Headlines for Wednesday, May 31, 2023
🗽There is no greater power than a community discovering the truth and working together to make sure an injustice is not repeated
🗽A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny. - Thomas Jefferson
🗽There is no greater power than a community discovering the truth and working together to make sure an injustice is not repeated
NEWS HEADLINES FOR MAY 31, 2023
New York Times: Trump White House Aides Subpoenaed in Firing of Election Security Expert: The special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who may have been involved in firing the government cybersecurity official whose agency judged the election “the most secure in American history,” according to two people briefed on the matter. The team led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has been asking witnesses about the events surrounding the firing of Christopher Krebs, who was the Trump administration’s top cybersecurity official during the 2020 election. Mr. Krebs’s assessment that the election was secure was at odds with Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions that it was a “fraud on the American public.” Mr. Smith’s team is also seeking information about how White House officials, including in the Presidential Personnel Office, approached the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump turned to after his election loss as a way to try to stay in power, people familiar with the questions said.
Washington Post: Mar-a-Lago prosecutors eye July episode with Trump surveillance cameras: A Mar-a-Lago employee who helped move boxes of documents last June has been questioned about his conduct weeks later related to a government demand for surveillance footage from Donald Trump’s property, according to a person familiar with the federal probe of the former president’s handling of classified material. The employee’s actions in June and July have caught the attention of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators as they try to determine whether Trump or people close to him sought to obstruct justice in the face of a grand jury subpoena to return all documents marked classified, or lied about what happened, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation. The Washington Post reported last week that the employee was questioned repeatedly by investigators after he was seen on video footage helping another Trump aide, Walt Nauta, move boxes into a Mar-a-Lago storage room on June 2, the day before a top Justice Department official arrived with FBI agents to collect classified material in response to the subpoena.
The Guardian: Donald Trump reiterates pledge to scrap birthright US citizenship: Speaking 125 years after the US supreme court settled the issue of birthright citizenship, former president Donald Trump pledged once again to end it. If elected back to the White House next year, Trump said in a video posted to social media on Tuesday, he will on day one sign an executive order to ensure the children of undocumented migrants “will not receive automatic US citizenship”. Recycling ugly, anti-migrant claims, Trump also said his order would “choke off a major incentive for continued illegal immigration, deter more migrants from coming and encourage many of the aliens Joe Biden has unlawfully let into our country to go”.
Reuters: Manhattan prosecutor seeks to keep Trump hush money case in state court: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Tuesday moved to block former President Donald Trump's attempt to persuade a federal court to take over a state criminal case in which he is charged with falsifying business records prior to the 2016 election. In documents filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Bragg argued that Trump is not entitled to the change in venue because he is not a federal officer. Lawyers for Trump have previously requested to move the case out of New York state court.
Daily Beast: Trump’s Lawyers Start to Wonder if One Could Be a Snitch: With three anticipated indictments, two ongoing court cases, and an ever-expanding cadre of lawyers, former President Donald Trump is at a critical juncture—and yet his legal advisers are starting to turn on each other. According to five sources with direct knowledge of the situation, clashing personalities and the increasing outside threat of law enforcement has sown deep divisions that have only worsened in recent months. The internal bickering has already sparked one departure in recent weeks—and that could be just the beginning.
Washington Post: New York DA says Stormy Daniels hush money not Trump’s official duty: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) argued on Tuesday that hush money paid in 2016 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels allegedly on Donald Trump’s behalf was not part of an official presidential act and cannot not be grounds for the case being removed to a federal court. The filing was in response to a recent bid by lawyers for Trump who want his 34-count indictment — which includes charges such as falsifying business records — to be transferred from state criminal court to U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Trump has pleaded not guilty and maintains his innocence. The indictment, which was voted on by a grand jury in late March, marked the first time a former U.S. president faced criminal charges.
Associated Press: Donald Trump’s legal team and Manhattan prosecutors spar over where he will stand trial: Ten months before Donald Trump is scheduled to stand trial in his historic New York City criminal case, Manhattan prosecutors are turning the former president’s words against him in a tug of war over precisely where he will be tried. Trump’s lawyers have spent weeks angling to have the hush money case moved to federal court. The Manhattan district attorney’s office responded Tuesday that the case should remain in the state court where it originated, citing old Trump tweets that they say undermine his lawyers’ jurisdictional challenge. Trump, a Republican, pleaded not guilty in state court last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to money paid to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, for orchestrating hush money payments during the 2016 campaign to bury allegations of extramarital sexual encounters. Prosecutors allege that Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, falsely logged the Cohen payments as being for a legal retainer that didn’t exist.
MSNBC: Trump reportedly building revenge list against feds investigating him: Peter Strzok, former FBI counter-intelligence agent, talks with Alex Wagner about new reporting from Rolling Stone that Donald Trump is trying to build a list of federal investigators and FBI agents who have been involved with investigating his many transgressions so that he can make sure they lose their jobs if he becomes president.
New York Times: Turkey’s Election Is a Warning About Trump: “The totalitarian phenomenon,” the French philosopher Jean-François Revel once noted, “is not to be understood without making an allowance for the thesis that some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or — much more mysteriously — to submit to it.” It’s an observation that should help guide our thinking about the re-election this week of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. And it should serve as a warning about other places — including the Republican Party — where autocratic leaders, seemingly incompetent in many respects, are returning to power through democratic means. That’s not quite the way Erdogan’s close-but-comfortable victory in Sunday’s runoff over the former civil servant Kemal Kilicdaroglu is being described in many analyses. The president, they say, has spent 20 years in power tilting every conceivable scale in his favor.
AL.com: U.S. Supreme Court could decide soon whether Alabama’s congressional map violates Voting Rights Act: The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in June in a case that could result in Alabama redrawing its seven Congressional districts and could affect other states in how the Voting Rights Act is applied. Individual voters and organizations filed the lawsuit in 2021, challenging the district map approved by the Alabama Legislature after the 2020 census. The plaintiffs alleged that the map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which prohibits election laws and procedures that are racially discriminatory. A key contention was that Black residents make up 27% of Alabama’s population, but only one of the seven Congressional districts, or 14%, had a majority Black population. A panel of three judges held a seven-day hearing last year and ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. They ordered the Legislature to redraw the map with a second district that had a majority Black or near majority Black district before the 2022 elections. The U.S. Supreme Court put a hold on the ruling at the request of Alabama election officials, who argued, in part, that it came too late for last year’s elections. That allowed the map to stay in place last year. But the justices’ decision on whether the plan violates the Voting Rights Act is pending. Lawyers for both sides argued before the Supreme Court in October.
Vanity Fair: Report: Trump’s Lawyer Revealed Some Unfortunate Things for Trump in Classified-Docs Case: Is Donald Trump going to be indicted by the Justice Department over his handling of classified documents? On the one hand—with the major caveat that he was, in fact, criminally charged in April by the Manhattan district attorney’s office over his hush money deals—the ex-president has effectively escaped any real repercussions for seven-plus decades of bad behavior ranging from the disturbing and f--ked up to the (allegedly) criminal. On the other, it’s not looking great for the guy! Over the last several weeks—while Jack Smith was reportedly uncovering “significant evidence” that the ex-president may have obstructed justice—news emerged that “close associates” of Trump and his actual lawyers believe an indictment is coming. And based on new reporting, it’s not hard to see why.
Washington Post: Race once governed U.S. voting patterns. That’s quickly changing.: Recent elections offer a heartening lesson about U.S. politics: Just because voting patterns are racially polarized does not mean they are racially motivated. This fact is worth celebrating, as it runs counter to our nation’s history. For a long time, White people would not vote for Black candidates under any circumstances. Black people, in return, rarely elected White candidates to represent majority-Black districts. For many of these voters, the color of a candidate’s skin was more important than their policies or character. This sad proclivity was not limited to the Deep South and was true well after the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act became law. For decades, virtually no Black person could win office unless they hailed from districts or cities with majority-Black populations. Skin color even trumped partisanship in many places. When Harold Washington — then a Black U.S. representative of Illinois — unexpectedly won Chicago’s Democratic mayoral primary in 1983, White voters in the city who typically voted for Democrats flocked to the relatively unknown Republican nominee, Bernard Epton. Some White working-class wards voted for Epton by as much as 95 percent; Black wards gave Washington as much as 99 percent. In the end, Washington won with a slim majority.
Tallahassee Democrat: Florida Legislature and Gov. DeSantis are trampling on our voting rights: If we want a democracy that works for everyone, we should be making it harder for money to influence politics, and easier for eligible Floridians to exercise their freedom to vote. But that’s the opposite of what’s happening in Florida, with state lawmakers erecting a slew of unnecessary and confusing barriers for Floridians looking to participate in our democracy. All while weakening campaign finance laws and handing the governor an exemption to Florida’s resign-to-run law so he can run for president while remaining in office as governor.SB 7050, a discriminatory, anti-democratic law just signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is the latest example of how our state leaders are getting it backwards. This new law targets Florida’s community-based voter registration organizations by imposing unnecessary restrictions and crippling fines for simple missteps. Expect to see a dramatic decrease in the grassroots voter registration drives that help seniors, students, people with disabilities and Black and Latino voters exercise their right to vote.
The Guardian: North Carolina’s gerrymandered districts set stage for 2024 Republican wins: Millions of Millions of North Carolina residents are likely to be placed in congressional districts where the outcome of elections is all but predetermined, following the state supreme court’s April ruling to allow partisan gerrymandering. The ruling will permit the state’s legislature, which is controlled by Republican supermajorities in both chambers, to draw new congressional district maps in advance of the 2024 election. North Carolina’s congressional delegation is likely to go from its current even split to 10-4 or 11-3 in favor of Republicans, despite the state having fewer registered Republicans than either Democrats or unaffiliated voters. “It’s hard for me to think of a more consequential decision,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.
Vanity Fair: Nothing to See Here, Just Trump Reportedly Vowing to “Immediately” Fire Anyone Who Investigated Him If Reelected: Donald Trump is currently facing many a legal problem. For starters, there are the 34 class E felonies he was charged with last month in relation to a hush money payment made in the run-up to the 2016 election. Then there’s the Justice Department’s investigation into his handling of classified documents, which is expected to result in a second indictment. Rounding things out is a DOJ probe of the violent January 6 insurrection and the plot to overturn the 2020 election, as well as a Fulton County investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in Georgia, both of which also have the potential to lead to criminal charges. Trump has, of course, insisted he did nothing wrong. But apparently he also has a plan for how to make himself feel better about all of this: fire everyone who investigated him should he win a second term.
NBC News: Biden’s student debt plan hangs in balance as major Supreme Court rulings loom: For months, the Biden administration’s ambitious plan to discharge billions of dollars of student loan debt has been on ice, blocked by lower courts, its fate left in the hands of skeptical conservative justices on the Supreme Court. Decision day is fast approaching. The stakes are high, with 43 million people eligible for up to $20,000 in debt relief. The total cost if the program ever goes into effect has been calculated at more than $400 billion, with the administration estimating that 20 million people would have all of their remaining student loan debt canceled.
Rolling Stone: Team Trump Scrambles to Unmask the Feds Investigating Him: In recent months, the former president has asked close advisers, including at least one of his personal attorneys, if “we know” all the names of senior FBI agents and Justice Department personnel who have worked on the federal probes into him. That’s according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter and another person briefed on it. The former president has then privately discussed that should he return to the White House, it is imperative his new Department of Justice “quickly” and “immediately” purge the FBI and DOJ’s ranks of these officials and agents who’ve led the Trump-related criminal investigations, the sources recount. The ex-president has of course dubbed all such probes as illegitimate “witch hunts,” and is now campaigning for the White House on a platform of “retribution” and cleaning house.
New York Times: Missteps and Miscalculations: Inside Fox’s Legal and Business Debacle: In August 2021, the Fox Corporation board of directors gathered on the company’s movie studio lot in Los Angeles. Among the topics on the agenda: Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against its cable news network, Fox News. The suit posed a threat to the company’s finances and reputation. But Fox’s chief legal officer, Viet Dinh, reassured the board: Even if the company lost at trial, it would ultimately prevail. The First Amendment was on Fox’s side, he explained, even if proving so could require going to the Supreme Court. Mr. Dinh told others inside the company that Fox’s possible legal costs, at tens of millions of dollars, could outstrip any damages the company would have to pay to Dominion. That determination informed a series of missteps and miscalculations over the next 20 months, according to a New York Times review of court and business records, and interviews with roughly a dozen people directly involved in or briefed on the company’s decision-making.
NPR: Is Texas next up? Lawmakers clear the way for the state to leave voter data group ERIC: Texas is on its way to being the latest — and largest — state to leave a bipartisan data sharing partnership that states across the country use to cross check their voter rolls. Texas lawmakers on Monday gave final approval to Senate Bill 1070, which would seek to end the state's participation in the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC. The legislation now heads to Gov. Greg Abbott. Multiple GOP-led states have backed out of ERIC in response to conservative advocacy groups who have at times spread misinformation about the compact. Virginia on May 11 became the eighth state to announce its departure.
Roll Call: Judge sets Navarro contempt of Congress trial for September: A federal judge on Tuesday set a Sept. 5 trial date for former Trump White House advisor Peter Navarro on criminal charges stemming from his refusal to cooperate with a subpoena from the House select panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The contempt of Congress case has been delayed over the past few months as attorneys argued over how to handle Navarro’s claims that former President Donald Trump told him to claim executive privilege over the subpoena. Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia already ruled that Navarro could not dismiss the charges over his claim of executive privilege. But he has yet to decide what to do at trial if Navarro testified to the jury that Trump instructed him to invoke privilege.
Associated Press: Juror and spouse: Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton could vote in trial on husband’s impeachment: On the way to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton becoming a rising figure in the GOP, his wife, Angela, used to entertain crowds with a guitar and a song. “I’m a pistol-packin’ mama, and my husband sues Obama,” she sang at campaign events and Republican clubs in Texas. When it came time for the high school teacher and guidance counselor to launch her own political career, a $2 million loan from her husband propelled Angela Paxton to a narrow victory for a state Senate seat in the booming Dallas suburbs. Once elected, she filed bills to expand his office’s powers, and approved budgets over his state agency and salary. Now, Sen. Paxton is a key figure in the next phase of Ken Paxton’s historic impeachment: as a “juror” in a Senate trial that could put her husband back in office or banish him permanently. It’s a role that raises an ethical cloud over the Senate proceeding. State law compels all senators to attend, but is silent on whether she must participate.
Wall Street Journal: Ron DeSantis, Disney Are Headed Into Untested Legal Waters: In dueling lawsuits, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Walt Disney Co. are locked in a legal battle over corporate power, governmental control and freedom of speech, without a clear-cut advantage for either side. The showdown is the culmination of a fight sparked by Disney’s criticism of a DeSantis-backed law limiting the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools. Disney is trying to convince a federal judge that it is the victim of a campaign of retribution waged by a governor intent on silencing dissent. In a competing lawsuit filed in state court, DeSantis’s allies are arguing that Disney illegally sought to usurp government authority in its effort to have more control over its Florida operations.
Associated Press: One justice explained absence from case. Another didn’t. Ethics questions vexing Supreme Court: One Supreme Court justice explained her absence from a case. One justice didn’t. The difference shows how difficult forging consensus over even small steps on ethics can be at the Supreme Court, which is facing new calls to adopt an ethics code following revelations about undisclosed gifts from a Republican megadonor to Justice Clarence Thomas. Last week, Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged the court needs to do more to reassure a skeptical public that the justices take their ethical obligations seriously. Though the justices have been resistant to a binding code of ethical standards, all nine signed a “statement on ethics principles and practices” issued in late April that promised at least some small additional disclosure when one or more among them opts not to take part in a case. A justice “may provide a summary explanation of a recusal decision,” the statement reads, a change from the standard practice of saying nothing at all.
Slate: It Took Alito Barely a Month to Violate the Supreme Court’s New Ethics Rules: On April 25, Chief Justice John Roberts sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” signed by all nine justices. Roberts forwarded along the “statement” in lieu of testifying before the committee, and obviously hoped it would quell growing congressional concern over the Supreme Court’s growing ethics scandals. The document identified various recusal and disclosure practices, claiming that “all of the current Members of the Supreme Court subscribe” to these suggested rules. It took Justice Samuel Alito barely a month to violate them. In the court’s orders list on Tuesday, Alito noted his recusal from BG Gulf Coast and Phillips 66 v. Sabine-Neches Navigation District—a case about two energy companies shirking their obligation to help fund improvement of a waterway that they use for shipping. (The court declined to take up the case, leaving in place a lower court decision against the companies.) But the justice did not explain his reason for recusing, one of Roberts’ promised “practices.” To obtain that information, you must dig through his financial disclosures, which reveal that he holds up to $50,000 of stock in Phillips 66, one of the parties. Alito is one of two sitting justices who still holds individual stocks (as opposed to conflict-free assets like mutual funds). The only other sitting justice who maintains investments in individual stock is Roberts himself.
USA TODAY: Donald Trump fought to save Texas ally Ken Paxton from impeachment. It didn't work.: In the hours before the GOP-controlled legislature in Texas voted to impeach fellow Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, former President Donald Trump repeatedly took to social media with a warning for anyone − and especially members of his own party − who opposed his longtime ally. Trump lamented what he called the “very unfair process” used last weekend to oust one of the nation's most active state legal officials and vowed that he would "fight" any lawmakers who supported the impeachment. In the end, a majority of Texas Republicans in the state's House of Representatives ignored the admonishments of a former president and party leader and voted overwhelmingly to impeach Paxton. Of 85 Republicans in the chamber, 60 supported Paxton's impeachment.
Cleveland.com: How a red state government is squashing Ohio blue cities’ policies: Puppies. Fracking. Guns. Minimum wage. Plastic bags. These unrelated policy arenas share one throughline – the state of Ohio does not allow its cities to regulate them. Having secured historic supermajority control of the Statehouse, Republicans have increasingly focused over the last 20 years on telling cities – lone pockets of Democratic control in Ohio – what kinds of laws they can’t pass for themselves. These “preemption” laws are written by the conservative and overwhelmingly rural political power at the Ohio Statehouse to stymie policy choices of Ohio’s progressive cities that house most of the state’s population. For a sense of perspective, Republicans control 93 of Ohio’s 132 legislative seats. Of those 93 Republicans, only six of them live in one of Ohio’s 10 largest cities, according to research from the Ohio Mayor’s Alliance.
ABC News: Woman who threatened Nancy Pelosi with hanging during Capitol riot gets over 2 years in prison: A Pennsylvania restaurant owner who screamed death threats directed at then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi while storming the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Tuesday to more than two years in prison. Pauline Bauer was near Pelosi's office suite on Jan. 6, 2021, when she yelled at police officers to bring out the California Democrat so the mob of Donald Trump supporters could hang her. In January, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden convicted Bauer of riot-related charges after hearing trial testimony without a jury. The judge sentenced her to two years and three months of imprisonment, giving her credit for the several months she already has served in jail, court records show. Prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of six years and six months for Bauer, 55, of Kane, Pennsylvania.
To connect with People Power United, follow us at:
Website: https://www.peoplepowerunited.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peoplepowerunited
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeoplePowerUni
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peoplepoweruni/
If you love the work we do and want to support, please consider pledging a future subscription. It’s only $5 a month and you won’t be charged unless we enable payments. People Power United champions progressive values, putting people over profits, and is a grassroots group committed to increasing voter registration and participation.
Join us! As a subscriber to the People Power United you will be notified of current issues, upcoming events, and calls to action. Please note we do not share data with anyone. We use the sign-up information to share current issues, events and calls-to-actions only.