but he maintained that the Biden administration is considering all options.

    “We want the courts to overturn this reckless decision,” Becerra said, adding that there was a “good chance” of Supreme Court intervention but declining to say how, exactly, the administration will handle the ruling in the interim.

    “Everything is on the table. The president said that way back when the Dobbs decision came out. Every option is on the table,” the secretary told Bash, referring to last year’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.

    Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a separate appearance on “State of the Union,” did not back away from her call Friday on CNN for the ruling to be ignored, saying that if it was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court, “it would essentially institute a national abortion ban.”

    “I do not believe that the courts have the authority over the FDA that they just asserted, and I do believe that it creates a crisis,” she told Bash.

    Ocasio-Cortez called the ruling “an extreme abuse of power” and said there was precedent for the executive branch ignoring court rulings.

    “I do think that when it comes to gaming out what the very real possibilities are in the coming days, weeks and months, this is not just about speculation, but this is about preparation. And the reality of our courts right now is very disturbing,” she said.

    Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas warned in a separate interview with Bash on Sunday that House GOP appropriators could defund certain FDA programs if the ruling is ultimately ignored.

    “The House Republicans have the power of the purse, and if the administration wants to not lead this ruling, not live up to this ruling, then we’re going to have a problem,” the second-term lawmaker said. “And it may come a point where House Republicans on the appropriation side have to defund FDA programs that don’t make sense.”

    US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on Friday issued a ruling to halt the decades-old approval of mifepristone, but he paused the ruling from taking effect for a week so it could be appealed, a process that is underway.

    “This is not America,” Becerra said Sunday. “What you saw is that one judge in that one court in that one state, that’s not America. America goes by the evidence. America does what’s fair. America does what is transparent, and we can show that what we do is for the right reasons. That’s not America.”

    Within an hour of the ruling Friday, a different federal judge ruled in favor of 17 Democratic-led states and Washington, DC, looking to expand access to the abortion pill, allowing them to keep the drug available.

    Becerra on Sunday touted the proven safety of the drug, a factor that Kacsmaryk questioned in his ruling. He confirmed that the Department of Justice had already filed its appeal and is waiting for its day in court.

    Still, Becerra had little to say about what tangible preparations the administration would take to secure access to abortion should the drug no longer be available after the weeklong pause.

    “Well, [women] certainly have access today, and we intend to do everything to make sure it’s available for them not just in a week but moving forward, period,” Becerra told Bash when asked if women would have access to the medication after this week.

    The Justice Department and Danco, a mifepristone manufacturer that intervened in the case to defend the approval, have both filed notices of appeal. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Danco said in statements that in addition to the appeals, they will seek “stays” of the ruling, meaning emergency requests that the decision remains frozen while the appeal moves forward.

    They’re appealing to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which is sometimes said to be the country’s most conservative appellate court. Yet some legal scholars are skeptical that the 5th Circuit, as conservative as it is, would let Kacmsaryk’s order take effect.

    “I got to believe that, Dana, an appeals court, the Supreme Court, whatever court has to understand that this ruling by this one judge overturns not just access to mifepristone, but possibly any number of drugs,” Becerra said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The Supreme Court just handed Joe Biden a series of setbacks. It may have also given Democrats new motivation to reelect him | CNN Politics

    The Supreme Court just handed Joe Biden a series of setbacks. It may have also given Democrats new motivation to reelect him | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden wasn’t planning to take questions on Thursday. His helicopter was waiting outside on the White House’s South Lawn.

    But after a 10-minute statement on the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling, a CNN reporter called out, “Is this a rogue court?” The president stopped in his tracks.

    Pausing to think a moment, he looked over his shoulder. “This is not a normal court,” he said before leaving.

    This week’s monumental rulings – striking down affirmative action in college admissions and unraveling Biden’s student debt relief plan among them – amount to serious setbacks for a president who promised as a candidate to advance racial equity and erase student debt.

    They are also an urgent reminder to Democrats of the enduring consequences of elections at a moment Biden’s advisers are searching for ways to inject enthusiasm into his bid for another term.

    What impact that will have on the coming election remains unknown. But Biden and his team have already begun assigning blame on Republicans for dismantling programs that have benefited young, college-educated and minority voters – all critical components of the Democratic coalition Biden will need to mobilize if he hopes to win reelection.

    That three justices within the court’s conservative majority were appointed by President Donald Trump – both Biden’s predecessor and, according to polls, his most likely opponent next year – creates even more of an impetus for Biden to use the rulings as a political cudgel as his campaign heats up.

    “The excesses of the Supreme Court are going to backfire,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat. “You know, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe versus Wade reduced what was supposed to be a red wave in the 2022 election cycle to nothing more than a red trickle. So not only is the Supreme Court’s decision bad law, it’s also bad politics and it’s going to come back to haunt the Republican Party.”

    Speaking to a group of Democratic donors in New York City on Thursday evening, Biden sought to underscore the stakes of the court’s new supermajority, a preview of how he’ll frame the issue over the coming year.

    “The Supreme Court is becoming not just conservative, but almost – it’s like a throwback. It’s like a throwback, some of the decisions they’re making,” Biden told donors in a private dining room inside the Seagram Building. “Did you ever think we’d be in a position, after 50 years of acknowledging the right of privacy in the Constitution, suggesting that there’s no such thing as the right to privacy?”

    Despite his criticism of the court, Biden has rejected some liberal suggestions on reforming the panel. He opposes expanding the number of justices that sit on the court and hasn’t embraced term limits.

    “If we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it, maybe forever, in a way that is not healthy,” Biden said during a friendly interview on MSNBC shortly after Thursday’s decision on affirmative action.

    Biden’s student loan plan, which came about last year after months of agonizing internal debate over its costs and eligibility criteria, was intended to free low- and middle-income Americans from crippling debt.

    Throughout the process, Biden expressed concern at being seen as offering a handout to the wealthy. Eventually, pressure to fulfill one of his top campaign promises led to the plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for certain borrowers.

    For months the White House publicly said there was no alternative plan if the Supreme Court struck down the student debt relief program. But behind the scenes, top White House officials were working for several weeks to fulfill a simple directive from the president to “be ready in the event the Supreme Court did not do the right thing,” White House officials said.

    The president’s charge to his team was described as this: “If the court ruled against the program, find other ways to deliver relief for as many working and middle-class borrowers as possible, accounting for all the legal issues.”

    For the past few weeks, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients gathered his team for weekly meetings to map out all scenarios for the Supreme Court’s ruling and explore all legal avenues available to them after the president told his team to build a “fully developed response” to all possible rulings, officials said.

    Zient’s office – led by deputy chief of staff Natalie Quillian, the Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council and White House Counsel’s Office – worked with the Department of Education and the Department of Justice to come up with options the administration could take if the ruling was not in their favor.

    “All of these meetings were structured around one question – how would we be able to deliver relief to as many borrowers as we could, as quickly as possible under any possible outcome of the Supreme Court,” official said.

    The White House also stayed in touch with and fielded suggestions for next steps from debt relief advocate groups and congressional allies throughout the process. Lawyers from the White House, Justice Department and Education Department examined all of the recommendations, including administration action and the legal authorities available to the administration, and ultimately crafted responses for multiple scenarios.

    Inside the White House, some officials had held out hope the court would uphold Biden’s student debt program, pointing to some surprising decisions over the past weeks that saw some conservative justices joining liberals on issues of voting rights and congressional redistricting.

    But even Biden acknowledged after the court’s oral arguments in February he wasn’t certain the ruling would go his way.

    “I’m confident we’re on the right side of the law,” Biden told CNN in March when asked if he was confident the administration would prevail in the case. “I’m not confident of the outcome of the decision yet.”

    His instinct was correct. The president was in the Oval Office on Friday morning when he was informed of the Supreme Court’s decision by his senior aides and then engaged in meetings stretching into the afternoon to fine-tune their response after the ruling was not in their favor.

    Ultimately, the president directed his team to move forward with a new plan, which includes pursuing a new path for debt relief through the authorities in the Higher Education Act of 1965, which was promoted by some debt relief advocate groups and progressive lawmakers, as well as creating a temporary 12-month “on-ramp repayment” program for federal student loan borrowers when payments resume in October.

    A day earlier, Biden was watching the news on television when the affirmative action decision was handed down by the court, according to an official. A team from the White House counsel’s office came to brief him on the ruling.

    “In our conversations with the White House about why student debt cancelation was needed, it’s about reducing the racial wealth gap,” said Wisdom Cole, national director of the Youth & College division at the NAACP. “If the administration is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, they must use every tool in their toolkit. Every legal authority to ensure that we see relief happen.”

    Demonstrating urgency in responding to the court’s actions was a key objective as the White House prepared for both rulings, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Looming over the preparations was the impression left after last year’s Supreme Court term that the Biden administration was unprepared for the decision striking down the nationwide right to abortion, despite a leaked court opinion months ahead of time indicating the justices were prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade.

    The White House has strongly denied it was caught flat-footed on abortion and has pointed to actions taken in the months after the decision to expand access, including to medication abortion.

    The issue proved galvanizing to Democratic voters in November’s midterm elections and has propelled Democratic victories even in traditionally Republican districts.

    Whether the court’s ruling on student debt relief and affirmative action can have a similar effect will prove critical over the coming year, as Biden works to convince voters he is still fighting to fulfill his promises. Initial reaction from progressive Democrats was positive.

    “It was not a foregone conclusion that the President would act so swiftly today. But he announced an alternative path to student debt cancellation by using his Higher Education Act authority given by Congress – and that deserves praise,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Institute.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Donald Trump Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    Donald Trump Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.

    Birth date: June 14, 1946

    Birth place: New York, New York

    Birth name: Donald John Trump

    Father: Fred Trump, real estate developer

    Mother: Mary (Macleod) Trump

    Marriages: Melania (Knauss) Trump (January 22, 2005-present); Marla (Maples) Trump (December 1993-June 1999, divorced); Ivana (Zelnicek) Trump (1977-1990, divorced)

    Children: with Melania Trump: Barron, March 20, 2006; with Marla Maples: Tiffany, October 13, 1993; with Ivana Trump: Eric, 1984; Ivanka, October 30, 1981; Donald Jr., December 31, 1977

    Education: Attended Fordham University; University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Finance, B.S. in Economics, 1968

    As Trump evolved from real estate developer to reality television star, he turned his name into a brand. Licensed Trump products have included board games, steaks, cologne, vodka, furniture and menswear.

    He has portrayed himself in cameo appearances in movies and on television, including “Zoolander,” “Sex and the City” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”

    Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was first used by Ronald Reagan while he was running against President Jimmy Carter.

    For details on investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, visit 2016 Presidential Election Investigation Fast Facts.

    1970s – After college, works with his father on apartment complexes in Queens and Brooklyn.

    1973 – Trump and his father are named in a Justice Department lawsuit alleging Trump property managers violated the Fair Housing Act by turning away potential African American tenants. The Trumps deny the company discriminates and file a $100 million countersuit, which is later dismissed. The case is settled in 1975, and the Trumps agree to provide weekly lists of vacancies to Black community organizations.

    1976 – Trump and his father partner with the Hyatt Corporation, purchasing the Commodore Hotel, an aging midtown Manhattan property. The building is revamped and opens four years later as the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The project kickstarts Trump’s career as a Manhattan developer.

    1983-1990 – He builds/purchases multiple properties in New York City, including Trump Tower and the Plaza Hotel, and also opens casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, including the Trump Taj Mahal and the Trump Plaza. Trump buys the New Jersey Generals football team, part of the United States Football League, which folds after three seasons.

    1985 – Purchases Mar-a-Lago, an oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida. It is renovated and opens as a private club in 1995.

    1987 – Trump’s first book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” is published, and becomes a bestseller. The Donald J. Trump Foundation is established in order to donate a portion of profits from book sales to charities.

    1990 – Nearly $1 billion in personal debt, Trump reaches an agreement with bankers allowing him to avoid declaring personal bankruptcy.

    1991 – The Trump Taj Mahal files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

    1992 – The Trump Plaza and the Trump Castle casinos file for bankruptcy.

    1996 – Buys out and becomes executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants.

    October 7, 1999 – Tells CNN’s Larry King that he is going to form a presidential exploratory committee and wants to challenge Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination.

    February 14, 2000 – Says that he is abandoning his bid for the presidency, blaming discord within the Reform Party.

    January 2004 – “The Apprentice,” a reality show featuring aspiring entrepreneurs competing for Trump’s approval, premieres on NBC.

    November 21, 2004 – Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

    2005 – Establishes Trump University, which offers seminars in real estate investment.

    February 13, 2009 – Announces his resignation from his position as chairman of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Days later, the company files for bankruptcy protection.

    March 17, 2011 – During an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Trump questions whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

    June 16, 2015 – Announces that he is running for president during a speech at Trump Tower. He pledges to implement policies that will boost the economy and says he will get tough on immigration. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people who have lots of problems,” Trump says. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”

    June 28, 2015 – Says he’s giving up the TV show “The Apprentice” to run for president.

    June 29, 2015 – NBCUniversal says it is cutting its business ties to Trump and won’t air the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because of “derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants.”

    July 8, 2015 – In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Trump says he “can’t guarantee” all of his employees have legal status in the United States. This is in response to questions about a Washington Post report about undocumented immigrants working at the Old Post Office construction site in Washington, DC, which Trump is converting into a hotel.

    July 22, 2015 – Trump’s financial disclosure report is made public by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

    August 6, 2015 – During the first 2016 Republican debate, Trump is questioned about a third party candidacy, his attitude towards women and his history of donating money to Democratic politicians. He tells moderator Megyn Kelly of Fox News he feels he is being mistreated. The following day, Trump tells CNN’s Don Lemon that Kelly was singling him out for attack, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

    September 11, 2015 – Trump announces he has purchased NBC’s half of the Miss Universe Organization, which organizes the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.

    December 7, 2015 – Trump’s campaign puts out a press release calling for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

    May 26, 2016 – Secures enough delegates to clinch the Republican Party nomination.

    July 16, 2016 – Introduces Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

    July 19, 2016 – Becomes the Republican Party nominee for president.

    September 13, 2016 – During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says his office is investigating Trump’s charitable foundation “to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York.”

    October 1, 2016 – The New York Times reports Trump declared a $916 million loss in 1995 which could have allowed him to legally skip paying federal income taxes for years. The report is based on a financial document mailed to the newspaper by an anonymous source.

    October 7, 2016 – Unaired footage from 2005 surfaces of Trump talking about trying to have sex with a married woman and being able to grope women. In footage obtained by The Washington Post, Trump is heard off-camera discussing women in vulgar terms during the taping of a segment for “Access Hollywood.” In a taped response, Trump declares, “I said it, I was wrong and I apologize.”

    October 9, 2016 – During the second presidential debate, CNN’s Cooper asks Trump about his descriptions of groping and kissing women without their consent in the “Access Hollywood” footage. Trump denies that he has ever engaged in such behavior and declares the comments were “locker room talk.” After the debate, 11 women step forward to claim that they were sexually harassed or sexually assaulted by the real estate developer. Trump says the stories aren’t true.

    November 8, 2016 – Elected president of the United States. Trump will be the first president who has never held elected office, a top government post or a military rank.

    November 18, 2016 – Trump agrees to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits against Trump University. About 6,000 former students are covered by the settlement.

    December 24, 2016 – Trump says he will dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President.” A spokeswoman for the New York Attorney General’s Office says that the foundation cannot legally close until investigators conclude their probe of the charity.

    January 10, 2017 – CNN reports that intelligence officials briefed Trump on a dossier that contains allegations about his campaign’s ties to Russia and unverified claims about his personal life. The author of the dossier is a former British spy who was hired by a research firm that had been funded by both political parties to conduct opposition research on Trump.

    January 20, 2017 – Takes the oath of office from Chief Justice John Roberts during an inauguration ceremony at the Capitol.

    January 23, 2017 – Trump signs an executive action withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal negotiated by the Obama administration and awaiting congressional approval.

    January 27, 2017 – Trump signs an executive order halting all refugee arrivals for 120 days and banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. Additionally, refugees from Syria are barred indefinitely from entering the United States. The order is challenged in court.

    February 13, 2017 – Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigns amid accusations he lied about his communications with Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn later pleads guilty to lying to the FBI.

    May 3, 2017 – FBI Director James Comey confirms that there is an ongoing investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Less than a week later, Trump fires Comey, citing a DOJ memo critical of the way he handled the investigation into Clinton’s emails.

    May 2017 – Shortly after Trump fires Comey, the FBI opens an investigation into whether Trump “had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests,” citing former law enforcement officials and others the paper said were familiar with the probe.

    May 17, 2017 – Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is appointed as special counsel to lead the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including potential collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein makes the appointment because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from investigations into Trump’s campaign.

    May 19, 2017 – Departs on his first foreign trip as president. The nine-day, five-country trip includes stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, a NATO summit in Brussels and a G7 summit in Sicily.

    June 1, 2017 – Trump proclaims that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord but adds that he is open to renegotiating aspects of the environmental agreement, which was signed by 175 countries in 2016.

    July 7, 2017 – Meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in person for the first time, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.

    August 8, 2017 – In response to nuclear threats from North Korea, Trump warns that Pyongyang will “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Soon after Trump’s comments, North Korea issues a statement saying it is “examining the operational plan” to strike areas around the US territory of Guam.

    August 15, 2017 – After a violent clash between neo-Nazi activists and counterprotesters leaves one dead in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump holds an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower and declares that there were “fine people” on both sides.

    August 25, 2017 – Trump’s first pardon is granted to former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt for disregarding a court order in a racial-profiling case. Trump did not consult with lawyers at the Justice Department before announcing his decision.

    September 5, 2017 – The Trump administration announces that it is ending the DACA program, introduced by Obama to protect nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Trump calls on Congress to introduce legislation that will prevent DACA recipients from being deported. Multiple lawsuits are filed opposing the policy in federal courts and judges delay the end of the program, asking the government to submit filings justifying the cancellation of DACA.

    September 19, 2017 – In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump refers to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and warns that the United States will “totally destroy North Korea” if forced to defend itself or its allies.

    September 24, 2017 – The Trump administration unveils a third version of the travel ban, placing restrictions on travel by certain foreigners from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. (Chad is later removed after meeting security requirements.) One day before the revised ban is set to take effect, it is blocked nationwide by a federal judge in Hawaii. A judge in Maryland issues a similar ruling.

    December 4, 2017 – The Supreme Court rules that the revised travel ban can take effect pending appeals.

    December 6, 2017 – Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announces plans to relocate the US Embassy there.

    January 11, 2018 – During a White House meeting on immigration reform, Trump reportedly refers to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries.”

    January 12, 2018 – The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump allegedly had an affair with a porn star named Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels. The newspaper states that Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, arranged a $130,000 payment for a nondisclosure agreement weeks before Election Day in 2016. Trump denies the affair occurred. In March, Clifford sues Trump seeking to be released from the NDA. In response, Trump and his legal team agree outside of court not to sue or otherwise enforce the NDA. The suit is dismissed. A California Superior Court judge orders Trump to pay $44,100 to Clifford, to reimburse her attorneys’ fees in the legal battle surrounding her nondisclosure agreement.

    March 13, 2018 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and will nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson’s replacement.

    March 20, 2018 – A New York Supreme Court judge rules that a defamation lawsuit against Trump can move forward, ruling against a July 2017 motion to dismiss filed by Trump’s lawyers. The lawsuit, filed by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant, is related to sexual assault allegations. In November 2021, attorneys for Zervos announce she is dropping the lawsuit.

    March 23, 2018 – The White House announces that it is adopting a policy, first proposed by Trump via tweet in July 2017, banning most transgender individuals from serving in the military.

    April 9, 2018 – The FBI raids Cohen’s office, home and a hotel room where he’d been staying while his house was renovated. The raid is related to a federal investigation of possible fraud and campaign finance violations.

    April 13, 2018 – Trump authorizes joint military strikes in Syria with the UK and France after reports the government used chemical weapons on civilians in Douma.

    May 7, 2018 – The Trump administration announces a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings. Sessions says that individuals who violate immigration law will be criminally prosecuted and warns that parents could be separated from children.

    May 8, 2018 – Trump announces that the United States is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.

    May 31, 2018 – The Trump administration announces it is imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from allies Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

    June 8-9, 2018 – Before leaving for the G7 summit in Quebec City, Trump tells reporters that Russia should be reinstated in the group. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 led to Russia’s suspension. After leaving the summit, Trump tweets that he will not endorse the traditional G7 communique issued at the end of the meeting. The President singles out Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for making “false statements” at a news conference.

    June 12, 2018 – Trump meets Kim in person for the first time during a summit in Singapore. They sign a four-point statement that broadly outlines the countries’ commitment to a peace process. The statement contains a pledge by North Korea to “work towards” complete denuclearization but the agreement does not detail how the international community will verify that Kim is ending his nuclear program.

    June 14, 2018 – The New York attorney general sues the Trump Foundation, alleging that the nonprofit run by Trump and his three eldest children violated state and federal charity law.

    June 26, 2018 – The Supreme Court upholds the Trump administration’s travel ban in a 5-4 ruling along party lines.

    July 16, 2018 – During a joint news conference with Putin in Helsinki, Trump declines to endorse the US government’s assessment that Russia interfered in the election, saying he doesn’t “see any reason why” Russia would be responsible. The next day, Trump clarifies his remark, “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” He says he accepts the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the election but adds, “It could be other people also.”

    August 21, 2018 – Cohen pleads guilty to eight federal charges, including two campaign finance violations. In court, he says that he orchestrated payments to silence women “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” On the same day, Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort is convicted on eight counts of federal financial crimes. On December 12, Cohen is sentenced to three years in prison.

    October 2, 2018 – The New York Times details numerous tax avoidance schemes allegedly carried out by Trump and his siblings. In a tweet, Trump dismisses the article as a “very old, boring and often told hit piece.”

    November 20, 2018 – Releases a statement backing Saudi Arabia in the wake of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Virginia resident, killed in October at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. Khashoggi was a frequent critic of the Saudi regime. The Saudis initially denied any knowledge of his death, but then later said a group of rogue operators were responsible for his killing. US officials have speculated that such a mission, including the 15 men sent from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to murder him, could not have been carried out without the authorization of Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the statement, Trump writes, “Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

    December 18, 2018 – The Donald J. Trump Foundation agrees to dissolve according to a document filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. The agreement allows the New York attorney general’s office to review the recipients of the charity’s assets.

    December 22, 2018 – The longest partial government shutdown in US history begins after Trump demands lawmakers allocate $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall before agreeing to sign a federal funding package.

    January 16, 2019 – After nearly two years of Trump administration officials denying that anyone involved in his campaign colluded with the Russians to help his candidacy, Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani, says “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign. I said the President of the United States.”

    January 25, 2019 – The government shutdown ends when Trump signs a short-term spending measure, providing three weeks of stopgap funding while lawmakers work on a border security compromise. The bill does not include any wall funding.

    February 15, 2019 – Trump declares a national emergency to allocate funds to build a wall on the border with Mexico. During the announcement, the President says he expects the declaration to be challenged in court. The same day, Trump signs a border security measure negotiated by Congress, with $1.375 billion set aside for barriers, averting another government shutdown.

    February 18, 2019 – Attorneys general from 16 states file a lawsuit in federal court challenging Trump’s emergency declaration.

    March 22, 2019 – Mueller ends his investigation and delivers his report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Justice Department official tells CNN that there will be no further indictments.

    March 24, 2019 – Barr releases a letter summarizing the principal conclusions from Mueller’s investigation. According to Barr’s four-page letter, the evidence was not sufficient to establish that members Trump’s campaign tacitly engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the election.

    April 18, 2019 – A redacted version of the Mueller report is released. The first part of the 448-page document details the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team on potential conspiracy crimes and explains their decisions not to charge individuals associated with the campaign. The second part of the report outlines ten episodes involving possible obstruction of justice by the President. According to the report, Mueller’s decision not to charge Trump was rooted in Justice Department guidelines prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president. Mueller writes that he would have cleared Trump if the evidence warranted exoneration.

    May 1, 2019 – The New York Times publishes a report that details how Giuliani, in his role as Trump’s personal attorney, is investigating allegations related to former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential Trump opponent in the 2020 presidential race. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings. In 2016, the elder Biden pressured Ukraine to oust a prosecutor who had investigated Burisma for corruption. Giuliani suggests that Biden’s move was motivated by a desire to protect his son from criminal charges. Giuliani’s claims are undermined after Bloomberg reports that the Burisma investigation was “dormant” when Biden pressed the prosecutor to resign.

    June 12, 2019 – Trump says he may be willing to accept information about political rivals from a foreign government during an interview on ABC News, declaring that he’s willing to listen and wouldn’t necessarily call the FBI.

    June 16, 2019 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveils a sign at the proposed site of a Golan Heights settlement to be named Trump Heights.

    June 18, 2019 – Trump holds a rally in Orlando to publicize the formal launch of his reelection campaign.

    June 28, 2019 – During a breakfast meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman reportedly discuss tensions with Iran, trade and human rights.

    June 30, 2019 – Trump becomes the first sitting US president to enter North Korea. He takes 20 steps beyond the border and shakes hands with Kim.

    July 14, 2019 – Via Twitter, Trump tells Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Illhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley to “go back” to their home countries. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley are natural-born US citizens; Omar was born in Somalia, immigrated to the United States and became a citizen.

    July 16, 2019 – The House votes, 240-187, to condemn the racist language Trump used in his tweets about Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Omar and Pressley.

    July 24, 2019 – Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

    July 25, 2019 – Trump speaks on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump asks Zelensky for a “favor,” encouraging him to speak with Giuliani about investigating Biden. In the days before the call, Trump blocked nearly $400 million in military and security aid to Ukraine.

    August 12, 2019 – A whistleblower files a complaint pertaining to Trump’s conduct on the Zelensky call.

    September 11, 2019 – The Trump administration lifts its hold on military aid for Ukraine.

    September 24, 2019 – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the beginning of an impeachment inquiry related to the whistleblower complaint.

    September 25, 2019 – The White House releases notes from the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. The readout contains multiple references to Giuliani and Barr. In response, the Justice Department issues a statement that says Barr didn’t know about Trump’s conversation until weeks after the call. Further, the attorney general didn’t talk to the President about having Ukraine investigate the Bidens, according to the Justice Department. On the same day as the notes are released, Trump and Zelensky meet in person for the first time on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. During a joint press conference after the meeting, both men deny that Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden in exchange for aid.

    September 26, 2019 – The House releases a declassified version of the whistleblower complaint. According to the complaint, officials at the White House tried to “lock down” records of Trump’s phone conversation with Zelensky. The complaint also alleges that Barr played a role in the campaign to convince Zelensky that Biden should be investigated. Trump describes the complaint as “fake news” and “a witch hunt” on Twitter.

    September 27, 2019 – Pompeo is subpoenaed by House committees over his failure to provide documents related to Ukraine. Kurt Volker, US special envoy to Ukraine, resigns. He was named in the whistleblower complaint as one of the State Department officials who helped Giuliani connect with sources in Ukraine.

    October 3, 2019 – Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump says both Ukraine and China should investigate alleged corruption involving Biden and his son. CNN reports that the President had brought up Biden and his family during a June phone call with Xi Jinping. In that call, Trump discussed the political prospects of Biden as well as Elizabeth Warren. He also told Xi that he would remain quiet on the matter of Hong Kong protests. Notes documenting the conversation were placed on a highly secured server where the transcript from the Ukraine call was also stored.

    October 6, 2019 – After Trump speaks on the phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House announces that US troops will move out of northern Syria to make way for a planned Turkish military operation. The move marks a major shift in American foreign policy and effectively gives Turkey the green light to attack US-backed Kurdish forces, a partner in the fight against ISIS.

    October 9, 2019 – Turkey launches a military offensive in northern Syria.

    October 31, 2019 – Trump says via Twitter that he is changing his legal residency from New York to Florida, explaining that he feels he is treated badly by political leaders from the city and state.

    November 7, 2019 – A judge orders Trump to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit against his charity filed by the New York state attorney general. According to the suit, Trump breached his fiduciary duty by allowing his presidential campaign to direct the distribution of donations. In a statement, Trump accuses the attorney general of mischaracterizing the settlement for political purposes.

    November 13, 2019 – Public impeachment hearings begin and Trump meets Erdogan at the White House.

    November 20, 2019 – During a public hearing, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland says he worked with Giuliani on matters related to Ukraine at the “express direction of the President of the United States” and he says “everyone was in the loop.” Sondland recounts several conversations between himself and Trump about Ukraine opening two investigations: one into Burisma and another into conspiracies about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 US election.

    December 10, 2019 – House Democrats unveil two articles of impeachment, one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress.

    December 11, 2019 – Trump signs an executive order to include discrimination against Jewish people as a violation of law in certain cases, with an eye toward fighting antisemitism on college campuses.

    December 13, 2019 – The House Judiciary Committee approves the two articles of impeachment in a party line vote.

    December 18, 2019 – The House of Representatives votes to impeach Trump, charging a president with high crimes and misdemeanors for just the third time in American history.

    January 3, 2020 – Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Trump announces that a US airstrike in Iraq has killed Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force.

    January 8, 2020 – Iran fires a number of missiles at two Iraqi bases housing US troops in retaliation for the American strike that killed Soleimani. No US or Iraqi lives are reported lost, but the Pentagon later releases a statement confirming that 109 US service members had been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries in the wake of the attack.

    January 24, 2020 – Makes history as the first President to attend the annual March for Life rally in Washington, DC, since it began nearly a half-century ago. Trump reiterates his support for tighter abortion restrictions.

    January 29, 2020 – Trump signs the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement into law, which replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement.

    January 31, 2020 – The Trump administration announces an expansion of the travel ban to include six new countries. Immigration restrictions will be imposed on: Nigeria, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar (known as Burma), with exceptions for immigrants who have helped the United States.

    February 5, 2020 – The Senate votes to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment. Sen. Mitt Romney is the sole Republican to vote to convict on the charge of abuse of power, joining with all Senate Democrats in a 52-48 not guilty vote. On the obstruction of Congress charge, the vote falls along straight party lines, 53-47 for acquittal.

    May 29, 2020 – Trump announces that the United States will terminate its relationship with the World Health Organization.

    July 10, 2020 – Trump commutes the prison sentence of his longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of crimes that included lying to Congress in part, prosecutors said, to protect the President. The announcement came just days before Stone was set to report to a federal prison in Georgia.

    October 2, 2020 – Trump announces that he has tested positive for coronavirus. Later in the day, Trump is transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and returns to the White House on October 5.

    November 7, 2020 – Days after the presidential election on November 3, CNN projects Trump loses his bid for reelection to Biden.

    November 25, 2020 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has granted Michael Flynn a “full pardon,” wiping away the guilty plea of the intelligence official for lying to the FBI.

    December 23, 2020 – Announces 26 new pardons, including for Stone, Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.

    January 6, 2021 – Following Trump’s rally and speech at the White House Ellipse, pro-Trump rioters storm the US Capitol as members of Congress meet to certify the Electoral College results of the 2020 presidential election. A total of five people die, including a Capitol Police officer the next day.

    January 7-8, 2021 – Instagram and Facebook place a ban on Trump’s account from posting through the remainder of his presidency and perhaps “indefinitely.” Twitter permanently bans Trump from the platform, explaining that “after close review of recent Tweets…and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

    January 13, 2021 – The House votes to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” He is the only president to be impeached twice.

    January 20, 2021 – Trump issues a total of 143 pardons and commutations that include his onetime political strategist, Steve Bannon, a former top fundraiser and two well-known rappers but not himself or his family. He then receives a military-style send-off from Joint Base Andrews on Inauguration morning, before heading home to Florida.

    February 13, 2021 – The US Senate acquits Trump in his second impeachment trial, voting that Trump is not guilty of inciting the deadly January 6 riots at the US Capitol. The vote is 43 not guilty to 57 guilty, short of the 67 guilty votes needed to convict.

    May 5, 2021 – Facebook’s Oversight Board upholds Trump’s suspension from using its platform. The decision also applies to Facebook-owned Instagram.

    June 4, 2021 – Facebook announces Trump will be suspended from its platform until at least January 7th, 2023 – two years from when he was initially suspended.

    July 1, 2021 – New York prosecutors charge the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corporation with 10 felony counts and Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg with 15 felony counts in connection with an alleged tax scheme stretching back to 2005. Trump himself is not charged. On December 6, 2022, both companies are found guilty on all charges.

    February 14, 2022 – Accounting firm Mazars announces it will no longer act as Trump’s accountant, citing a conflict of interest. In a letter to the Trump Organization chief legal officer, the firm informs the Trump Organization to no longer rely on financial statements ending June 2011 through June 2020.

    May 3, 2022 – The Trump Organization and the Presidential Inaugural Committee agree to pay a total of $750,000 to settle with the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office over allegations they misspent money raised for former President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

    June 9-July 21, 2022 – The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol holds eight hearings, where it hears from witnesses including top ex-Trump officials, election workers, those who took part in the attack and many others. Through live testimony, video depositions, and never-before-seen material, the committee attempts to paint the picture of the former president’s plan to stay in power and the role he played on January 6.

    August 8, 2022 – The FBI executes a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents, that may have been brought there.

    August 12, 2022 – A federal judge unseals the search warrant and property receipt from the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. The unsealed documents indicate the FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents from its search, including some materials marked as “top secret/SCI” – one of the highest levels of classification, and identify three federal crimes that the Justice Department is looking at as part of its investigation: violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records.

    September 21, 2022 – The New York state attorney general files a lawsuit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging they were involved in an expansive fraud lasting over a decade that the former President used to enrich himself. According to the lawsuit, the Trump Organization deceived lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of his properties using misleading appraisals.

    October 3, 2022 – Trump files a lawsuit against CNN for defamation, seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

    November 15, 2022 – Announces that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

    November 19, 2022 – Trump’s Twitter account, which was banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is reinstated after users respond to an online poll posted by Twitter CEO and new owner Elon Musk.

    December 19, 2022 – The Jan. 6 insurrection committee votes to refer Trump to the Department of Justice on at least four criminal charges. Four days later the panel releases its final report recommending Trump be barred from holding office again.

    February 9, 2023 – Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts are restored following a two-year ban in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, a Meta spokesperson confirms to CNN. On March 17, 2023, YouTube restores Trump’s channel.

    March 30, 2023 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.

    April 4, 2023 – Surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records in Manhattan criminal court. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs. Hours after his arraignment, Trump rails against the Manhattan district attorney and the indictment during a speech at his Florida resort at Mar-a-Lago.

    May 9, 2023 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.

    May 15, 2023 – A report by special counsel John Durham is released. In it he concludes that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. The report does not recommend any new charges against individuals or “wholesale changes” about how the FBI handles politically charged investigations, despite strongly criticizing the agency’s behavior.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says justices are ‘destroying the legitimacy’ of the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says justices are ‘destroying the legitimacy’ of the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said Sunday that some Supreme Court justices are “destroying the legitimacy of the court,” amid a lack of oversight, calling it “profoundly dangerous” for democracy.

    “We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach and abuse of power, and the Supreme Court has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    The progressive lawmaker cited recent allegations against Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas over ethics improprieties. Her comments come as the court wrapped up its term with a slew of consequential rulings, including ending affirmative action for college admissions, clocking student loan debt relief and limiting LGBTQ protections.

    Alito did not disclose a luxury 2008 trip he took in which a hedge fund billionaire flew him on a private jet, even though the businessman would later repeatedly ask the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf, ProPublica reported. In a highly unusual move, Alito preemptively disputed the nature of the report before it published last month.

    Thomas, meanwhile, has fielded sharp criticism after a separate ProPublica report detailed his relationship with GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, including luxury travel and other lavish gifts that Thomas received from Crow, as well as Crow’s purchase from Thomas and his family the home where the justice’s mother still lives.

    The real estate transaction and the bulk of the hospitality went unreported on Thomas’ annual financial disclosures, as did Crow’s reported payments for the tuition of a grandnephew of the justice.

    Thomas has defended the omission of the Crow-financed travel from his reports, saying he was advised at the time that he was not required to report the hospitality.

    “If Chief Justice Roberts will not come before the Congress for an investigation voluntarily, I believe we should be considering subpoenas, we should be considering investigations, we should pass much more binding and stringent ethics guidelines,” Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday.

    Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, previously said his committee would mark up legislation on Supreme Court ethics after lawmakers return from their July 4 recess. Durbin had also asked Chief Justice John Roberts to appear before the Judiciary panel – a request that Roberts declined in April.

    Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday also called on the Biden administration to keep pursuing student loan cancellation after the Supreme Court blocked the president’s student loan forgiveness plan Friday, rejecting a program aimed at delivering up to $20,000 of relief to millions of borrowers.

    “People should not be incurring interest during this 12-month on-ramp period,” she said, referring to the administration’s proposal to help borrowers avoid penalties if they miss a payment during the first 12 months after student loan repayments resume in October.

    “So, I highly urge the administration to consider suspending those interest payments. Of course, we still believe in pursuing student loan cancellation and acting faster than that 12-month period wherever possible.”

    “We truly believe that the president – Congress has given the president this authority. The Supreme Court is far overreaching their authority. And I believe, frankly, that we really need to be having conversations about judicial review as a check on the courts as well,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link