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Trump allegedly attempted to pressure Arizona governor to overturn 2020 election results
- Washington Post: Trump pressured Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to overturn 2020 election: In a phone call in late 2020, President Donald Trump tried to pressure Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) to overturn the state’s presidential election results, saying that if enough fraudulent votes could be found it would overcome Trump’s narrow loss in Arizona, according to three people familiar with the call. Trump also repeatedly asked Vice President Mike Pence to call Ducey and prod him to find the evidence to substantiate Trump’s claims of fraud, according to two of these people. Pence called Ducey several times to discuss the election, they said, though he did not follow Trump’s directions to pressure the governor.
- USA Today: Pence: ‘No pressure involved’ in phone call to Arizona governor over 2020 election results: Former Vice President Mike Pence confirmed that he called former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey at Donald Trump’s request to discuss the 2020 election results, but insisted that Trump never pressured him to find evidence to back up his unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. “I did check in, with not only Gov. Ducey, but other governors and states that were going through the legal process of reviewing their election results,” Pence said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “But there was no pressure involved. I was calling to get an update. I passed along that information to the president. It was no more, no less, than that.” Trump lost Arizona to now-President Joe Biden by less than 11,000 votes. Asked if he had been pressured by Trump to push Ducey to change the election results in Arizona, Pence said he had not.
Supreme Court upholds controversial Mississippi voting law originating from Jim Crow era
- NBC: Supreme Court rejects challenge to Jim Crow-era Mississippi voting law: The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a challenge to a constitutional amendment adopted by the state of Mississippi during the racist Jim Crow era aimed at preventing Black people from voting. The justices left in place a law barring certain felons from voting, which the state says is no longer tainted by the racist intentions of its original authors because it has subsequently been updated on two occasions.The court’s decision not to hear the case prompted a sharp dissenting opinion from liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by fellow liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
- AP: Supreme Court won’t hear challenge to Mississippi’s Jim Crow-era ban on voting after some felonies: The U.S. Supreme Court said Friday that it will not stop Mississippi from removing voting rights from people convicted of certain felonies — a practice that originated in the Jim Crow era with the intent of stopping Black men from influencing elections. The court declined to reconsider a 2022 decision by the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said Mississippi had remedied the discriminatory intent of the original provisions in the state constitution by altering the list of disenfranchising crimes.
Federal investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents continues amid controversy
- New York Times: Investigation of Trump Documents Case Continues After His Indictment: Three weeks after former President Donald J. Trump was indicted on charges of illegally retaining national security records and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them, a federal grand jury in Miami is still investigating aspects of the case, according to people familiar with the matter. In recent days, the grand jury has issued subpoenas to a handful of people who are connected to the inquiry, those familiar with it said. While it remains unclear who received the subpoenas and the kind of information prosecutors were seeking to obtain, it is clear that the grand jury has stayed active and that investigators are digging even after a 38-count indictment was issued this month against Mr. Trump and a co-defendant, Walt Nauta, one of his personal aides.
- Guardian: Why was Trump hoarding classified government documents?: There are many surreal revelations in Jack Smith’s federal indictment of Donald Trump. There are the texts between various Trump underlings and Walt Nauta, the Trump body man who has also been indicted, showing the president directing his employees to move the boxes containing classified information back and forth to various locations around his properties in Palm Beach and Bedminster, New Jersey. There is the annoyed missive from Trump’s wife Melania, trying to make sure the boxes don’t crowd out room for her luggage on a private plane. There is the claim from Trump’s former attorney, compelled to testify against him in an unusual arrangement, that the former president suggested, with a Grinch-like pinching gesture, that the lawyer destroy confidential documents to prevent them from being produced in a subpoena. There is a text message Nauta sent to another Trump underling, showing a box having fallen over in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, secret documents spilling on to the floor – whoops.
- Washington Post: How Trump has flaunted sensitive information: A history: Among many striking things about the July 2021 audio of Donald Trump seeming to discuss a classified document with guests is how casual it all was. In real time, the now-indicted former president seems to recognize that what he’s doing is not kosher, requesting that it be off the record and drawing an aide to comment with an apparently uneasy laugh, “Yeah, now we have a problem.” It’s as if those involved were familiar with the dance of Trump being cavalier with sensitive information. Which, even before this latest entry, is indeed what his full record demonstrates. Appearing on MSNBC over the weekend, former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said she personally witnessed the way Trump shared information at Mar-a-Lago during his presidency.
In The States
OHIO: U.S. Supreme Court sends redistricting case back to the top Ohio court, rejecting Republicans’ appeal
- CNN: Ohio redistricting case that raised controversial election law theory sent back by Supreme Court: The Supreme Court on Friday sent back to state court an Ohio redistricting case that raised the same, sweeping theory about the “Independent State Legislature” theory that the justices recently rejected in a case arising out of North Carolina. By returning the case to the Ohio Supreme Court, the justices wiped away previous rulings striking down congressional maps for Ohio and instructed the state court to reconsider the dispute under the US Supreme Court’s new opinion in the North Carolina dispute earlier this week. Republican state officials in Ohio had turned to the US Supreme Court after the state Supreme Court repeatedly rejected congressional maps drawn by the GOP-controlled Ohio legislature and by the state’s redistricting commission, which is made up of elected officials in the state, a majority of whom are Republican.
IOWA: Iowa voting materials will now be allowed in other languages
- Washington Post: Iowa’s English-only policy crashes into reality: In February 2001, a committee of the Iowa Senate held a hearing to consider a law that would require official state documents to be presented in no language other than English. The legislation was pilloried as anti-immigrant, prompting the chairman of the committee to allow two immigrants to testify about its effects. One supported the bill, a resident who’d arrived from Italy nearly half a century prior. The other, an immigrant from Mexico who was in his early 20s, opposed it. Ultimately, the committee advanced the legislation, and a modified version of it became law. It was sponsored by that same committee chairman, a legislator who would eventually become one of Iowa’s most infamous members of Congress: Steve King. He lost reelection in the 2020 Republican primary after being ousted from his House committees because of his overtly anti-immigrant and pro-White nationalist rhetoric.
NORTH CAROLINA: Despite Supreme Court ruling, efforts continue to subvert democracy and disenfranchise voters in North Carolina
- New York Times: As 2024 Voting Battles Heat Up, North Carolina G.O.P. Presses Forward: A closely watched political fight is developing in North Carolina over voting rights and control of elections, as Democrats aim to recapture a presidential battleground and Republicans look to win back the governor’s office. Much as Georgia, Florida and Texas drew an outpouring of national attention and political cash as Republicans moved to restrict voting in the heated months after the 2020 election, North Carolina is poised for headline-grabbing confrontations over nearly every lever of the electoral apparatus. In the Republican-led legislature, the State House is considering two bills passed by the Senate that would sharply alter how elections are run, adding voting restrictions and effectively neutering the state elections board, which is now controlled by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat. And in a looming redistricting clash, the newly conservative State Supreme Court has ordered lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional and state legislative maps, which will most likely be far friendlier to Republicans.
- WFAE: New voter ID rule in NC sparks worries about fairness for Black and Latino voters: Shalea Brown, 20, is a registered North Carolina voter and works at a mall in Raleigh. Brown said she knew there was talk about a voter identification requirement, but she had no idea it would be enforced in the upcoming local elections. “If I had such a hard time getting a state-issued ID as a Black, lower-middle income person, then somebody who is less fortunate than me is going to have an even harder time getting it, and that shouldn’t mean that they aren’t able to vote,” Brown said. While she does not have a valid driver’s license, she does have a state-issued nondriver ID that was difficult to get. She had lost her Social Security card, which made it challenging to get the state-issued ID. “I had to go through all these channels to make a new Social Security card, go to my doctors to get documents from them, get everything notarized and took two trips to my local North Carolina Division of (Motor Vehicles),” she said. “I couldn’t get an ID until I had all of this.” Brown said that she could easily have found herself in a situation at the polls this year where she wouldn’t have been able to vote if she didn’t get a state ID.
FLORIDA: Judge blocks new Florida election law on voter registration, calling it the ‘latest assault on the right to vote’
- Politico: Federal judge halts new Florida law he calls ‘latest assault’ on voting: A federal judge on Monday blocked a new Florida election law pushed by Republicans that puts restrictions on voter registration groups, calling it “Florida’s latest assault on the right to vote.” U.S. Chief District Judge Mark Walker granted a preliminary injunction against the law just days after it went into effect. Walker is an appointee of former President Barack Obama who has repeatedly ruled against the state in past legal challenges to election measures put in place by the GOP-controlled Legislature. “When state government power threatens to spread beyond constitutional bounds and reduce individual rights to ashes, the federal judiciary stands as a firewall,” Walker wrote in his 58-page order that included a subtle jab at Gov. Ron DeSantis by invoking a catch phrase he often uses. “The free state of Florida is simply not free to exceed the bounds of the United States Constitution.”
What Experts Are Saying
VIDEO: Norm Eisen, House Judiciary Committee special counsel in Trump’s first impeachment trial: “Pence is distinguishing his call to the AZ Gov. from Trump’s[.] Trump’s pressure on the Gov. to find fraud likely only worsens his legal exposure in the DOJ investigation[.] No wonder Pence wants to separate himself[.] I explained @CNN w @Boris_Sanchez” Tweet
Donald Kettl, former dean and professor emeritus of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy: “‘I can’t recall a time when we’ve had such fundamental friction between the states on such important issues’ [… ‘]It is certainly good to have a chance to have a contest over basic values, and that’s one of the great strengths of the American republic…But there is also a basic question of the fundamental rights of individuals and whether the balance of power in deciding them ought to lie’ with states or the nation as a whole.” CNN: Why the US ‘does not get to assume that it lasts forever’
Michael Podhorzer, former long-time political director for the AFL-CIO: has argued that the wave of restrictive red state social laws has simply made more apparent something that has long been true: that the red and blue parts of the country are so divergent in their values, priorities and even economic structures that they are more accurately described as separate nations than separate regions. In his mind, what’s changed isn’t that these different regions – or different nations – have divergent approaches on both social and economic issues, but that the Trump-aligned MAGA movement ascendant in the red states is now pursuing such an extreme and even anti-democratic (small d) agenda. CNN: Why the US ‘does not get to assume that it lasts forever’
Podhorzer: “On its 247th birthday, America continues to be the ‘land that has never been yet – And yet must be – the land where every man is free,’ as Langston Hughes put it in Let America Be America Again…Since last week, all eyes have been on the Supreme Court and the regressive rulings of its unaccountable rogue justices – but too little attention is being paid to the forces that put those justice on the Court to achieve a revanchist agenda that could not be accomplished through any remotely democratic process. We would not be here today, outraged about the Court’s backwards rulings on LGBTQ rights and affirmative action, were it not for a revanchist coalition of capitalists and white supremacists that is bent on repealing the New Deal economic order and the civil and human rights gained in the Twentieth Century.” Weekend Reading: Consent of the Governed?
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian at New York University: “Yet when democracy is under attack, as it is today in America, talking about patriotism is essential. To make it appealing, we must find a new language, one that can mobilize new generations of voters and constituencies who may not be inclined to display the flag. Creating passion and excitement around America explicitly as a multiracial democracy is one way in. It directly confronts the GOP’s attempts to disenfranchise non-Whites, impose silence about past and present racial crimes, and engineer and enforce rule by a White minority. Celebrating America as a multiracial democracy is also forward-looking and pragmatic.” Lucid
Stephen Vladeck, University of Texas law professor: “Moore v. Harper [on the independent state legislature doctrine] is a profoundly court-power-expanding decision with regard to how much authority it’s going to give federal courts in future elections. For anyone who thinks that judicial restraint is an important principle, this [Supreme Court] term shows very little of it.” Washington Post
Richard L. Hasen, professor of law at UCLA and the director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project: “It is indeed a cause for celebration that the United States Supreme Court, on a 6–3 vote in Moore v. Harper, rejected an extreme version of the ‘independent state legislature’ theory, which could have upended the conduct of elections around the country and paved the way for state legislatures to engage in election subversion. But after the celebration comes the inevitable hangover, and with all the hoopla, it is easy to miss that the Supreme Court has now set itself up, with the assent of the liberal justices, to meddle in future elections, perhaps to even decide the outcome of future presidential elections (as it has done in the past). Chief Justice John Roberts drove a hard bargain.” Slate
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
Politico: The parents group Republicans are banking on to win the White House
Trump Investigations
NBC: Trump adds Georgia’s Raffensperger to his list of ‘real’ criminals
Slate: What Ever Happened to That Other Jack Smith Investigation of Trump?
January 6 And The 2020 Election
Detroit News: Midland man arrested for allegedly striking Capitol officer with flagpole on Jan. 6
NBC: Jan. 6 defendant arrested near Obama’s home had guns and 400 rounds of ammunition in his van
Guardian: Man accused of attacking Capitol officer as January 6 arrests pile up
Opinion
New York Times: Tell Me There Isn’t a Witch Hunt in Tennessee
Hill: The new, mysterious constitutional right to discriminate
New York Times: The Tragedy of John Roberts
Washington Post: Top court watcher: This term was marked by a broad expansion of judicial power
New York Times: No One Can Stop Rupert Murdoch. That’s Increasingly a Problem.
In the States
Post and Courier: Supreme Court is overturning GOP redistricting maps in the South: What’s it mean for SC-1?
CBS Minnesota: New laws expanding voting access take effect Saturday
Local10: City of Miami files new district map following judge’s ruling of gerrymandering
